A little home improvement - Part 1

7:41 am - Saturday - August 25th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 60º F, 99% humidity, wind 5 mph out of the south by southwest.....partly cloudy with a forecast high of 70º F.

After our somewhat harrowing rock climbing expedition on Thursday we opted for a 'stay at home day' Friday.  There are always things requiring attention when you live in a home with wheels; much the same as a sticks and bricks home.  

One thing which had caught my attention with our recent move from SDC to Tony's property was a small hole, or worn spot in the fabric (Sunbrella) of our patio awning ( by Zip Dee) along the track that the little wheel affixed to the left top corner of our entry door has made over the years......

 The little wheel protects the awning fabric from being torn by the sharp corner of the entry door

The wheel track left by the little wheel after 36 years of doing its job

......it was inevitable that at some point the fabric would be breached by the thousands of passes the wheel has made over the same spot over 36 years of opening and closing the door.  I failed to take a picture of the actual spot where the Sunbrella fabric wore through, but did get pictures of the repair.  Frankly, I am impressed with how durable the Sunbrella is.

A number of years ago I had another small tear in the Sunbrella fabric and had contacted ZipDee about how to repair that.  They sent me, free of charge, several fabric swatches which matched what we have, which is called 'Hemlock Tweed Fancy, which is still made by Sunbrella.......they told me to just apply a good outdoor silicone caulk to the fabric and then apply the swatch over the tear.  Since Sunbrella is essentially made from silicone the silicone caulk forms a perfect bond.  I followed their instructions and it worked.  I still have several swatches of that fabric so pulled them out to cover the worn spot.......

.....here you can see the fabric swatch applied to the worn area.....the pattern is not an exact match, but it passes the 5 foot rule......hard to see the difference from 5 feet away.

Once the repair was done I turned my attention to continuing to clean and polish the passenger side of the coach.  As you will recall I cleaned the front of the coach a week, or two ago.  I try to avoid doing the whole coach at one time as it wears me out.  Doing a section at a time is much more enjoyable.  In addition to cleaning the passenger side back to the right rear wheel well, I got on a step ladder to clean the area just under the awning......it hadn't been cleaned in about a year, and was quite filthy......

 The area where the awning attaches to the roof was quite dirty....this is the 'after' picture

 Making 'her' look pretty again

.....everything came out quite nicely.....I even took time to apply a little AmorAll to the black wheel covers.

I also spent some time in the trailer going through the tool bag in which I keep my larger, heavier tools.  I don't use them often, but it's always good to sort through them periodically to see what I have.  Over time other none tool stuff seems to find its way into this bag, and I found and removed a number of 'intruders', plus rediscovered a few tools I forgot I had.

While I toiled outside TLE vacuumed the interior, plus spent over a hour defrosting the Dometic absorption fridge.......frost tends to accumulate more rapidly in this more humid climate.  I think this is at least the second time she had gone through the defrosting regime since we arrived in Southwest Harbor.  In the dryer southwest climes where we spend much of our time we can go 6 months between defrosts.

For our evening entertainment we began watching the mini-series entitled 'Pacific' released in 2010; produced by DreamWorks, HBO and Play Tone.  It is a 10 part series of which we watched the first three episodes.  It is about the Pacific Theater during World War II.  IMDB gives it an 8.3 stars of out a possible 10.....we would agree.  So far we are quite impressed with the historical accuracy, acting, and cinematography.  We are watching it courtesy of Amazon PrimeVideo on our smart TV.....Tony's WiFi is amazing!

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