Transfiguration II

We took the bus back up to St. Louis this weekend to finish up some of the interior work we had started and some other odds and ends I had wanted to take care of. As usual the drive to St. Louis was an ordeal. It had been a rainy day that was supposed to clear up, but never did, and as we left the house we were shocked to realize that we had no headlights or windshield wipers. We stuck to the side roads and made it to Cuba through the mist. Once in Cuba we stopped and ate some lunch to hopefully let the rain pass (which the weather said it would be clear in the late afternoon), and while there picked up some RainX to make the most of the drive. Well the rain never stopped and we just pushed on, pulling over frequently to clean off the windshield, and 4 hours after we left Rolla, we made it to St. Louis.

Once in StL, it was a quick stop by the Fish Fry and then to work. Friday night I tried to figure out the lights, but gave up quickly with the intention of reading up on the wiring before I messed with anything else. Diane prepped everything for finishing up her laminate job and we called it an early night.

Saturday was a much more eventful day. With a mission set forward by Diane to finish the laminate, she and Pat set to work at her tediously slow pace. While they worked on that I set to removing the luggage rack to clean off the mold and put on some new seals. Taking the luggage rack turned out to be bad news though, as I came across a mess of rust. Without the time or equipment to properly repair the rust, I gave it a thorough wire brushing and sprayed some rust repair primer on to hopefully retard the formation of rust until I can really get in there and fix it.

Removed Sink Cabinet

Where Sink Cabinet came out from (be a good place for a lounge chair I think)

Uh oh RUST!

Rust Temporarily Repaired

Seals on the luggage rack
Putting seals on the pop-top

Cabinet all laminated up

Diane working the router

Diane routering, Pat cleaning up the edges

Sink hole cut out thanks to Diane's Router work

About 1 am we finally headed home, beat. Diane had finished the laminate, but not gotten a chance to put the headliner back in. I had put on the new seals, sealed the holes left by the AC tubing, and started mounting the front tire mount (turns out the screws they sent were way too long and ran into the defroster tube).

We made it home all in one piece on Sunday. Today I figured out the lights, taught myself some stuff about wiring and reading wiring diagrams properly, so now we have working lights and wipers. I also finished mounting the spare tire. Good times for now.