Walls: The finale
Happy Friday! We’ve had a great week, progress is on schedule and we’re super pleased.
Fun hats and twister
What a scorcher of a week it’s been! Working in the hot weather brings a whole new set of issues, we’ve finally been able to put the thermals away and have reached for some really funny looking sun hats! It does get quite uncomfortable at times working in the heat, but we’ve been staying well hydrated and cracking on none the less. We’ve had the small luxury of completing most of the cutting in the shade, underneath our favorite blossom tree.
Our main focus this week has been to continue where we left off in getting the rest of the walls up. We made a great start last week on the rear section of the van and we hoped that although it would be more of a challenge this week, it would still go as well. We started from the back and continued along making sure to take the windows into account with some very careful measuring. Once again Ben was masterful with the jigsaw and the cutting seemed to take no time at all.
It mostly seemed to go well and although lifting the 1.9 x 1.2m sections into the van without scratching the ceiling insulation can be tricky we managed with only a few bumps. Attaching the ply sheets to the wall is not as easy as I’d been led to believe, it takes quite a bit of force to bend the ply flat against the battens, which is impossible for one person to do and manage the screws and drill at the same time. We had a lot of fun playing ‘Twister’ as we attempted to secure them. One slight issue we found is that the screws we’d decided to use were a little too short to grip into the battens properly in the middle section. This meant we had to drill some extra screw holes and although not ideal, we think it’ll be OK in the end and we may be able to hide these with the final finish of the van.
As the week progressed it was exciting to see the walls going up, it’s been a long time coming. Our hard work this week has really pushed the conversion forward and it’s been great to reach this stage. I’m really pleased with how it’s all turned out and there was even just enough time to get one of the back doors cut out ready for attachment next week.
Other news…
There’s always a lot of work going on ‘behind the scenes’. This week we’ve carried on with our research into the power situation. We have some rather powerful batteries in mind that’ll make for an interesting read. We are just double checking and finishing off the last of the research and all being well we should be ready to order them next week.
As for now, our next task will be to work on the bulkhead, before moving onto the ceiling. We will need to vapour barrier both the bulkhead and ceiling before we can get the plywood walls on, but are confident we’ll have a nice shell to start the internal work shortly. Speaking of the bulkhead, we’ve been busy planning the ‘bulkhead hatch’ with John, and are looking forward to starting this on Monday. Big thanks to John for the time and thought he has put into the hatch, particularly into the mechanics of how this will work.
On another note, I have been looking for ages for the before and after picture of the bumpers which were painted by Linda in an earlier post. Unfortunately, thus far I had been unable to find the picture…. until now! Look at the improvement:
Looks great! What a handsome couple!!!! Love the hats! xxx