Osage Moon

We were going for mildly eccentric, I think. Who knows? We are who we are. And part of who we are is people who get tired of an hour and fifteen minute commute, very late at night, after a day of hard physical labor. We needed a place to live while developing this place.

For some strange reason (our norm), we decided to combine the amenities of a motor home with the stability of a room in the corner of the barn (see The Cedar Lounge).

The barn was remodeled to accomodate a huge RV: 36 feet long, ten and a half feet high, and exactly as wide (to the centimeter) as the barn door. As you might expect, the side mirrors are being replaced. Mostly it stays parked on the gravel road along the south side of the barn overlooking the pond.

When we bought this thing, the owner suggested at least three times that I paint on a layer of EPDM. So, even before taking the RV out to OM, I find out what the heck EPDM is (a rubberized roof coating) and then, after repairing obvious cracks and leaks, I layer it on good and thick.I felt pretty good about the work I did. More on that later.

The idea of the RV was to get a livable space on site ASAP so we could make some real progress by working a few days at a time vs. commuting every day. The reality is we lost November and December to RV repair, instead of making progress on the barn, Cedar Lounge, and -- oh, yeah -- the land.

The main bugaboo, as the days grew shorter and colder, was the intermittent furnaces. But then, we were in a drought. What did we know about the holes in the roof? We had persistence and luckily had discovered a mechanic (Brent Hill at Longhorn RV in McKinney) game enough to take on this old scow and get it back into shape.

And in addition to the professional help, we have redecorated, refixtured, and repaired the plumbing and numerous small problems to the point that it's a good place to live. With its gold bedspread and fabric wall panels of violet, purple and gold, the bedroom has a renaissance flair. And the bed is incredibly comfortable.

Once you learn the dance-of-the-narrow-passage (a lot like getting sea legs), the dining, kitchen and living areas are quite nice. Really. I know we've said some awful things about the RV, but once we realized that no one else on the planet would be dumb enough to buy this thing for the kind of money we've had to put in it, we dug in and made it work.

We kid. A bit. Truth is everything has taken longer than we (ha-ha) planned, although -- slowly -- everything we imagined is becoming real, right before our amazed eyes.

Now back to that thing about holes in the roof. Yep, come the rains we find out we still got 'em. Or actually, one. The front AC unit leaks. Even our buddy Brent couldn't fix that one since the real problem was that the roof sags so much a lake forms up there and flows into the RV through the regular air intakes. No matter, a huge canopy (and several thousand more dollars -- you may start noticing that whenever we try to save money ... ) over the RV would help it stay cool in the summer and dry in the rain. A large patio under the canopy would connect the RV and the Cedar Lounge. As I write this (Jan 23, 2004), the canopy -- per Dustin Bewley -- has just been finished.

To the right is one of the rare photos of the inside of the RV showing the lilac blinds and light gray-green paint job that Amy and some friends devised. Unfortunately you can't see the cool couch and floor treatments -- they're covered for use by dogs. The photo also shows three quickly-graying occupants, one of whom is trying to tune in the weather on our single TV station.

And now: Road Cabin Update

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