Sunday, December 29, 2013

Shastoration Sunday

The trailer project continues. I took some time off this week and made some good progress. We ordered the aluminum skin from California and it showed up in three big boxes. It's not ready for skin just yet, but we have it sitting on the shelf. The house and trailer wiring are finally finished.
 
The electrical cabinet contains three fuse panels and one inverter charger. In total there are four AC circuits and five DC circuits.
 
 And there was light. All of the lights are DC LEDs so they draw very little power.  

I replaced the standard bulbs in the main house light with LEDs and rewired the original kitchen light for two LEDs also. Although not shown in the picture, we saved the original 1960's glass sconce for the kitchen light. You can just see the remote battery monitoring panel mounted on the front of the fuse door there in the closet. I picked up a cheap car battery to test out the systems. Eventually we will get use a sealed AGM type for camping.
 
Most importantly, the refrigerator works. So now when the world ends and we have to pull it into the middle of nowhere, the beer will be cold.
The next step is to trim and insulate. Since we will be using lots of spray foam for insulation, the interior trim will need to be completed so nothing leaks in or deforms the panels.

Monday, December 9, 2013

Big House News

With our munchkin, the blog posts and general photo worthy activities have really slowed down. We love our house, but with the three of us things have been getting tight. If we have a second one, then we are definitely too small. It's amazing how much stuff kids have. Our options are either move or add on. Since the Roe Circle Country Club is the most exclusive club in Kansas City, we really don't want to leave. That puts us back at adding on. There is no good way to add on to the house without completely screwing up the lines and general layout. Fortunately we have a big garage with power, water, and gas. For the past couple months we have been running through various options with Studio Build and finally have something that works.
The general idea is to "drop" the addition onto the garage and link the two from the upstairs hallway in the existing house. The addition will have a master suite, 4th bedroom/office, and a laundry/storage room. The window layout hasn't been finalized so just a few are shown.
The 4th bedroom faces front with the laundry room at the right of the front windows.
 
Siding will be horizontal stained cedar.

 
The master bedroom faces the rear and patio.  The master bedroom hopefully will have a wall of built-in closets and some type of cool headboard with some more storage. The master bath will have a walk in shower, tub, water closet, and dual sinks. The current plan has a wet bar with an ice machine and coffee maker between the master bedroom and bath.
Eventually we will move the laundry into the addition. This will allow us to make a true half bath and pantry down in the kitchen where the laundry currently sits.
Depending on the weather, the tentative start date is February 1. Stay tuned for plenty of updates in the coming months.