Hi Mike and Heidi…… He’s driving me nuts. LMAO

Just be happy that after all these years you still have each other. The older we get the more I realize how much this matters. I think it was very smart to let the lease go and pick up a grandma car like you did. The mileage is very low and the repairs and such will provide some more content for KZbin. As for saving all that money under the mattress I am thinking the itch to get back out in a camper of some sort might alter that plan a bit. You guys love the camping and the traveling aspect and you are not tied down at this point in your life except for Heidi's current job situation. I see a new to you RV of some sort in your future by this time next summer at the latest.

I think that you are making all the right decisions in this current economy! It is so difficult, we grapple with some of these same decisions!

We injoy everything you guy's talk about, thanks for home bace & RV update. The Power Watch Dog 🐕 is amazing product. Smart move stay at this location move the fence forward to the street lot's of room for RV trailer. Just keep in mind the entrance of the rv trailer will be on the fence side back in.

You wanna live where everybody knows your name, and there so dang glad that you came. The only thing Columbus discovered, was some seriously rough roads, bucking bronko, lets go! Holy weenershnitzel, its a freaking warzone out there, who activated the Mocktar Stealth Haze? HAHA! Mike, lets make my Niece Heidi happy, install a wood shop dust extractor in the basement, that will solve the dust problem. And as long as you have a vent fan pulling air in and out, she should be able to paint in the basement too. I would have bought the lease car, but you do whats best for you. Struts dollar a piece? Well I'd buy that for a dollar! You made a great point, about how much you saved to not lease a new car. I think Mike is right, knowing his cooking skill, he'd accidentally create mustard gas, then he will pass out.

its very hard to pull the trigger on buying a house or car with these high interest rates.

I'm just wondering? Michael where did you retire from. Kudos to Heidi.

I kept wondering in previous vids what the whole joke was with "the 'a' word", but didn't bother to ask. Now I know, and it made me laugh. We don't have any of that sort of thing. Plus, even if we did, I watch these vids with headphones, so no A/S/whatever device would "hear" it if we did have one. Is there a way to change their name, so you could avoid that problem? I'd change mine to something unlikely to be heard much, and also unlikely to come up in casual conversation. "Galadrial, turn on the garage lights!" Mike, have you lost some weight? I keep wanting to, and sort of do the intermittent fasting, but so far, no luck. "Something just like that." Boots. I bought a pair of boots at DSW, and they seemed OK during my brief test in the store. Over time, as they wore in, I realized just how amazing they were. They really fit my foot, provided support that I really need, had excellent grip, and with a gel insert remained comfortable for many hours of hiking, yard work, or whatever. Of course, they wore out, so I went back to DSW, bought another pair just like it, and was happy with those for years again. I may have even had a third pair before I was unable to find the same model. The closest one I could find, from the same manufacturer, didn't have as good support, was never as comfortable, and didn't last as well. Now I have yet another pair from that manufacturer, more like the older ones, but still not as supportive. I wonder if I should have just bought several pairs that second time, and kept them in storage. On the e-bike reviews, I'd be interested in an overall comparison. Of all the various models you've tested, what are the pros and cons of each, maybe ranked for various categories. When we downsized for the RV lifestyle, I sold my road bicycle, a Specialized Allez Elite I'd put thousands of miles on. Partly because of downsizing, but also partly because I can no longer ride with drop bars. A more upright (or 'bent) model would be better, and having the electric assist would also be good. Meanwhile, my wife could use an e-bike too. Ideally, we'd want a tandem recumbent e-bike, but I don't even know if anyone makes those.

Daaaamn! Where’s towmater taking that whip?!

Heidi…understand the long work hours as I spent 39yrs in big Box retail mgt…

Nice station wagon guys.

✌🏼

I’m guessing that buying a new pick up truck and fifth wheel comparable to what you had a few years ago probably costs 10 to 20 thousand more.

