Sooo....I was told during a conversation yesterday with someone offline that a simple haphazardly installed bracket for a CB antenna could not possibly have caused so much devastation and damage to the cab over.  I giggled....really....I did.  

Of course, this prompted an official investigation for proof of the matter, including eye witnesses and photographs of the scene.

Can I get a witness??

The investigation provided enough evidence that the accused (the bracket) was…

I THOUGHT....yeah..this is what I get for thinking...

that this was going to be a fairly easy job to do on this heater duct that is crushed by the frame of the couch/bed. Now, looking over this couch and how it is bolted together with no working room anywhere to dismantle it and then get it back together, I decided that was not happening. (I am reminded of Lakota's comment on ablog about an RV being built around a cabinet. I think this RV was built around this couch. LOL)…

I'm going to be heading out to work on the cabover this morning for a bit.  Thunder in the distance, but  it looks like it's going to roll north of me.  Darn...need the rain here.

While I was having my cuppa's this morning I was looking around at upholstery fabrics.  I thought I might stick with color schemes that go with the striping on the RV, blues and teals.

Here's a color combo choice I am mulling over, the dark plain color would be for the main seat…

In my basement...which suffered major water damage when a sump pump gave out during a heavy rainstorm (water seeped in through a crack in a block. The ground could not keep up with the water)

...is a drop ceiling.  The tiles suffered damage with warping from the humidity, so they all had to come down.  I have loads of channeling in the crawl space, and I looked at that and wondered.

It worked!  I screwed this channeling onto both sides of the 2x4 where the ceiling was dropping…

Okay, the hard part of the framing inside is done. Those 2x4's were purely exasperating trying to get them up without a helper. My arms were screaming murderly.

I am going to hafta to do the 2x2's between the 2x4's because of the length of the 2x4 run. As soon as I took down the support lifts the ceiling sank in the middle a bit. So, hopefully the 2x2's will stop that from happening.

I did some toe nailing and did angle brackets on one. And this wood splits easily. I like the…

Hey, I've got a great idea on where to hang the fly swatter for easy reach....let's put a 1" machine screw into the front of the refrigerator and hang it right there!  Easy peasy........

Garsh we're smart....

And you know that antenna that bounces on the cabover when we're traveling?  How irritating!  So let's put a screw in and…

What did that cabover ever do to them to deserve such abuse?

 Now we come to the CB antenna bracket. (this is what my brother said it was for)  Right smack on the edge of the top, screwed in with several large screws and piled on with some sort of sealant that certainly did not work over time.  Inside the camper where that is located, of course..the wood is rotted on the ceiling as well as on the edges.  It did some major damage and contributed very much to the overall…

During the work week, I've made a list of things to take on that don't take a lot of time commitment to finish.  This morning I got two things attended to.

First a bent up vent outside that goes to the water heater control area (I think)  It looks like someone tried to get into it without pulling down the canopy bar.  You can't get the door open with the canopy bar in the upright position.

So I got that all straightened up and back in there correctly.…

This morning I began the 2x2 supports installation. I have one up, it went fairly easy and seems very secure.  There will be a lot of cutting to fit as I go around the walls and such, but that's what a chop saw and measure tape are for. ;-)

My brother and I had been talking about those 2x4's that will go across the top and how to attach them to…

Well, as many silicone implant recipients might tell you....sometimes they get a bad job and suffer leakage....... ;-)

My job today was to tackle the antenna on the roof.  What I discovered was the antenna was really not the cause of the major leaking, it was the wire to it that had a hole separate from the unit almost to the edge of the top.  There was a metal plate on top of some foam rubber stripping, screwed in....and the wire from the antenna was shoved under the plate…

I found the reason that the cabover damage was so extensive and mainly in the corners of the front. The ceiling is dry, the windows are dry...but those bottom corners...what a mess! Both sides of the outside has buckled seals right at the bottom curve. The water was running right down into them and staying trapped there. Rusted screws and seepage was inevitable. I pulled it out, and will get some new sealing strips, install new screws and silicone around them.

Not sure what those strips…

So much water...still in that insulation.

Well, I did some work in Diggity Dodge this morning and concentrated on one area of the ceiling that was a major contributor to the still existing water reservoir of a ceiling.  There is a piece of 2x4 coming out from the wall that just stopped at about 8" and doesn't seem to be attached in any way to any other boards.  It just kind of hangs there like a lone wolf.  This piece was hanging down really bad when I began this project and…

I headed down to the basement and brought up my Maytag dehumidifier. This is a 45 pint unit. I usually empty it once a day in the basement during spring and humid weather, but I'll bet it will need emptying at least a few times per day with this camper right now.

This unit has an option to drain the water away via a hose, so I'm going to see about doing that tomorrow morning when I take it out there. Then I don't have to worry about it shutting down as "full" while I'm at…

Yepper...I found a fix!  But first, let me tell you what was probably the issue to begin with once that particle board got soaked under the laminate.

The stove.  Besides the 1/4" or so lip of the frame of the stove resting on the counter top edge, there were only two screws holding it in place. Those two screws were in the back of the stove into the counter.  The rest of the screws that were placed in there when installed, either missed the particle board all together or hit…

....I was sitting down taking a break from pulling staples up from the floor and got to looking at the counter top and stove. The stove had always looked lopsided, it's actually level in the front, it's the counter frame on the bottom that has pushed out of kilter.

Then I saw some particle board pieces on the carpet at one end of the counter, that had been cleaned yesterday before trying to rip up the carpet piece. Hmmmm....

Let's inspect. This is the back end of the counter top…

Before I started on the project today I wanted to visualize something a bit nicer to look at. I went out to the pond and saw the Rhododendrons in the morning sunlight. I thought I would share the beauty:

On with the work. Today I planned to take the rest of the cabinets down and then begin the kitchen end. The cabinets were a tough job, most of the screws were…

There comes a time when you have to be grateful to those who do a half azzed job on things.  Ripping the carpeting up was easy peasy because it really wasn't put down with any real effort. LOL

I got lucky on the floor, I was pretty worried on that when I dove in, but it appears to be very thick plywood there (1" maybe?) and it's dry for the most part!  The edges are stained and wet, but they are solid.  I have the fan blowing on the base now.…

I spent almost two hours on this project today just trying to remove the frame for the couch/storage.

One of my biggest pet peeves is trying to undo what someone else has done with screws and nails and glue.

People just seem to grab a drawer or box of miscellaneous screws and nails and just put them in as they go, disregarding screw head types, length, type of nails, and then to top it off they sink the stuff into the wood where it's too hard to get a drill bit in and seated…

Well, the Good is I actually found some dryer board toward the back as I move on with tearing down ceiling. YEY!  And I got the hand crank off for the antenna without having to cut it.

And,, I have come up with a name. She will be called "Diggity Dodge".  :)

The bad is, this is going to be a complete gutting.  Everything must go. And hopefully I won't have any more ceiling falling on top of me. Stinky, wet and nasty stuff up in 'der.  LOL

The Truly Ugly…

I really am enjoying the demolition part. LOL

That front overhang is bad....bad...bad to the blackened wood.  I've ripped out a bunch and have an oscillating fan going in there to get things dried up.  The rotted wood is all pretty wet.

This is what I started out with on the right side:…