A short update from Lubbock

We got a lot of visiting done in Albuquerque and some housekeeping.  We were able to see Jan's mom, Viv numerous times while we there and also had some nice times with Nancy and CT.  In fact CT spoiled us with an absolutely gourmet burger dinner experience.  He made and baked brioche rolls, ground the beef and infused it with bacon, and added double fried fries on the side.  Really , really good!

Gourmet baby!

 We also took advantage of being close to Costco, found a very good Vietnamese restaurant, got the coach completely washed and waxed, and did some pre Thanksgiving food buying.  We take advantage of a company in Albuquerque that details RV's, Recapturing Vehicles.  It's a bit expensive, but they do a fantastic job, so we splurge once a year and have them do our coach.  It includes a complete wash and a hand waxing of the entire motorhome.  We find the wax lasts about a year, and every once in awhile we are actually able to keep it clean for more than a day or two after having it done:)  In fact, and now I'm probably jinxing it, the weather is supposed to be nice all the way into Atlanta.  And after they finish we put 2 coats of Mop n Glow on the roof.

We also took a short detour to Amarillo on our way to Lubbock.  We like the Speedco there, so we went over in gale force winds Thursday to spend the night at the Oasis, a nice full service campground with predominately pull-throughs, then first thing in the morning we popped over to Speedco, found no one ahead of us and got our yearly service done.  Oil and filter change, fuel filters, coolant filter, and a complete check of fluids and a chassis lube, it's like a Jiffy Lube for trucks and motorhomes, very convenient, quick, affordable, and they allow you to watch the whole operation.

The business end

So now we are in Lubbock where our daughter, Kelly, her husband Todd, and our grandkids, Faith and Christian live.  We have been visiting a bunch, and anticipating the arrival of Karen, Tom, Walker, Jason, and Viv to join us for Thanksgiving.  So as we enjoy our time together and feel thankful for all we have, I hope each and everyone of you have a pleasant and thankful Thanksgiving!

A huge disappointment

For those of you that followed along with our horrible floor travails back in January of 2014 realized that we had a tremendous job ripping out the rotted, from the leak, floor, and all the tile in the coach, the rebuilding of the floor, the extremely careful redo of the tile in the galley and bath areas and finally the installation of engineered wood throughout, we have experienced a huge unexpected problem.  But first let's recap.

The original damage caused by the leaking
refrigerator panel

Chipping away more and more

As the damaged area got bigger and bigger we determined the only way to go was to remove all the tile from front of the coach to the bedroom and reinstall new tile in the galley and bath area.

Ripping out the tile in the hallway,
this is NOT fun

New plywood installed

Tile dry fitted

And tile all installed and awaiting grout

Although Jan and I did all the demo, we hired a guy to cut and lay the new tile.  Nothing against him as he researched through his tile contacts what kind of mastic or thinset would be best to use in a rolling home.  He came up with an elasticized mastic that we all agreed should work well.  

Our coach has 4 slide outs, one on each side of the living area, and one on each side of the bedroom.  The slide in question affecting the tile is the one on the passenger side front that encompasses the galley, associated cabinets, and the couch.  The slide moves in and out over rollers, 5 in all.  3 are mounted in the floor of the coach from the front of the slide to about the 3/4 mark going aft, the other 2 are mounted in the bottom of the cabinets, one at the rear of the slide about where the double doors are in the above photo and the other in the front of the photo where the single door is.  Now when the slide comes in, those two rollers mounted in the base of the cabinets roll over the tile.  We knew this when we installed the tile and our installer worked hard to be sure to have an even solid covering of mastic behind those tiles in particular.  Well, the challenge to accomplishing that is the ends of the tile had to be pushed and squeezed under the cabinets, but we all thought he had accomplished the task satisfactorily.  We had the wood installed later after our return from Alaska in 2014.  That went very well, and the slide functioned beautifully.

Wood being installed

All done

Now to earlier this year.  We first noticed that on one tile in front of the refrigerator the grout was cracking along one side.  On inspection we noticed that we could ever so slightly move the one edge of the tile.  All we could think of was about a leak, gun shy you know, well there was and is no leak, hmmm.  Then we noticed the tile that was under the aft roller in the cabinet seemed to be slightly loose as well.  OMG!  

If you remember we had an appointment with Elite, our go to shop in Oregon back in August of this year to have some work done.  They are experts with slides, systems, and remodeling, so we figured we'd ask about our problem while there.  Well, Murphy raised his head the very morning of our appointment.  We were at a campground not too far away, so we decided Jan would take the truck over a couple minutes before I would bring the motorhome just to make sure they were ready for us.  So as she left I started to put the slides in, it is just coincidental that that slide is the last one we bring in, so with all the other slides in, I start to bring the passenger front slide in and......BAM!  A loud sharp crack that stops me cold, OMG, what in the world???????  I stop and go look and find the porcelain tile that the rear slide roller moves across has snapped in two.  Porcelain tiles are very, very hard and tough, it's why we picked them so when they break it's like a gunshot.  I figure well it's already broken and I got to go, so gritting my teeth I bring the slide in the rest of the way and head for Elite.

