The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly...

so the good...hmmm, I don't know. let's not start with good. let's go straight to the ugly: the wallpaper on the ceiling and in the bathroom of the RV:

 

definitely ugly (the picture doesn't really do it's ugliness/blandness justice). so the plan was (note that I said "was" as that will be significant later) to scrape off the wallpaper and then paint the ceiling and walls this pretty sky blue color. I even have a huge, yellow vinyl sun decal to put on the ceiling. and if that went well, I was going to maybe paint the trim a pretty light spring green color (I guess I just want the inside of the RV to look like outside on a pretty summer day). anyway, I bought the stuff for painting a few weeks ago but before we could get to that, we had to get rid of the wallpaper.

so last Saturday, that's what we decided to work on. that brings us to the bad. two bads, in fact. first of all, we went to Lowe's (which we find ourselves doing on like a weekly basis lately) and spent $40 on stuff to get the wallpaper off. we bought a scorer, a scraper, a shaver, and a spray gel that's supposed to help dissolve the wallpaper adhesive (notice I said "supposed to").

 we set to work, following the directions carefully, scoring the wallpaper first, then spraying it with the gel and waiting 15 minutes. after that, we figured it should be easy to get the wall paper off. no. nope. uh-uh. no way. we scraped and shaved as hard as we could but could barely manage to get anything at all off. 

although the little bit we did manage to get off told us some very bad news: a lot of the wood (as in the wood that makes up the ceiling) in the RV is rotten. yeah, water damaged, or something. gonna need replaced. yay.

peeling off wallpaper and painting are things I at least have an idea of how to do. replacing wood I have no idea about, not to mention how much more it's gonna cost us. :( not good. not good at all. I guess we're gonna talk to some people who might have an idea of what to do and go ahead and fix it. at least if we take all the wood out we won't have to worry anymore about scraping off the wallpaper that refuses to leave.

so that was a disappointing day of working in the RV. we couldn't get the wallpaper off, we found out the wood was rotten, and we were feeling discouraged, so we just gave up, left everything where it was, and came inside. which brings us to the good, because that's where I saw this:

it cheered me up immediately. apparently the rats had decided that they loved the curtains and wanted to chew on them, so they pulled them into the cage. now, I know Cameron doesn't think it's "good" that the rats are chewing on his curtains, but I have to say I thought it was totally cute. I love those guys.

so I guess the story has a happy-ish ending. the RV is being a problem, but at least I have rats. hey, yeah, that's the moral of the story: if you're going to buy an old RV that may need a lot of work, make sure you also get some pet rats to cheer you up when you find out there is more wrong with the RV than you expected. :)

hopefully next time I'll post, I'll have good news to report!

Reasons Why We Should Not Own an RV

1.) the first time we (well actually Cameron, let's be clear here) drove it, we (again, Cameron) ran out of gas on the side of the road.
2.) when we went to put more gas in, we couldn't figure out where it was supposed to go. finally I smelled the place we were thinking of putting it, and after confirming it smelled like gasoline, we put it in there. (at least we were right)
3.) I was thinking I could just go to Lowe's, buy some kind of long extension cord, and plug the RV in. nope. wrong. completely wrong. turns out, we need  a very high amp extension cord (higher than what they sell at Lowe's), and a special circuit put in where we can plug it in to. probably people who have never owned or considered owning an RV in their life would have at least known that a regular extension cord was not going to work--but me and Cameron, noooooo. no idea.
4.)  despite the fact that Cameron owns a house, neither of us have ever really done any home improvement/building/fixing type stuff, so our plans to fix up the inside of the RV may be a little...ambitious.
5.) both of us barely understand how our cars that we've had for years work, much less a more foreign and complex vehicle like an RV.
6.) we have no idea how and where to empty the thing that holds the water/bathroom stuff/etc.


so that's all a little scary. but you know what? it's okay. because we are going to make this work. Also we have awesome friends like Joe :

And Olivia:

...who are good at/knowledgeable about the  things we need help with. Joe has promised to make (!) us an extension cord that works, and put in a circuit so someday, we can actually have *electricity* in our RV. and Olivia has offered to help us with the carpeting, as well as check the bathroom floor from water damage and act accordingly from there. and maybe even help us with the painting, which is next on the agenda....hopefully we'll get to some of that stuff tomorrow!