Greetings from Pendleton, Oregon!  Hey, I know we said we'd be back on the road by now, but this part of the country has no humidity to speak of … even on the hottest days, you somehow manage to survive.  Having grown up in Michigan, I already know I don't enjoy hot, humid days…. No sense in torturing myself.  So, we're staying til sometime mid-August and are making good use of the time.  Seeing a lot of the kids and grandbabies and getting some projects done on our RV.  After my fiasco with the dishes and sauces, we decided it was high time to replace the carpet, anyway, and now is as good a time as any, so we went shopping for a mutually agreeable selection.  Now we know what 38 years of sharing life has accomplished. We walked into the first store, each of us eyeballed the same roll, and agreed immediately that it was the one for us!  How easy could it be!  With the help of our sons and much deliberation on Ken's part as to how to re-carpet the slide-out, we now have lovely new carpet!  If anyone is deliberating on how to carpet under a slide, never fear!  It's not easy, I won't fool you, but it can be done, and done properly if you  go about it systematically.  In order to do this job properly, you would need to either own or rent a pneumatic stapler that shoots a quarter inch crown by five-eighths inch staple and use a glue in a caulking gun, example: brand "Liquid Nails" which is easily obtained at your local lumber yard or home depot store. After removing the old carpet,  Ken cut the new to the approximate size, leaving some extra for custom fitting as he went.  Next, he covered the slide section, bringing the carpet just to the floor at the front of the slide, and -- here's the trick -- as he did the final trim, he used liquid nails to quick tack it down, followed by a gazillion staples through the nap of the carpet to hold it snug for life.  On the main floor section, he made sure the part that would go under the slide was about 3" deep, then, doing about 12" at a time, squirted a bead of liquid nails under the slide as far as the tube would reach, quickly slid the edge of the carpet under, and I followed with a long spatula, pressing the carpet down into the tacky stuff.  After we were sure everything was down good 'n snug, Ken followed along with his staple gun, and, reaching under as far as the thing would go, he sunk about a gazillion more staples.  The trick here is that he had the slide to the 'in' position about an inch or two before putting the carpet under it, just to release the pressure on the slide so we could kinda 'tip' it as we went.  Heaven help anyone who ever has to remove that carpet!  It looks like it grew in the RV from day one, and we love it.  Of course, one advantage to choosing your own carpet is getting the quality you want.  That is a job we're glad is done… next time, we'll probably be ready for a new RV anyhow!

There you are… some pics of our new carpet.  Looks great, huh?  Since we are being so handy, Ken has been doing a few things I'd wanted done for quite some time, too, like removing the top of the step that goes up to the bath & bedroom area, hinging it, and covering it with carpet… VOILA!  We now have a shoe bin that doesn't show.  That's why you don't get a picture of it.  It's totally hidden.  Sure is handy!  Another project was making more storage under the bed.  If you go look under yours and you find that the storage area is only about 2/3rds of the area, you just might have some dead space that you could use for extra bedding or something you don't need very often.  We gained a space 4' by 28" by the depth of the underbed frame just by removing the plywood platform and making an access hatch in it, then framing in the area to support the hatch.  Easy as pie and no sense in not having it to use!  Plenty of room for seasonal clothing or bedding, maybe the Christmas things, or how about some family treasures you won't part with but don't need to have handy?

That's about it for now, folks.  We haven't worked all that hard this month, and have had plenty of time for family and friends and for getting some doctoring out of the way.  See you next month… it promises to be busy, too.  Someone  turn down that humidity in the central part of the country, will ya please?