It’s kind of nice that Allen has been getting Saturdays off work. That doesn’t happen too often. But it gives us a chance to do more things… So this Saturday we fixed the ladder on the camper and lowered the top bunk in the garage to give us me more storage space.

When Allen and Charlie made their lonesome trek out west without me, a pesky pole in a gas station parking lot jumped up and hit the back of the camper, busting the light and messing up the ladder. The brackets ripped off and the ladder bent a little. We ordered parts from Grand Design which was a whole other hassle in itself, but they came in yesterday.

When Allen went to put them on, one of them broke apart in his hand. Cheap. Yet $25 a piece. Put together with pop rivets. So we took a trip to the job site (Sutro) to do some welding. It was only Allen’s second time using a welder and I think he did pretty good. He didn’t want me to put his crappy welds on the blog, but, oh well! So here are the practice ones…

First he took a wire wheel to it, to get the paint off, then welded it, then used something else that basically sanded it down I think. I wasn’t allowed to look at it because he said it would burn my eyes.

After welding we sprayed them with Rust-Stop, stopped by Lowe’s to get little nylon washers (because for $25 each, they don’t come with the hardware), then put them back on the ladder and camper. And here is the finished product…

The bunk was fairly simple.  It’s the Happi-Jac system.  We Allen just had to drill different holes to put the pins in so that the top bunk would stop and have a place to stay. As it was, you could only have it either all the way up or halfway down the wall.  There was no middle ground, but now there is, and I have a place to put my sewing machine when I’m not using it!

  
And these are just some more random pictures from the day…