How is it holding up? I got the same plug from Walmart $25.99, it came quickly in plastic bag in box with no directions. Fortunately there are many on auto Tube showing how it goes on. A new better more waterproof model is needed. I cut apart my molded black plug, inside was porcelain prong holder with crimp connections to wires, and white corroded ands.lightly burned. I have new RV smart plug and receptacle on other end. The twist lock receptacle on old style overheated and burned.

Thank you for such a detailed video and explanation with each step. I've been looking at this bike on Amazon.

I'm not sure exactly what to take from this. Are you saying it *is* OK to buy from Empire, or it isn't? ;)

As far as we know, neither of us ever got COVID. I'm almost never sick, aside from the cancer, high blood pressure, GERD, high cholesterol, and on-and-off post-nasal-drip. I do take either Airborne or Emergen-C regularly, depending on which is cheaper or more available. I also drink a bit of liquor, neat, and that probably kills anything trying to live in my mouth or throat. Neither of us took the COVID jabs, though for a brief while we were concerned that her employer was going to force it, which would have led us to a choice of her quitting early or taking the chance on it. That balance of livability vs movability of RVs comes up with us, too. Here we are with a 45' fiver carrying my 1300 mc, pulled by a one-ton dually. Travel days, we're close to 16 tons, 63 feet long, 13' 4" tall. Those are not fun days, and prep for moving is a lot of work. Then again, when we're settled somewhere, like we are now (a lot longer than we intended to be), it's like living in a condo, only in a different part of the country than a couple months ago. Earlier today, we saw someone coming into the cg with a very different rig. It was a CanAm Spyder pulling some sort of small, flat trailer. Later, we saw the trailer set up in a site, expanded out, and the Spyder was gone, probably up in the mountains. I can imagine us doing something like that (maybe after we stop the full-time thing), but it's a very different lifestyle, with different compromises. With the fiver, we're not spending 6 months anywhere, but we do like to park for anywhere between two weeks and two months, three months this winter at our Florida spot. We have one of the best kitchens available in an RV, better than a lot of apartments, and it really is our home. That we haul around. For my part, I'm not interested in a live video, but I think you'll find enough people who *do* like those, it's probably a good idea.

Wondering if you still love this a year later. I'm about ready to bite the bullet.

Can you provide and update on how well they worked during the hot summer months? What temps did you see inside the fridge/freezer after the installation? I am considering installing either these on my Solitude to help my Norcold 2118 which has trouble cooling on hot summer days.

That seems like *so* much work to get around the fact that there aren't any gutters. It used to be, you could get all the gutter materials from Homeless Despot, Blowes, etc, take it home, and put up a whole house worth of gutters in a few hours. Or get one of those seamless gutter contractors in and have it done even quicker. We've done both approaches. Are those options just not available anymore? That one section at least, one short section of gutter, two end caps, a downspout, and a piece to divert the water away from the house would take very little time, and fix the problem until you put in something more permanent. I can see how someone who knew the former owner would think it was a nice house, if they hadn't seen it after the addict son (and whatever associates) trashed it. It doesn't take long for someone like that to really mess a place up. When I was a kid, my parents and another couple went in together on buying and fixing up a house, what would be called "flipping" now. It was also a nice house, well built and all, but the owners went through an ugly divorce, and the man went through ripping out plumbing and electric, leaving trash everywhere, basically just ruining it as much as he could so his ex wouldn't get much. "Maybe that's his definition of 'nice'." LOL. I realized that while that section was playing, I was breathing shallowly, since I could *almost* smell it, seeing all the trash on the floor. It's good that some people can recognize good basic structure despite such overwhelming mess. Most people wouldn't make it past the entry. On the whole bit of people thinking your "so lucky" to be reviewing the bikes etc, I suspect you're not going to sway them with your arguments about what's involved in it. To them, that will still be a very minimal effort for getting "free" stuff. They have no idea what it's really like. When I got into RVing, quite a few people told me I should have a blog, or better yet a KZbin channel, and make a lot of money from it. I knew better. I have a pretty good sense of the work involved, as well as the difficulty in doing it in a way that I'd really stand out and be able to get enough of a following to make any money, much less "lots of money". But that all reminds me of one of my jobs, when a close coworker told me about encountering a couple of guys he went to school with, and they were doing grunt work, delivering and installing equipment. They asked him something along the lines of "how hard is it to get a desk job here?", meaning what do you have to do to get a job like his, where you just sit around all day, never do anything difficult, and make lots of money. Very much along the lines of "Money for Nothing". The work we did was not easy, it just wasn't physical. Dismissing it as "a desk job" meant those guys had no clue. I do *not* wish for your position of reviewing product. I'm glad it works out for you, and you do a great job with it, but it's not for me, and I don't envy you for it. Those storms remind me of growing up in MI. The storms were so violent at times, and that was exciting. High winds, lightning and thunder, we were glad our house was made of cinder blocks. Seeing you use the truck to pull up stuff made me think that's the time I'd really appreciate my one-ton dually. Put it in 4WD (really 6WD) low, with the engine having a thousand pound-feet of torque, and it would pull those up so easily. "We all work on our days off." Yes, that's part of our culture, and makes for a more valuable life. Seeing the yard free of brush is great. I can only imagine how that felt for you, having it all gone.

