Lots of progress since our last update.

We realized that instead of a complicated bit of routing on the underside of the nice wood counter to accommodate the bump around the sink, we could instead route down into the existing evil blue counter and simply drop the sink farther into it.

Unfortunately that counter is evil and the little jig saw and Dremel work we did with it before let us know that attempting to route an inch around the whole thing might kill us or at least give us cancer by week’s end. So, we made a trip to home depo for respirators. We got the best ones they had because we have no clue what evil petrochemicals we’re dealing with and we wanted a nice fit. This presented a minor complication for me though, because I have a beard. Well, I had a beard. Sometimes overlanding requires sacrifices.

Dachary ended up getting close and personal with the evil while routing it.

Dachary gets down and dirty with the routing

We later added a face shield to keep the little flakes off of her when she was close. Those things stuck to everything nearby.

old counter routing flakes

After that it was time to finally, finally deliver it to the wood shop for finishing. Which meant driving over the mountain through a cloud. At one point there were three vehicles directly ahead of us and we could only see one of them. This picture doesn’t even begin to convey how bad it was.

foggy drive

When we arrived at the woodshop we realized we’d forgotten to finish sanding the inside of the sink hole (oops) and we were informed that they were now getting into their wholesale season so there was only one guy who could work on it and only on weekends. So, it may be a month before we get it back now. :( It’s totally our fault, and we should have thought of it, but shrug. It is what it is.

Afterwards we went to eat at a nice healthy lunch place we like, and discovered that basically every restaurant in town was closed for the week. It’s a tiny town that relies on lots of tourist money. We think we’re in between the “leaf peepers” season and the ski season, so we ended up driving back home and eating McDonalds. Bleh.

…

We decided to try and make some progress on the prerequisites for installing the propane, which were to cut a hole in front of the sink, partially to have a cabinet there and partially to have access to the wall where we need to drill a hole for the propane to go through.

kay cuts hole under sink

Then we build and installed the supports and framing for the stove, as well as some wood to keep crap from falling down behind it.

![stove supports]
stove supports

That box is primarily to support the stove, and secondarily to be somewhere we can keep flat things like cookie sheets and cutting boards. If you look closely you’ll note that the hole is off-center. This is intentional. There is a flat plane of metal on top of the wheel well, and the left support of the box is on the left edge of that plane. We wanted a nice perpendicular angle between the support and the floor so that left support is shifted a bit to the right. It’s also the left wall of the box, so it’s not centered.

The stove fits just about perfectly.

the stove in place

…

Today we had our first snow of the season.

lita watches snow

Dachary decided we should work on something inside the garage while it snowed so we built the sliding bed.

First she used the miter saw to cut a pile of slats.

dachary uses miter saw
a pile of bed slats

Then we drilled a bunch of pilot holes, installed lots of screws, and eventually shoved it in the ambulance to make sure everything fit. We had to do some creative cuts to make some of the pieces fit under the seat belts. Dachary doesn’t look particularly happy because by this point both of our backs were unhappy, especially hers.

bed in place

Dachary did a good job with the design, and we did a good job with the construction. None of the slats are rubbing against each other, but we were amazed at just how much friction there is holding the sliding slats in place.

Our next step is to pull it apart, sand a little underneath where the pieces will rub, wax where they’ll slide over each other. To facilitate this, and have the wax not be frozen when we’re trying to apply it, we brought it in and laid it out on the dining room table.

We’ve made a lot of progress recently and it feels good. Our backs don’t agree, but our hearts and minds do.

Dachary is relaxing with a dog behind her shoulders, a cat across her legs, and Fallout 76 on the TV.

Side notes:

We’re keeping the seat belts back there so that we can legally sit back there and work while the other person is driving, and so that we don’t die if we’re struck while sitting back there. We like not dying.

Yes, we will definitely be making cookies. We craved baked goods so badly in south America.

This is the respirator we ended going with. I would highly recommend it. We were incapable of detecting the evil in the air when wearing them. We know it was there because at one point dachary accidentally leaned hers on the counter while trying to get a closer look at something, and it pushed it away from her face and let her smell it. Bleh. We, of course, had the exhaust running too. But still, these things are amazing. If you’re anywhere near the forest fires currently going on in California, I recommend you pick up one of these.

3M Respirator