End caps!

 I am sorry to report that I was an extreme grumpy gills during Airstream work this weekend. Peter had all of Friday to devote to his goals, so I worked remote from the comfort of the air conditioning while he slaved away finessing the end cap with the assistance of Amanda. The spray glue the guy at Home Depot recommended was inferior to the 3M glue in that it did not want to stick to the Reflectix, so it was relatively useless for its intended purpose, but what are you going to do? Amanda was a huge help in the insulation department, and by 5pm on Friday the front end cap was, TA-DA, finished! 

Before we called it quits for the day, we cleco'd in the street-side upper wall. I stand by my assessment that that is a three-person job. We also checked our newly arrived replacement external lights to see if they would nest in the existing housing--unsurprisingly, I guess, they did not. On the way home we stopped at Tractor Supply and got two more kinds of lights to test. We think we can drill a new hole in the housing so we can sit a single LED in there, and screw the covers back in. 

Saturday morning I got to work on insulating the curb-side upper wall while Peter riveted in the street-side. I took it upon myself to do some wire sorting because it was giving me anxiety that Peter didn't seem to be paying the wires much mind (I had no evidence for this really, but I just couldn't let it go!) I know he is frustrated by the slowness of our progress and I worry that he is so focused on gaining ground that he forgets other details. But, if you know Peter you know there is always a method to his madness. 

We slid our electrical components platform to the side and insulated the back street-side wall and around the back hatch. Oddly, the remaining skins didn't match up the way we expected, probably there was some design intention in that, but since that area will now be visible instead of covered by the bathroom housing, we wanted fewer lines. We took a scrap of aluminum to cover that spot instead. 

With the help of Amanda and Prudence we got the curb-side upper wall cleco'd into place, and then put some rivets in there to help it align more. We are only securing it halfway up the wall so that the wall can peel back a bit for Will to run wires for the puck lighting. We threaded the rest of the existing wires to their spots as best we could. Then I gave it a good vacuuming, which never feels like a particularly essential task but is always so satisfying. 

We have been disagreeing about the number of lights we'll need inside. One of Peter's pet peeves is dim lighting and low visibility, but I think he is underestimating how bright LEDs can be and also how small the space is. He was pushing for additional, larger puck lighting across the endcaps, in addition to more decorative sconce lighting mid-way up the wall, but after getting the walls up he seems to agree with me that that the extra puck lighting isn't necessary. 

Before we left, Peter showed me the shower pan side-by-side with the toilet I had chosen. It is a bit wider than I had imagined, and he thinks the bathroom will end up being longer than we really wanted. We had talked about a waist-high "closet" between the shower wall and the bed, but it looks like we mix need to redirect that space to the bathroom so there is enough room to put your feet down in between the toilet and the shower pan. The other option is moving the toilet from the curb-side to the street-side and doing kind of like a walk-through bathroom, but I am loathe to lose the storage and to interrupt the openness of that side that we had envisioned. 

Next time I think we will put the last lower wall on for the back curb-side and tackle the back end cap? After next weekend, Will is coming back to help us wrap up the wiring and install the propane lines. I would like to leak-test the old freshwater tank and get it re-installed so Will can install tank monitors for us and we can turn toward the plumbing next. But, we still haven't decided where we want our control panel to go, since we only just decided to fabricate both the front and back endcaps. No original control panel anymore! 

But, Peter is project manager, so I will leave those things for him to figure out. Trying to lean into that freedom of responsibility to keep the grumpiness away. ;)