I love it when a plan comes together
Over the past couple weeks, our path to completion has become much more clear. The linchpin in all of this was getting the exterior paint plan locked up. The further we got into the build, the more daunting the prospect of trying to paint Carmen ourselves got. The reality of trying to secure a location that we could actually do something like this, and the need for a better compressor, as well as needing a lit of time to get it done just seemed like a bad idea. This doesn't even account for the simple fact that we weren't convinced we could do a good job. So the search was on to find someone to paint Carmen. The problem is that this wasn't going to come cheap based on what we were hearing...
We had an idea that seemed full of promise - find a custom paint shop that would be willing to drastically reduce the price of the job in exchange for permanent advertising on the vehicle. I made some calls and actually had some interest on this. The problem was that out of those that were actually interested didn't have a booth that was big enough to hold Carmen...or in the case of one place they were just retarded and clearly wanted no part of the job despite talking a good game on the phone. So the prospects were not looking good...and our anxiety around actually finding someone to do this that wasn't Maaco was growing. I ended up calling Creative Mobile Interiors which is a shop that does high end RV builds to pitch the idea. They loved it, but really only focus on interior work. At this point, they referred us to a place called Star Jet who they use for their exterior paint work. Star Jet's business is painting buses and RV's. We got in contact with them and the conversations were pure magic.
We talked to Dick Cahill and based on some pictures he quickly gave us a quote that was very reasonable...this was all under the pretense that we were going to do the body prep work (e.g. stripping all the lights, sanding, etc.). Here's where it gets really good. Dick tells us that he's willing to let us use his shop and equipment over a weekend to get Carmen ready for paint. So awesome. We were done at that point. Jeremy and I went over to meet with Dick and also had the chance to meet his wife Dee, and sister Tawana. It's a family biz, and we really can't imagine a better fit for what we need. Great people that we're really looking forward to working with. You can check then out at www.starjetbuspainting.com. As of now, it looks like we will do the prep work on Saturday May 19th (my birthday) and Carmen will be painted the week of the 21st. So cool.
We have also talked to a woman who does re-upholstering and will be recovering our seat cushions for the back of the ambulance. And Jeremy has secured the services of his cousin Dino who will do the fabrication and retro-fit to put our brand new leather seats on the original bases so we can replace the cab seats.
All of this points to us getting this thing done! I love it when a plan comes together...
A banner day!
Jeremy and I both took these last two days of the week off to get some much needed work done on Carmen. With the paint date pending, it's important that we deal with all the infrastructure items so we're ready to go. Having a couple dedicated days is great, but it was made even better when we made the call to my secret weapon...the previously mentioned handyman, Vic Silva. We were experiencing some pretty weird electrical issues that clearly neither I nor Jeremy were in a position to try and troubleshoot. The emergency lights were working intermittently, the outlets in the back weren't working at all, and one of the reverse lights (and thus our backup camera) was not working.
We got started early on a day when the rain was steady. It was all hands on deck. Jeremy was working on trying to finish recovering all of the interior panels and actually got everything we had to recover totally done! See Jeremy in action:
Jeremy at his mobile workstation. He was not very happy with me when I took this picture. Primarily because he has gotten so good at recovering these panels that we've started referring to him as the male version of a seamstress...which we have coined "seamster". So next time you see him, you can ask if he carries a "Seamsters Union Card".
The electric took a lot of troubleshooting (by Vic of course), and after much tracing, some driving around town looking for parts, and some calls to companies about equipment they put into service more than 20 years ago, ALL OF IT WAS FIXED! We have steady emergency lights, the outlets and inverter work, and the backup camera that originally gave us problems was fixed in a flash. Thanks Vic!
Vic didn't know I took this one! Here he is deep in the troubleshooting process for the emergency lights.
Today was a HUGE day. We'll see what tomorrow brings, but enthusiasm is building. Oh yeah, and July 4th? We got it.
Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment