Wrapping up our stay in Readyville, TN

I love the way late afternoon sunsets accent the countryside in autumn.  That light infuses everything with a warm glow -–sort of reminds me of a Thomas Kincaid painting.  The white house in the distance has been there since 1820 and the gray horse barn to the right was built prior to the Civil War.  

This is  a tranquil area. We will only be here a few more days.  I have been taking advantage of the time to do a few improvements to the motorhome.  We have a wood floor in the galley that is roughly 3 feet wide  x 10 feet long.  It was beginning to show some wear.  I knew if I waited too long that I would have to sand the entire floor down to bare wood, and I did not want to go through all of that mess in such a small space.  And, to get from the living room to either the bathroom or the bedroom, we have to walk on the wood floor.   My options were limited.
I decided to do the work in the evening, finishing up just in time to go to bed.  The living room carpet butts up against the wood floor on one side and that presented me with another challenge:  how do I brush on polyurethane at the edge without getting some on the carpet?  I knew I could use masking tape, but that would be tedious to get it on and tedious to get if off.  I decided to by an El Cheapo mini blind at WalMart.  Cost me $3.25 with tax.  I used a few of the slats to separate the carpet from the wood .  That way I could quickly brush on the poly without having to do a time-consuming job of keeping the end of the brush away from the carpet.

The other  challenge was that I had to apply two coats and the second coat needed at least 4 hours to dry before we could walk on it.

So I set my alarm for 1:30, but woke at 12:30 and found the floor dry enough to lightly sand, remove the dust and roll and brush the final coat.  I planned to finish up in the bathroom where the wood stops and the tile begins.  I was back in bed by 1:15 and when Sandy awoke around 6:00 she found the floor dry enough to walk on.  Hip, hip, hooray.  But she had to carry chunky Trixie out of the bedroom so that her nails would not dig into the surface which had not cured enough for puppy toes.

My other coach improvement came about today when I was looking under the sofa for my winter coat.  Our sofa is in that portion of the living room that slides out. When I took off the access panel under the sofa and looked in all I could find was daylight coming from the lower SW corner of the slide out room. Oh crap! I thought. This is not good.  And it was not.  But it was an easy fix.  I was able to fill the gaps with the low expansion spray foam.  Now we don’t have to worry about spiders, lady bugs and other insects sharing our living quarters.  For my non-RV readers, the gap was not visible from the outside and could only be found by looking up into a small access panel outside and underneath the slide out room.  It is very unlikely that mice could get in there because the painted sides of the motorhome are as smooth as glass.

The neighbors across the road have two gentle and sweet horses.  Stormy is on the left and Kisses is to the right.  We have become good buddies by feeding them pieces of apple.   Now when they see us approach they come running.

Our hosts Gary Omel and his friend Sandy Starlin are riding the John Deere Gator with Gary’s two dogs, K.C. and Jackson in the back. 

Today Sandy and I pulled together most of the clothes we will take with us to Illinois. After 14 months of having everything at our fingertips, it was difficult to decide what to take with us. It is a 600 mile drive.  We will spend one night in a motel and will not take anything inside but the clothes on our backs.  We do not want to transport bedbugs across state lines.  I believe that is a violation of the Simmons Act.

Tomorrow morning we are going back to the Readyville Grist Mill for breakfast. It will be a new venture for the mill owner.  And come Monday morning, we are out of here at 5:00 a.m. as we head to frozen Northern Illinois. 


I won't be blogging until we get into Florida around New Year's Eve.  Hope you all have a safe and Merry Christmas.


Tune in again in 2011