Every time I hear Mike say "I don't know why" about something that was done in the house, I have to laugh. Never mind the fact that different people have different plans, likes & dislikes, etc., there was a drug addict living there! He didn't need a "why" for what he did.

Thank you for the video --- but WHY must we have to look at her BOOBS hanging out? Come on!!! Have some decency. I won't subscribe because of this.

$210,000. Am I close? 👍 good video as always👍

Still running good?

Why should I care about what a French Canadian thinks?

Another great video guys !! Always a real pleasure to see Heidi on too and who don't like Tennessee Whiskey right 😅😊. Thanks !!

The reason is its so far to any box stores to run out an grab things an to restaurants that whole place is stretched out so far from every thing u seen how far u are from a boat dock and swimming people want sites with a beach in eye sight an boat ramps with In walking distances an a walmart around the bend 😂

On the electrical, are you just talking about 3-way and 4-way switches? Those aren't really very complicated, if that's it. If you want to control a load from two different locations, you can do that with 2 3-way switches, and if you want to control it from additional locations, that's just one 4-way for each location beyond the 1st 2. But I don't want to get into that if it isn't what you mean. Giving thing away free..we used to use Freecycle, a service Yahoo! provides. Time after time, we had people claim they wanted something, but then never show up. It got to where we refused to "hold" anything, and *that* led to complaints. Some people, you just can't please. So we started just putting stuff out at the end of our driveway, with "FREE!" signs. Carpet in the kitchen! Wow. I'm a pretty anti-carpet guy anyway, but in the kitchen? Hey, like they say, you do you. I grew up with one of those rolling dishwashers, didn't know there was another way. We'd roll it around the corner to a utility sink, hook it up, run it, then roll it back. We moved out of that house (MI) in 1980, moved to a much nicer house in MS, which had all kinds of amazing modern tech, including a built-in dishwasher, a microwave oven, and a whole-house vacuum! We felt so rich. The more I see of this series (why isn't it a YT Playlist?), the more I like the idea of continuing to live in our fiver, whether part-time on the road or just parked on whatever property we buy, while we get the house just how we like it. We're so used to this being "home", we'd skip the phase where the new sticks-and-bricks place is not really home yet, is just a place where we sleep and work on.

It's been fun going through these, catching up on the progress. I think it may be in part because we're spending more time lately looking at properties, thinking more seriously about our next phase. There's even one place that we've found, that I expect will be sold before we're truly ready to buy, and I think we'll both be a bit disappointed when that happens. But we're just not in a position to jump on it right now. There will be others. Your work on this place may be enough to inspire us to put together a series of pictures, videos, and talk about that project when it happens. Who knows, maybe I'll finally start a blog, or even a YT channel.