We get Erik at Elite to take a look and he informs us that whoever installed the tile used the wrong mastic, and in his opinion, there were going to be more and more tiles come loose over time.  Oh wow, we don't want to do this job again:(  So we decided to cover the broken tile with plastic and packing tape to protect us, the pieces and shards from this tile are like razor blades, and figure we will nurse it back to Florida where we can deal with this one way or another.  Well about a week or so ago, the tile shattered completely, and it was really interfering with the movement of the slide so we knew we couldn't ignore it any longer.

Closeup of our busted tile

The first thing we had to do was raise the roller, remove it and find out what was going on. Of course that calls for removing the floor of the cabinet so a lot of unloading had to occur first.  Once we got the roller out we could see the roller was sitting right where it was supposed to be on the edge of the tile.

The adjustable roller

The roller's home and the edge of the tile

We pulled the broken tile out and the first thing we noticed, it was easy.  Not what we want, if it's easy then the mastic isn't holding at all, bad news.  In fact we found two not so good things, one the edge of the tile where the weight of the slide sat was hardly buttered with mastic, no wonder the little bit of mastic wore down, and then caused the edge to not be supported, and eventually from the weight snapped the tile in two, and then eventually to shatter, and secondly when we pulled up the rest of the tile, there was NO adhesion to the plywood floor, it came up clean as a whistle!

You can see here the abysmal coverage of mastic

And here the fact that there was no adhesion to the plywood,
it looks brand new!

So what to do?  We needed a temporary good solution to get us to Florida, then we can determine exactly how we want to proceed with this tile repair.  We decided to make a "tile" of plywood that the roller can move over.  We shimmed it up in the back and cut it to fit, plus we can report the slide moves in and out very well.

Our temp solution

When we get to Florida we will fashion a smooth strong plate, probably of an MDO or something for under where the slide roller sits when it is extended  instead of tile, which will butt up against the new tile we will install.  Also Erik at Elite told us what mastic to use, the one they use and have never had a tile loosen, going to do a bit more research into that before we begin.  As to the other tile that slightly moves, well, we think it might be best left alone until it gets worse, it really isn't noticeable except to us.  We don't even  want to think about the possibility that ALL the tile may have to come up sometime in the future.

Heading on down to Albuquerque

Today is our last day parked in Santa Fe, we move down to Albuquerque, actually Bernalillo tomorrow.  It looks like our sequence here in CO and NM is going to be fairly consistent in the future.  We love our time in Durango, then over to Taos where Karen and Tom will be, Santa Fe just because we like it, and then down to Albuquerque to see Jan's mom, Viv, and Nancy and CT, and maybe Megan and Chip, then over to Lubbock for Kelly, Todd, and our grandkids.  This area has become family central:)

So we continued our Longmire quest this past week.  We learned that Walt's office, at least the door to Walt's office and the town square that you see he and his deputies park in is actually in Las Vegas, NM, about 70 miles away.  We also learned that the Red Pony, the bar where Henry works and owns is actually the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid, NM, the same town where a lot of Wild Hogs was shot, not far down the road from us either.  We are actually getting big kick out of this.  We've also learned that NM is very friendly to the film producers and for years many, many movies have been made here.  

So back to Las Vegas, we found the square and the famous Plaza Hotel built in 1881 which you see in a lot of the scenes in the Longmire show, as well as where scenes from Easy Rider, and No Country for Old Men were also shot.

The square

The Plaza Hotel

Back when it was built, Las Vegas was larger than either Albuquerque or Santa Fe!  Then as we looked around we found a locked door in the adjacent building, the door to the Absaroka County Sheriff's Department in Durant, WY, Walt Longmire's office door.

You can make out the door in the center of the picture

It's locked and evidently doesn't go anywhere

You can see the stairs up to Walt's "office"
It just ends at the top

After walking around a bit we had a nice lunch at the Landmark Grill at the Plaza Hotel.

Add caption

We then went to Madrid to see the "Red Pony".  It is actually the Mine Shaft Tavern, there was some kind of shindig going on there so we didn't go in.  Check out the link.  So folks, that concludes our obsession with Longmire, I know I can hear a breath of relief:)

In addition to walking around downtown and a few more meals in Santa Fe, we did accomplish another project on Jan's list.  We have a large dark brown leather sofa bed in our coach, that helped along with our cat Bert's help, has developed a lot of stains on the seat cushions.  We had tried several times to get a leather guy to fix it, but it never worked out, so Jan has been wanting to have the seat cushions recovered and thought cloth would look nice.  She and sister Nancy went and picked out material, and while they were at it also decided to have our dining chairs redone as well.  It just happens that a friend of Nancy's and CT's has an upholstery business and we are very pleased with the result.

Our new seat cushions

And our new chair material

Also we have been slowly converting our lighting in the coach to LEDs.  Most of our 60+ halogens are now LED, saving energy, important when running on batteries, and heat, the LED's are much cooler.  We have 6 fluorescent fixtures in the coach, and we use one in particular a lot, it is over our main bathroom sink.  When it blew out recently we decided to try out LED tubes.  They require you to remove the ballast and alter the wiring just a bit, very easy to do, then the replacement tubes pop right in like a fluorescent tube, and voila, it is bright, brighter than it was, is the correct color temp for us, and best of all if you believe the hype, should outlast us in the coach.  They are a bit pricey, at about 3X the price, but with the better, brighter light and its expected life it should work out well.  We'll do some more as they burn out.  Go to M4 Products and see the company we do our business with after trying many other vendors.