A Hail Of A Time
What an exceedingly long day…… We were up at 4am to watch the first F1 race of the 2019 season, which took place in Australia, hence the weird time. This finished around 7am and we decided to go with the momentum of the week and get up and head out to the van. The first goal was to get the battens from yesterday stuck down, which fitted seen as it was still rather early and we couldn’t use any of the power tools just yet. Once a more civilized time rolled around we cut up and laid the last of the extra support battens.
Rain and Hail
Our hope was to get all the battens secured and get cutting and fitting the insulation, however the weather and the children that live around here had other ideas. There we were working in glorious sunshine and then suddenly it pelted it down with hailstones, not once but twice! Having to stop all work each time and grab three sheets of insulation board and then the three large sheets of marine ply, (which weigh in at 20kg each I might add) and haul them one by one back into the van to save them from the rain. As soon as we seemed to get the materials, all the tools and work bench back in the van the hail would stop. We are finding the weather rather infuriating at the moment its either raining randomly or the wind is so excessive it blows everything all over the place and you’re to paranoid to do anything in case the door slams into you.
We did the best we could, as always, with the stop start weather. We were also treated to frequent visits from the local kids who all want to know whats going on, what the tools are for and how you use them. We never knew our area was so social until we started this project and whilst it is always fun to talk about the project, you find that half an hour seems to easily slip away.
Like a Knife Through Butter
Battening the van has not been as easy as expected, the floor is different heights (like corrugated metal) and we’ve had to make some compromises on where the battens could go versus our layout plan. Ideally, we need to have them all stuck down on the raised parts of the corrugated floor so that they end up the same height as the insulation boards. There are a couple of spots, where the welding has been done on the floor that have consequently ended up slightly higher than the rest of the van and we’ve had to shave a little of the battens in order to make everything sit flush. The final fiddly bit was around the step, where for some reason the front of the step is higher than the side, but only by a little, leaving us no option but to raise the side piece to match.
Whilst Ben was finishing the last of the battens I decided that I’d make a start on cutting the large boards of insulation into the right sized squares created by the battens. The insulation is kind of like a butter soft polystyrene, which made it really tricky to cut, it was so easy to stray from the marked out line and it had the tendency to snap if you went slightly to fast. I battled on, measuring and cutting two separate pieces, both of which turned out not to fit! I was super frustrated given that I’d measured twice before cutting! I have no idea how they ended up wrong but by this time I was cold, tired and pained (my wrist has not been right since lifting the ply boards the other day) and I was really fed up.
Ben ever the optimist set to and cut out one of the more rectangular shapes that we needed! It started to rain AGAIN and the wind was getting up, so Ben finished up whilst I ran around like a lunatic for the third time today packing tools away. With the end of the day nearing and everything packed away I went to see how Ben had got on and lo and behold he’d succeeded in cutting the first piece of insulation! It may only be a small step but I am really pleased with our rectangle! Well done Ben! 🙂