Mike, I have to disagree with you about body shops, though maybe what I've run into is more an exception than the rule. I'd put a couple of dents, one tiny and one large, in my truck, and intended when we got back to metro Denver this time to get those fixed at a body shop we've used before. Then, at our last stop on the way, we had a major hail storm, which added a *lot* of dents to the truck. So we took it to that same shop, but with insurance for the hail damage. These guys do Paintless Dent Repair (who doesn't?), but they also do the older kind of dent repair when the paint is damaged. They've been pounding out dents, smoothing things out, and painting the result to match. They've also bolted in a new piece (hood) and cut off and welded on another new piece (roof), but from what I can tell, they use whatever approach makes sense for the specific thing being repaired. Of course, some things, it makes sense to replace rather than bend back into shape, as the new piece has a strength that's lost through bending. As for the electric and plumbing, I think I *would* rewire the whole place, but a section at a time, as I got to it, and that's what we'll likely do with the next place we buy, since it will probably be old. We're even thinking that with one of the places we're considering, it could be a good thing that the walls are all junk we want to tear out, since that gives us the opportunity to replace old wiring and plumbing, and even to add that newfangled stuff, insulation, to the exterior walls. At our last house, I rewired much of the garage, which was a random mix of aluminum and copper, with an oversized breaker, and with some wiring right under wall coverings with no protection. After having 50A in this fiver, I think 100A would be enough for our next house. Maybe not. But in any case, I wouldn't be spending $10K to $30K for that. I'm no carpet expert, but it looks to me like that was done with "remnants". Someone who knows more, please tell me I'm wrong, and explain. And yes, I can see those seams. Never mind your camera, and the lighting, I have poor enough connection right now that I'm playing back at 360p, and they're obvious. So far, the only thing I've done with carpet is rip it out and dispose of it, to be replaced with hard flooring. But doesn't it usually come on fairly wide rolls?

your story on customer service wasn't boring at all man... lol it's hard to find that quality of customer service anymore but I'm preaching to the choir here, eh? I've had a couple good experiences in the past year with smaller companies wanting to retain their customers but then there's Ford who won't even cover a bad valve stem when you pay for an extended tire warranty... lol it's ok. they'll just move onto the next customer.. lol

The walkthrough of that place reminds of some of the places we've been finding for sale. Some of those have someone who does not own it living there, and it's somehow up to the buyer to get them out. We don't want that situation, but others I think are "estate" situations. Whoever lived there has since died, and nobody's bothered to clean the stuff out. That's a potential big job, but doable. I wonder how much it would cost to get some high school kids, or someone else young and willing, to clear out all the trash from a house like that, and load it into a rollaway, just get it gone. I can't imagine much of it is worth trying to sell, or even give away. I would definitely want to be wearing my heavy boots any time I went through a place like that. And gloves. And after seeing the broken toe, I'm even more sure I'd want heavy boots. Some of the places we've seen, I'd wear a respirator. There's a huge potential to places like that, though, since the overwhelming majority of people won't consider them at all. A place with "good bones", but needing a boatload of cleaning, and then a lot of remodel, can be a great value. I hope it works out well for you. I guess I'll see, as I progress through additional videos. I can't believe how much time I've spent yesterday and today catching up on the channel!

I found the transition-to-fiver video! We're still in our first ever RV, though when I was a kid my parents had a very small travel trailer, no bathroom even. Ours is also Forest River, a Riverstone Legacy 42FSKG, which is a monster to move, but great to live in. If it were possible to lift our bed, you'd see the garage under there. I like to say that this rig feels like a small condo when we're set up somewhere, but going down the road it feels like I'm towing a small condo.

D'oh! Catching up on your older vids, I see this one, and realize you were at the '22 FROG rally! That was our first one, and we were in a grassy section with temp hookups (no sewer), our line backed up to another line. In '23, we did the early thing, got a much better spot. It was also "back-in", but with regular hookups. Our line was filled first, so we got to pull through the other side, making it effectively pull-through. Then the line behind us backed in to ours. We're not signed up for '24 yet, not sure if we'll go or not. We have some work to be done at the Riverstone factory in September (hail storm, not any fault of the manufacturer, but we want the experts to do the work), and may work that in. Even on the "tight" side, you're not as close as we were on one side in '22. Our neighbor's steps almost reached our rig. If he and I had both opened our windows in our slides, I think we could have passed things back and forth. The site in '23 had way more space. I'll have to see if you also made the '23 rally, meaning we missed out on meeting you twice. Now that you've sold your FR, I assume you won't be doing the rally. Frog Bob and his wife aren't running the show anymore anyway, so I'm not sure if it will be quite the same.

