Muchacho Polaco

I came home to this yesterday. I didn’t take the dogs for a walk yesterday morning, so this was the inevitable punishment. I had no idea one decorative pillow could have so much within – but it was a disaster.

About a month ago we purchased, mostly on impulse, an old popup camper. We have friends that have one and they love it, coupled with some memories from my childhood, it seemed like a good thing to do. We were looking in the $4k-$6k range, but one came up for $1k and I scheduled to see it just as it was listed. I bought it right away as the price was great. We were just hoping that all was in decent order.

I was a bit optimistic we’d make it home fine as the tires on the trailer were brand new. We made it maybe 5 minutes before we realized the lug nuts weren’t on tight enough and most had come off. That stranded us on the side of the road while Yun went to track down some lug nuts and a wrench.

Eventually we made it home. I then realized our Honda Element would not have the proper towing capacity – it can handle about 1500 lbs and this thing is about 1800 lbs dry. This was my justification for the purchase of the Tacoma. We will now sell the Honda and should get much more than we paid for it years ago.

Needless to say, the thing was mostly hideous and smelled.

But functionally, all seemed to be in working order. We have watched a number of videos of people online restoring their old campers and thought they looked great – so I thought we might attempt the same.

The first step was to rip everything out of there – but rip gently, because I’d need to put it back in.

Getting the cabinets and appliances out was actually much more difficult than I had anticipated. If it was a proper demo job with a sledge hammer, it would have taken minutes, but I went slow and careful.

Once everything was out – I primed the interior walls and then began to lay the floors. I have a surplus of vinyl planks from the house, so I just used those. They worked great and it really wasn’t that many cuts.

Once the floors were in, the primer was dry enough to go ahead and paint the interior the blue I found. This seemed like a better solution than white (which most people seem to prefer) as it should be more forgiving with keeping it look clean.

The old countertops were pretty ugly. So I used them as templates for some birch I bought.

The rest of the countertops worked out to look the same. They are much more solid and look a lot better. I will change the faucet for something new, but will keep the old stainless sink as it looked fine.

Getting everything back in was no small task. The original wood is pretty cheap and fragile, so I did some reinforcements to improve upon that. I still have paint touch up on the interior and will restain the countertops a few more times before adding polyurethane as a protective coat.

The old cabinet trim was a hideous brown – so I updated that with some light blue trim I received this morning. I like the contrast a lot.

My favorite part was reupholstering the cushions. Ana and Yun worked on those and did a spectacular job – though it took a lot of work. We removed the old zippers, washed them, and reinstalled them on the new. In retrospect, I probably should have bought new ones for a few dollars rather than the hours it took to get the old ones out.

It was a lot of work this weekend – exhausting really. Gabby and Orlando came up to help me and we got everything above done working 14 hours on Saturday and another 6 on Sunday morning.

What remains:

1. Touch up interior paint
2. Stain and polyurethane
3. Install fridge, hot water heater, and air heater
4. Replace the curtains with something less visually offensive
5. Wash the canvas
6. Reseal the roof and paint
7. Reseal the bead around the perimeter
8. Paint the trailer black
9. Remove the external decals, power spray, and paint
10. Add new brake lights
11. Add new internal lights
12. Add new front door light
13. Steam clean mattresses

I am hopeful all of the above will be finished by October, as it begins to cool down, so we can start using this thing on our weekends. On top of all that, I need to finish the suspension on the truck. Then I will take it down to the dealership in Mexico to make sure everything is in perfect order.

The paint on the truck is terribly faded, so I will have the whole thing painted. I am hopeful these things too will be completed by early October. With all of that, we should be good to go!

I started growing these many many months ago. I thought they’d be a lot bigger.

The journey home from the north is always especially nice this time of the year.

As it turns out the damage was perhaps not as bad as previously anticipated. Abe came up this weekend to help me tear things apart and put it back together again. “Help me”….my role was mostly to get the tools.

The drive shaft was removed from the transmission, so we had to remove it from the differential in order to re install it into the transmission. The initial fear was that the differential was damaged. As it turns out it doesn’t seem that’s the case. We took it for a drive this afternoon and all seems to be working well. I bought some parts I should receive this week and then I will take it down to Mexico to do final repairs and then have it painted.

After bidding on this vehicle in a couple auctions, I finally “won”. It turned out on the prior auctions, the reserve was not met. Which means they put it back up.

The damage is worse than anticipated. We will see. If I can get it to Mexico I should be fine. It only has 88k miles, which for Toyoya truck is rather quite low.

These are some agaves I’ve been propagating from the front. I have eight of various sizes. The one in this photo is the largest.

The ones in the front yard look like this:

They look terrible because we’ve not been getting water. But they produce a steady stream of offspring that look like:

Then I have another variety:

I have nine of these and they came from various places around the neighborhood. I have a large one in the front that looks like:

And finally I have 3 more of another variety I’ve propagated:

These are the newest and smallest of the bunch.. I have one smaller one growing in the front that I found in the neighborhood:

That’s a total of 21. At an average of $15-$30 each at the nursery (depending on type and size), that’s a rough savings of $315 to $630.

There was a Ford F150 that went for about five grand that I liked more than this toyota but I didn’t bid on it because I didn’t want to win two trucks. We will keep trying.

In a couple more hours this morning’s auction begins and we’ll see if we are victorious this week.

We purchased a pop up camper a couple weeks back and realized we need a truck to pull it. I was thinking our Honda Element would be sufficient, but the pop up is too heavy.

In the last auction, I lost a truck by $200.

We have to walk the dogs at 5am each morning because by 6 it is far too hot.

Scout was a natural swimmer – at least that’s how we got him. Berlin not so much, but he’s much more willing to learn than Rome. In that way he’s more like Scout and the other one much like Tila in that he seems to hate the water.