What To Do When You Have Nothing For The Blog?

Why, make something happen, of course!  Actually, the blog title should be “How Could I Be So Stupid?”  I’d better ‘splain.

I had that pesky leak in my kitchen slide drip some more water inside during a heavy rain yesterday.  With some suggestions made on our blog, it required me to pull in the slide and look over the top to find the source of the leak, a good rainy day project.  I pulled in the slide a little at a time and buckets of water ran off it.  As it was almost in, I heard a clunk and the slide jumped a bit before it came all the way in.  Nothing unusual, the slides are noisy and sometimes jump a bit.  Except this time it was very unusual and I should have known better.

You see, outside, up against the Journey we keep our lounge chairs covered in plastic when we’re at a site, instead of hauling them in out of the inside where we keep them when traveling because they don’t fit in the basement compartments (too wide).  Do you see where this is going, yet?

Looking all over the top of the slide with a light, I could not see any source of the leak so it will necessitate removing the slide awning and working from the outside. Figures.

I’ll hope for a nice, warm and dry day to do that job.

This morning I came out and found that when I moved the slide in, it caught on the chairs, and ripped the rivets holding the sides to the basement compartment out and bent the metal.

This is one of those “I should have know better!” moments.  Not the end of the world, but several hours worth of repair work lays ahead.  But in a way, this was somewhat fortuitous, because as the metal bent, some of the paint cracked off exposing the infamous Winnebago rust underneath.  It was hidden by the paint.  I peeled away all the loose paint, got out my wire brush and attacked the rust.

 

Once I got all the heavy, scaly rust off and got it as clean as I could I gave it a good coating of rust resistant paint.

As I let that dry, I had to head out to Lowe’s and pick up a rivet gun, I already have a really good one, but it’s sitting in my son Corey’s garage with many of my tools up in NJ. I picked up some RTV silicone sealant and a punch, yep in NJ, too.  Grrr!

Tomorrow if the weather holds, I’ll be bending, hammering and riveting the metal back in place, then sealing and painting the seam so it will be good as new.  And lucky me, I just found out I’ll have a couple of helpers as our grandsons are coming over.  A project we can do together.  :c)

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