At Alfateers for Coach Repairs

Are you familiar with that famous saying, "I only came in for one thing..."?

That's more or less our story. A couple months ago, Mark decided to make an appointment with Alfateers to inspect and repair the slide-outs. Alfateers is a hold-over from the original company that manufactured the Alfa brand of motor home. Their staff are arguable the most knowledgeable in the country for Alfa repairs, and the rebranded company has made a name for itself in customer service in the years since. That reputation, and the fact we were going to be in California anyway, is what influenced the decision to get our slide repairs done here.

For better or worse, the appointment to fix the slides turned into a laundry list of fixes..."Oh, by the way, there's this issue too. Maybe you can fix that while you're at it. And...what about this, can you give us an estimate? ...oh, one more thing, this should be a cheap fix..." etc., etc. In the end, however, it wasn't the little things that got us, it was the monster lurking the closet, so to speak. In summary:

• Screen door latch handle (it no longer takes two hands and a knee to open the front door)
• Leaky water valves and hoses in our fresh water hookups and the saniflush leaks (on the black water tank)
• Replace the worn out struts on one of the basement compartment doors
• Reattach the outside wall to the frame on the passenger side
• Replace the main awning motor and brake (this bit the dust just last week)
• Replace the rubber seals and rollers on both slides
• Fix the loose screw causing the bedroom slide to hang up and not fully deploy (this was also scratching both the wood flooring in the bedroom and the outside bottom of the slide)
• Replace the main slide motor and brake
• And the "ka-ching" item (the monster) that we didn't know about until the main slide was inspected, and which will take an entire week to repair... replace water-damaged subfloor in the main slide. For this job, they will have to entirely remove the slide from the coach - 35 hours of labor. Yikes! 

Some of the smaller items are done already. We expect the awning and the water problems to be finished by end of day tomorrow. Fortunately for us, Steve and Alicia (my son and his wife), have graciously allowed us to stay with them in their guest room next week while that major repair is being done. 

I don't even want to talk about the cost of this whole project, except to say that this RV is our one and only house and home, and when things need fixing in your house, you just fix them and deal with the cost the best you can.

God always provides. And I have no doubt He will this time as well.

In the meantime, tomorrow we will be driving the motorhome to Lancaster for the weekend and delivering (at last) the remnants of Katie's belongings that we had been storing for her since she moved from Minnesota to California. She'll be happy to get them back and we'll be happy to recover some space in our tiny home. Then on Sunday afternoon, we'll park the "Follymobile" back here at Alfateers, pack up a suitcase and the cat, and head to Steve and Al's in Canyon Country for the week.

The folks at Alfateers have promised to have everything done by the 22nd. I'm counting on it, because the plan is to camp at the Thousand Trails park in Acton, put up our Christmas tree and bake some cookies... preferably before Christmas.