A Few Spring Mods

Catching up on posting about a few little mods that have been added recently.

We have long wanted to try to warm up the floor a bit, as in the shoulder seasons the existing vinyl gets a tad chilly. On our SouthWest trip in the spring of 2019…and that just feels like such a long time ago, we came across some interesting cork covered yoga mats in Walmart. Clearly thinking out the zen box, we figured this could be used as a new flooring layer, and at a great price point, four rolls made the trek home with us.

Finally getting around to the install, is was pretty easy. Just a bunch of measuring, some double sided tape, and it was done. As the cork was raw, I applied three coats of a water based polyurethane for protection. The cork is super comfy underfoot, cleans up well, and at the minimal expense, it does not really matter if it only lasts a few years.

A little more work was needed to change out the back lights. In our vintage, the lights on the back wall were originally fluorescent. The tubes were soon swapped out for LED retrofits, but a key problem remained. When the bolster was in place, or even a couple of pillows behind our backs, the lights were pretty much covered and useless. So the hunt began for a replacement.

We found a couple of nice lights from a company called Salvinco. They are a small gooseneck style, and the neat thing is they offer two styles of lighting. A traditional reading light, as well as some low level light. Plus they have built in usb charging.

The existing lights have long vertical enclosures, and as luck would have it, the power wire exited the wall at the bottom. This hole needed to be covered, and the wire fed upwards to the new light. I ended up using a cover plate and a wire cable cover, both painted to match the silver.

Mounting was a little tricky, but the final product is far more useful to us.

The last mod is purely a cosmetic change. In our vintage, the service panels were painted to match the Alto, unlike the black plastic versions on the new models. Exposure to the elements, and general wear and tear has meant that I needed to repaint these parts every couple of years. On our last visit to SC, I picked up some new fridge vents and the water supply compartment.

looks worse than it actually

Changing the fridge vent was super easy, just re-installing the fans on the upper vent, and putting them in. Changing the water supply compartment was a whole other ordeal. To seal the compartment from water, the SC infamous black urethane adhesive was used, so getting that compartment removed was DAMN hard. A few new nicks were unfortunately created, but they are within my acceptable limits. To finish the new look, I masked off and painted the 30 amp receptacle black as well. All looks good.