The Parker Travels

We left off last month with the pallet boards ready to assemble into a table. Well here it is! We first laid out the boards to get an idea of the design and see which boards would fit best where. Then we started to glue and screw each board into place, one by one. We used liquid nails to glue the board to a piece of plywood. Since the boards were so warped we screwed them to the plywood from behind to secure it into place and help flatten things out. Once all the boards were secured to the plywood it was time to cut off the excess. We flipped the piece upside down and aligned our cut guide on the edge of the plywood. Then we ran the skill saw across the boards, cutting off all the excess and leaving behind a perfectly straight line. When all 4 corners were cut we glued a piece of masonite on the back of the plywood to cover up all the screws and to give the table a bit more structure. We secured the masonite with 4 screws i...

This is our new leveling toy. It is the BAL Light Trailer Tire Leveler , aka BAL Leveler. It usually cost around $80 but we got it at a steal of $50! We have heard a lot about it and were very excited to test it out in our driveway today. Normally when we level the trailer from side to side, we have to drive up on a few blocks check the levelness and add more or take away blocks as need. This BAL leveler does all that guess work for you.  To set it up all you do is park your trailer wherever you like. Level the front to back of the trailer with your trailer tongue lift. Then simply place this BAL Leveler under the trailer tire that is the lowest and lift it up with the ratchet wrench that comes with it. Once the tire is lifted to the desired height you are done! Just leave it in position until you are ready to leave.

Ok remember this disgusting mess ?  Well look at it now! This post is going to have a lot of "potty talk" so be prepared. hehe. Let me explain how we got from gross to beautiful! This was actually Kyle's project that he took on while my dad was out. We knew that we wanted to save the cassette toilet that was inside the shower. Kyle worked his magic at getting that sucker out of the shower, fixed and cleaned up nicely. He then added some casters to the bottom of the potty so we could roll it in and out of the cubby it will be hiding in. We may or may not have had some toilet races down the driveway after the wheels were on… Next Kyle built this box that will be the cubby for the potty to hide it when not in use.  We put it in the trailer and slid a bed in to make sure we had clearance. Just made it, phew! The weather strip glides across the top of the box but other than that nothing else touches it when closing up the traile...

We used this 303 Fabric Guard that has been highly recommended all over the place for Sunbrella fabrics to waterproof our canvas this weekend. Also needed are some pieces of cardboard to prevent overspray getting on materials it shouldn't touch like the vinyl and screens. We went around the trailer, Kyle spraying while I held various pieces of cardboard to make sure the Fabric Guard was sprayed only on the fabric. You can see here the right panel has been sprayed, you want to thoroughly saturate the fabric so it looks like this. On a day like today where it was in the 90s, this stuff dried pretty fast. The cure time is what is important to pay attention to. Most directions say 6-12 hours cure time depending on the temperature outside. This means don't get it wet, let rain or dew on the canvas until the cure time. That is why we have waited so long to waterproof our canvas, you really need a nice hot dry day to do this. Here you can s...

I know we are so trendy right?! Gotta have shiplap if you are doing a remodel I guess! This actually started as a joke. Kyle and I have an inside joke about "really opening up the space" and "add shiplap and subway tile" from all these remodeling shows now. But after we built a new wall in the trailer, guess what? It really could use some shiplap! Haha. Jokes on us! Since real shiplap is made out of wood, and would add a ton of weight to our already heavy trailer, we decided to make faux shiplap. We bought the same vinyl flooring we used for the floors, but in the lightest color they had, which was this Driftwood Grey color. I wanted the lighter color because we knew we would be painting them white(ish). Like everything else in this trailer, we started with Zinsser Bulls Eye Interior Latex Primer . This is after the first coat. I added one more coat of primer before I painted with the top coat. For our top coat I went with a sample...