The Good , The Bad and The Ugly

First the Good. Here’s our motorhome. It’s almost finished. It’s drivable. All of the systems work. It looks pretty good.

Then the Bad. Ken has decided that we owe him almost $8,000 more and he is holding the motorhome hostage. This is completely outside of our original contract.  Some of the charges are for parts that are essential to the proper construction of the motorhome plus we never agreed to any additional charges as the build was progressing.
And the Ugly. Ken is angry and is retaliating in more ways than one. In an effort to get the motorhome finished as quickly and cheaply as possible , he has been cutting corners everywhere that he can. This is the completed interior.It looks nice in photographs.

However when you start looking closer you’ll see things like this. This is the dinette seat with material wrapped around a piece of foam and stapled to plywood instead of a real cushion. The cord snaking up the wall is connected to  a power strip which was supposed to be hard wired with the wires running inside the wall.

So that’s where we are now. We are not paying any additional charges but we’ve decided to stop trying to get him to fix any mistakes. We’ll just deal with those after we get possession of the motorhome. Since he refuses to honor our original contract ,we’re going to have to take him to court. Updates soon!

Two More Weeks

Not much to say about the motorhome yet. Ken told us that he was planning on answering the complaint that we sent to the Attorney General but since we haven’t heard anything about that most likely he hasn’t done it. Our attorney sent him a letter on Friday detailing our case against him and asking for a response which hasn’t happened either. We went to the shop today and nothing had been done since our last visit a week ago. We only stayed for a few minutes , just long enough to see if any work had been done. Ken ignored us. It looks like this is going to be ugly.

   Pictures of the interior

WE’VE HAD ENOUGH !!!

We had high hopes that this motorhome would be finished by now and we would be back on the road. Ken put a lot of effort into it for a couple of weeks but that didn’t last. The final straw came on Oct.23. He called us the 20th and said that they would be working on it all week and by Friday , the 23 , it would be ready for an inspection and for completing all of the finishing touches. When we went to his shop on Friday , it looked almost exactly the same as it had looked the previous Friday! We’re baffled by his behavior – why lie? We just can’t deal with this any longer and have started legal actions. The first step was filing a complaint with the Washington Attorney General’s office. Ken was not happy about getting that notice. We have also contracted with our own attorney to force Ken to honor our contract. Updates to come…
In the meantime summer is long gone from Washington state and the rainy season has begun. Our solar panels don’t work without the sun so our strategy for free and inexpensive camping which involved bouncing back and forth between Eden’s street , casino lots (every Indian tribe in Washington state has a casino) and state parks is no longer possible.  We’ll be hunkered down for the duration in a private campground. It’s actually not bad for a private campground but not the sort of place we normally chose to spend our time.

View from our widow..

  The other side..

It’s Been an Entire Year!

September 17 was our 1st anniversary of the start of this motorhome project. We never would have believed that we would still be waiting for it to be finished a year later. The picture at the top isn’t Ken’s pickled remains but he’s pushing it !  We gave him an ultimatum-work on it every day or we will remove it from his shop.  It’s to the point where that is possible so we have a lot of leverage.

More pictures here – http://cid-4ce32117b0082fb8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/It%5E4s%20Been%20an%20Entire%20Year!!

Pow Wow

We went to our first pow wow a few years ago. We were at one of our favorite free camping sites , an Indian casino , and they just happened to be having a pow wow so we stayed to see what is was all about. We enjoyed it so much that now we check to see if there are any where we happen to be. Lucky for us – there was one close to Tacoma!

  The main things are the dancing and the outfits. Everything has a meaning and most of it goes back for generations. Dances may have originated from season rituals ,religious ceremonies or social gatherings. The dances are opened to the general public although  the audiences at the ones that we’ve attended have been predominately Native American.

More pictures here  -  http://cid-4ce32117b0082fb8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Pow%20Wow

A Little Bit of Progress

  Still here in Tacoma. The only way that we can keep Ken working on the motorhome is to go out to his shop twice a week so that’s what we’ve been doing. It moving along but still very slowly.
                                                                 We’re getting very frustrated!

More pictures here –  http://cid-4ce32117b0082fb8.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/A%20Little%20Bit%20of%20Progress

We Have Some Cabinets!

   Well, we have some cabinets started which is better than nothing.
   Here’s the shop where the motorhome’s been living for nine months. Finally sunshine!

   The beginning of the bathroom vanity

  Some of the upper cabinets-standing on their end for now

  The kitchen countertop. It looks better in person!

  Sorry about the boring post. It looks like we’ll be here for awhile but at least we’re getting   some work done.  Happy 4th of July!