"We don't know when you're going to watch this video"...yeah, about that. We followed the channel (and a bunch of others) a lot before we took the plunge, went full-time. After that, we cut way back on our KZbin time. I hadn't realized just how long it had been since we checked the channel until yesterday. I saw a recent video. Wait...a house? Heidi has a job? Now I need to watch this one, and probably a few others, to catch up. Maybe I'll find out how your son is doing with his van, or if that's over. I totally get the whole thing of making changes though. We started this not knowing if it would last 3 months or 10 years. It's been over 3 years now, and we still don't know how much longer. So I'm watching this video on 2024-07-06, while we're in Golden, CO. Should be heading north and east, vaguely (maybe south and east) on the 15th. We'll see.

Never thought about the extra water from a dormer. Glad I decided to stick with shingles instead of the roof but it does look nice.

do these roofs rust?

I would paint the stairs in the same color as trim 😊

What happened to your sons van? I thought he loved that van and it was setbup perfectly for traveling.

We just hit 118 degrees here in Phoenix today. I think that was about the same temperature when you were changing your axles on your Rockwood travel trailer in Yuma.😅

Have a good trip ! We went to MD for grand daughters wedding , just out of DC. I didn't like driving in the town. Coming home was the best!

Look at 200mk transcend by grand design great couples camper we have on check out video lots of kitchen counter space

I think the roof looks great too, and as long as you and Heidi are happy with it, I am happy to fam! Davy Tree will Davy Crocket please fix our fence, its holly blessed, big holes, needs fixed. HEHE Mike, I love the idea of a studio down there, you just need to put down some shop carpet, and acoustic panels on walls to remove echo. Always a sucker trying to make a quick buck off the marketplace. When it rains, it pours, right over the gutter, and onto your head, now thats a shower! Oh I don't like that shady dude at all. He has the freedom to travel, but not to harass. Mike's vivid description of him being treated like the girl who is ready to get picked up by her man honk honk, ROFLMAO! 🤣 The guy who likes to honk all the time, he's what mama always called, Bad News, he wants more then a look, he wants the complete package. Good thing you got all that security, you freaking need it now! Heidi looks good in uniform, she's the boss, everybody knows now, good. lol Oh my gosh, I really love your new grill, its so nice! I have the traditional smaller Weber grill like you guys used to use as well.

The new grill looks real nice and chicken looks yummy. Hope you were going to the beach in south carolina. My favorite place on earth. Hope you had a great time! The sunshine days are amazing for sure:)

I don't blame you , I would tell him where to put the horn!!!!

I agree, its so much nicer traveling with an RV. No hassle with loading and unloading so many times. Are you headed to the beach? Enjoy wherever you are headed.

A metal roof will last a life time,,roofing shingles be lucky to get 20 years.

Mike / Heidi, the roof looks great, I personally don’t care if a roof is metal or asphalt. I like the appearance of both. My roof is asphalt, but it was put on a few years ago, plus I have solar on top of that now. Overall, it basically it says I metal or asphalt just as long as you both enjoy it that is really matters.

our gutters do not work well when it rains hard. They are new, but the steep slope on the back of our home overwhelms the gutters. A contractor said we need wider gutters to defeat that problem. AS far as the metal roof is concerned, yours looks great. The cost for them here is very expensive compared to shingled roofs here in NYS. IT was hard to get anyone to install a metal roof here. They said it would look out of place with the other homes around. So we had a good shingled roof installed. BTW, love the longer videos. Sometimes I forget it may be a month ago when you started the video, lol. The horn guy lol, I would have said Why the hell are you beeping your horn in my Driveway, did i have a date with you? Get the hell out. Im really a nice guy, BUT. State hospitals ARE UNDERRATED.

Weld a pipe to your basement drain to drain the overflow to the outside.