Wow. This month was a real trial. Not the one I had intended, but a good test of our marriage nonetheless.

We were supposed to spend August living out of the 5th wheel trailer at Haas Lake Campground in Wixom. I would continue to commute to work at DTE in downtown Detroit, and Shawn would work remotely from the trailer. The goal was to make sure that:

  • Shawn could work remotely without technical issues – testing the stability of the WiFi hotspot and cellular signals on his 2 phones
  • Andrea could prepare meals, do laundry, and get through a day without going batshit stircrazy.

Well, that was the plan. Hahahahahaha. Thanks, Murphy.

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Utter chaos. The table and cooler indicate where the island will be. Note the water lines sprouting from the floor?

Instead we spent only 2 nights at the trailer because we had no running water, the ailing refrigerator gave up the ghost, and we had to completely tear out and rebuild the kitchen peninsula which contained the sink and 95% of the counter space. Oh, woe.

The water issue didn’t take too long to fix, but it had to be spread out over a few visits, as we didn’t have all of the right tools and materials. The bathroom sink now has a shiny new single-handle faucet which makes the sink and tiny countertop look even worse. Oh well, that project will have to wait.

We opted to replace the 2-way RV refrigerator with an electric-only residential model. It means we can’t run the refrigerator off of propane, but we don’t plan to really do any boondocking in this trailer anyway.

Because RV frigs work differently (circulating ammonia instead of freon), there are a series of fins inside the refrigerator and freezer compartment that eat up space. With the new 10.1 cubic foot Haier electric, I gained about 2 cubic feet of space within the same footprint because there are no fins. Yay!

We also checked with our salesman and he said we shouldn’t have any issues with resale. Most folks who buy rigs this size stay in full hookup campgrounds (like us) and don’t travel too far from home (not like us!). Electric-only refrigerators are also about 1/3 the cost of 2-way RV refrigerators, too – bonus!

The refrigerator still isn’t tucked into its cabinet yet, but I’m hopeful we’ll finish that within the next 24 hours. The 5th wheel is parked outside of our house right now so we can continue to work on it while providing electrical power for lights & fans. Thank goodness the heat and humidity have given us a break.

The kitchen peninsula was completely rebuilt into a 5-foot island.  I’ll write more about that once it’s completed, as I think it’s going to look spectacular when it’s done. It’s 75% there!

Part of the reason we wanted to sell this house was because Shawn is tired of projects and fixing things. It’s frustrating that we’ve had to spend so much time on the trailer and therefore haven’t gotten to the critical projects for selling this house.

But, we didn’t kill each other during this process and that’s what matters. Right??