We don't even have to tell you how cold it is outside. If you live in an RV you know and if you live in a house without a steering wheel you also know. It's cold.
We are on our way to SD for the next few months so our concerns about the cold are great. We have no idea what we're in for but we are certainly preparing ourselves.
First we bought some insulation sheeting. The pretty blue kind because the white or pink just wasn't going to go with the rest of the house. We cut to fit our windows with lovely edges made with a dull box cutter. We put foam weather stripping around them and velcroed to the windows. We were pretty proud of how this turned out but soon realized we have no light coming in. So we decided to cut out a "window" on one of the windows. We took our dull box cutter (seems that new blades really aren't that expensive) and we cut out an 18" x 24" window than cut a larger piece to cover that hole but can be removed during the day. Clever and classy!
Next item was the bathroom because for some reason it's freezing in there. We took some of that same sheeting and attached it to the entire outside wall. Not without first having to remove the toilet paper holder and now our toilet paper rolls all around and gets lost everytime we travel. This wall cover still didn't keep the seat warm enough for Kelly so she found some toilet seat covers that Caleb uses in public restrooms (that are decorated with Diego) and taped to the seat. They seem to keep her warm enough to quit squealing at 6 am every morning. Again...classy!
Now it was time to address the front door. It has so much air swooshing in around it that the stairs (inside the house) often have ice on them. Weatherstripping around the door was the obvious answer. But how to attach the rubber stripping to the cold, metal doorframe (because of course we didn't think to do this until it was already 15 degrees outside.) Kelly so cleverly reached for the double sided tape (not heavy duty foam stuff...more like the Scotch tape stuff). You're not surprised (and you may not be finished laughing) but it didn't work and Brian graciously didn't make her feel like a total ass - after all, he let her use it in the first place. So we got clever and screwed it in (and used a little duct tape just to be sure).
We also had to figure out how to supplement the gas furnace with electric heat since propane has now jumped to over $3/gal, we're setting the thermostat to 60 degrees and Brian is sleeping in a hat. After some research we're off to Walmart for an oil filled radiator type thing. It was hot on the outside, large and dangerous for kids and dogs... not sure what we were thinking but we had hopes it would be warm. Nope, froze all night. Back to Walmart to get a safer fan heater. Nope, again we froze. Back to Walmart to get the ceramic heater that we were going to get in the first place - it's quiet and our living room is warm and comfy. However, the fan heater we got for the bedroom makes a lovely click click click and it has to be exchanged...nothing like a Walmart customer service line after Christmas.
All in all we think we're going to have a grand adventure this winter. Some may have fears that we are going to wake up as popcicles. In fact, we sometimes have fears that we are going to wake up as popcicles. But for now we believe that with enough weatherstripping, insulation, duct tape and long underwear (and maybe a few strips of scotch tape) we'll weather the storm like pros...clever and classy.
