Time at home is time for repairs

During our time at home, we are doing repairs on the motor home. I have said that almost everyday we find something that needs attention. Sometimes the attention can wait, sometimes it needs to be dealt with right away. We had a list of to-do items when we got home, and we're working through those (which explains why I skipped posting for a few days!).

I got pictures of the largest of the projects we are engaged in doing - working on the slide-outs - maintaining the seals around the slide out rooms, and repairing the awnings over them.

For a while, we have been dealing with getting water inside the motor home when we bring the driver's side slide in. If it has rained, or if we've had the air conditioner running and the condensation has run down, there will be water on top of the driver's side slide. I've learned a few techniques to help:

• before bringing the slides in, raise the back levelers and extend the front leveler to let water run off
• after bringing the slide in, check for water on top, and if there is water, get two large towels and put one at the front and one at the back of the slide to "dam up" the water and keep it from draining into the motor home

It isn't totally clear to us why the water is pooling on top of the slide - certainly one problem is that the awning on top of the slide is not attached well to the side of the motor home, so that allows water to get in:

You can see the gap between the side of the motor home (on the right) and the awning.

A similar gap exists on the awning over the passenger slide, but that slide is not as long down the side of the motor home, so maybe that is why we don't seem to have problems on that side.

We had looked up information online and found a really great video on how to measure an awning for replacement and how to replace it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyLf6ED2YQI
When watching this, we realized that although we have this gap at the edge of the motor home, the awning itself is in fairly good shape. When we were at the farm in Virginia, Jimmy took a look at it and thought that the issue was just that the seam connecting the awning to the "bead" that was in the channel had come loose - in fact, the thread was still there, but no longer stitched. So, we thought we might try to get the awning re-sewn instead of paying for replacement.

We got started on the task, but were stymied because the screws holding the barrier that protects the awning from the wind were stuck fast. Dwayne talked with Jimmy on the phone, and they devised a solution that ended up loosening the screws (heating them, spraying WD-40, and then letting them cool down).

To do this, we needed tall ladders and the ability to have both of us having access to the awning:

It was quite the endeavor, but eventually we were able to get the awning off -- here it is on the ground folded up:

I had called an RV repair place a couple of days ago, and they referred me to an upholstery shop in Lewisville. We took the awning there, and she concurred that she could do the job, but needed us to get the beading to go in the top and the bottom. So we headed to the RV repair place and got the beading, and brought it back to her. We got sufficient beading to do both awnings, even though we had not gotten the passenger side one down yet. We headed back home and got the passenger side awning off too -- will deliver it to the upholstery shop tomorrow.

The price for new installed awnings would probably have been well over $500, maybe over $1000.
The price for new awnings that we would install ourselves would have been about $300.
The price for getting our awnings resewn will be less than $100!  Hurrah!!!

p.s. the lady at the upholstery shop agreed with us that our existing awnings are in good shape - she said that she would recommend that we make the repair to them rather than spend money on new awnings.

p.p.s while the awnings are off, I have access to the seals at the top of the slides, so I have been able to clean them and treat them with seal-conditioner. I was able to treat the rest of the seals last week - so able to get a bit of maintenance done!