Category Archives: Uncategorized

sitting area almost complete!

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The eating, board-game playing, wine-drinking, hang-out zone in the back end of my motorhome is almost done!  The only thing missing is the table (coming soon).  My mom stopped by today and dropped off the cushions she has beautifully upholstered for me (in Italian wool I scored at the Bensen/ Inform Warehouse Sale), as well as the curtains she made out of some old IKEA curtains I had in my last place.  She also contributed some unused throw cushions she had at home, as well as some new cushion covers she made me out of left-over wool to make the space inviting.  I’m SO happy with how it all looks – fresh and clean and comfortable – exactly what I was going for.  Thanks mom – I love it all!


I’ve also started decorating the space.  My ‘centerpiece’ is the antelope head hanging above the table (bought it at Front & Company a few months ago specifically for the motorhome).  I also used a painting (picked up from Value Village a few months ago), a brass horse (that I’ve had since I was a kid) and my journals to fill the shelf above the bench that used to house a flat screen tv (that I removed and recycled – who needs a tv?).  Photos of everything above.


Getting excited to finish this project so that I can invite some friends over to toast the new space!

michael visits the farm

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Now that I’ve been out on the farm for a few weeks, I’m starting to get visitors.  Last weekend, I had a VERY special visitor – my dear friend Michael.  Mike and I have been friends since studying Russian language together in 2002.  We were also flatmates together in Glasgow from 2005-2006.  We have a special history of sharing many meals together as friends and roomates, so it was FANTASTIC to have him come out and have a meal with me on the farm, especially since we haven’t seen each other in years (he lives in Europe most of the time, and spends the rest of his time traipsing around the world to exotic locales).


Also exciting is that Mike and his girlfriend recently spent a few weeks living and working on a permaculture farm in Portugal, so they’re both going to come back out to this farm while they’re still in the Canada to give us some tips and pointers that they picked up during their short but intensive farming experience.

Photos of Mike at the farm as well as a few circa 2005/06 in Glasgow thrown in for memory’s sake.

Love you, miss you, come back again soon!

ripping out the bathroom sink

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So, the motorhome I bought didn’t come with a toilet. 

Yep, you heard me right.  No toilet.

At some point in the past 30 years, the motorhome was renovated, including the bathroom. The original toilet was removed to make room (I’m presuming) for a nice shower (fully tiled in slate – very nice, although still very small) and a full-sized sink and cabinet. I’m sure that was great for the last tenants who clearly (I hope!) must have had access to a toilet somewhere else, but living with a toilet is a pretty standard pre-requisite for me, so putting one in has become one of my priority renovation tasks.

However, the ‘newer’ shower and sink/ cabinet left no room for a toilet (unless I wanted to sit on toilet while using the sink and step over the toilet while getting into the shower – which I don’t), so my parents and I decided the thing that made the most sense was to remove the sink and cabinet and put a new toilet in their place. We’re a little iffy on the plumbing details since we don’t have any experience in plumbing. The access pipe to the black water tank is somewhere under the tiled floor in the bathroom, so we’re probably going to have to rip it up and hope to goodness that we find a clear pipe that we can connect the new toilet to.

Luckily, we haven’t reached that daunting task yet, so in the meantime, I thought I’d get to work on doing something I figured I could manage on my own – removing the sink and cabinet. It was pretty fun to take a hammer to the whole thing and bang away on things until they broke demolition is fun! I managed to get the cabinet out on my own, but the sink, counter and plumbing pipes were a bit tougher so I invited my friend and colleague Jeremy out to help me clear away the heavier stuff.  Thanks Jeremy!

Now that that stuff is out of the way, I’m hoping the next steps of toilet installation will get a bit clearer. Photos of the step-by-step demolition as well as Jeremy standing next to the displaced sink are above.

PS – During the process, I think I discovered the motorhome’s original wallpaper on a bit of exposed wall under the sink!  Kinda fun since I have no idea what the thing looked like in it’s original state.  Photo of that included too.

PPS – Jackson, the farm dog, did not get harmed during the demolition process. He just fell asleep next to the cabinet junk pile waiting for me to finish so I could take him for a walk ;)