Cabinetry Fixes & Housework

It's been a while since the weather was cooperative enough for us to get anything done on the RV, but this week we decided we just needed to bite the bullet and start working on things.  However, we stuck to the inside for now!

The latches on several of our drawers are broken; mostly they were broken before we purchased the RV, but some have gone out since then and some are in worse shape now after opening violently when we went over bumps or around curves while driving.  Aaron fixed the worst offender this week: the latch on one of the cabinet drawers in the kitchen.  We discovered we don't have as many replacement latches as we thought, so we'll have to get more before we can finish the rest of the drawers.

First Aaron had to repair the broken cabinet bottom - a result
of me overloading it with baking stones 😳

Replacement latches

Aaron had to get creative because the replacement
metal latches didn't fit in the same spot as the old
thick plastic latches...he ended up mounting
the latch to the top of the drawer instead of the
bottom and it worked perfectly.

We also discovered the glue holding the brush-like weatherstripping (maybe? not sure what to call it) on our screen window in the living room had decayed, so we re-glued that on.

What's that called??

While checking to see how this item was mounted on the other screens we discovered that our dining room screen was missing this piece!  That explains SO MUCH about why bugs kept on getting inside our RV!  I felt like they were coming through the window crack that I could see, but didn't understand why the window was designed like that...and now I know that it WASN'T designed that way, it's just missing the brushy weatherstripping thingy that's supposed to keep them out!!  I'm SO excited and can't wait to get a replacement glued in so we can keep our windows open without fear of bugs!!

While it's been too icky to work on the RV in West Virginia, we've been getting into other projects at my parents' house in Blacksburg.  In contrast to the family farm in West Virginia, the house in Blacksburg is on a wooded mountain with lots of leaves...so many leaves...  We spent some time one afternoon clearing some very compacted (and almost soil) leaves out of the culverts crossing my parents' driveways.

There were so many leaves and they were so
heavy I had to switch from a rake to a snow
shovel to move them across the driveway.

Aaron gave up on tools entirely and just started hauling the
leaves out with his hands.

All clear!

Aaron replaced a non-working drain in my parents' bathtub, inadvertently aggravating a slow leak they've always had into a very fast leak in the process.  He and my dad replaced the drain pipe entirely and now the bathtub is in top notch shape!

Old corroded drain plug mechanism.

Replacement drain pipe installed.

All new hardware!