During the week I’ve been busy planning the bathroom, it’s been quite the undertaking and has required a fair amount of research and comparison to what others have done and what we could do in the space allocated. After purchasing Gandalf and in our initial discussions over our plans we knew that we’d need to plan a space for a bathroom in. This was an important consideration for us as we hope to spend most of our time off grid…
Having chosen and installed the Truma heater and hot water system it was time to turn our attention to the storage and supply side of things. Heating Water Over the past few months we’ve been debating our options for water storage. We are at a point where this would now be a good task to get ticked off the list. We intend to travel for a while and are hoping to stay off grid for the most part, with that…
On a roll from yesterdays progress we headed out early to start day two of the bumper weekend. The Solution One of our big hopes this weekend was to install the shore power sockets on the van. Although we are not completing the rest of the electrical install just at the moment, we wanted to get the hole cut and fit the sockets ahead of time. I am mid-way through writing a fairly comprehensive guide to our electrics, which will…
With a couple of really successful weekends of work and Christmas behind us we hoped to follow up with another bumper weekend. We came ready with an ambitious plan to install both the Truma heater and the Smart plugs for the Shore Power. Did we succeed? Read on to find out! Truma Heater It was quite a drizzly weekend the three of us were all wrapped up and ready for work. Heading out to make a start on the long…
Yesterday’s hard work and the resulting success seemed to almost propel us forward with the remaining tasks planned for today. We were really hoping to be able to make a start on some of the internals, specifically the kitchen area. With the hob exhaust in place it was now time to implement an elegant solution for our fridge. Day 2 We’d been discussing with John for sometime how to go about creating a heavy duty sliding drawer for the fridge….
After a busy Christmas period for our business and some great family time, we decided to get back into the swing of van work with a cheeky session between Christmas and the New Year. Thanks to a number of days of hard work from myself, Ben and John, we’ve made another good step forward, managing to tackle one of the bigger jobs that had been looming over us. Day 1 We’d hoped to get the heater install finished up this…
Having been lucky enough to be offered a couple of days of help on the van from John (Ben’s dad). We jumped at the opportunity to try to get some of the ever growing list of tasks ticked off the list before Christmas. It’s really helpful when others are interested in the project and keen to get involved. It’s such a long journey to the finish line you sometimes feel you need some fresh outside positivity to help you along…
Hello world! Welcome back to some updated van news. Let’s kick off with the kitchen. As mentioned previously the countertop had been sent off to be crafted by John, a neighbour of Ben’s parents. It’s now time to get the kitchen install underway! Fitting the countertop A quick update on our other progress before we get into the countertop. After finding and purchasing the sink and tap for the kitchen, and looking into various other parts of the build we…
After a very good evening out celebrating another September birthday with my family we groggily rose for our super early start. We were due to be on the road at 8.30am. Wearily we headed out to the car and off we went. Today our 7 hour round trip journey will take us from Canterbury right down to Christchurch in Bournemouth and back again. Adventures to the Coast What may we be up too today I hear you ask? Well, today…
After working hard on the struts and having the majority of the furniture framing done we took some time to catch up on some design aspects of the build. I personally had been looking forward to figuring out the final look of the kitchen. Decisions, Decisions! It can be hard to know quite where to start with a kitchen in a camper van, and in general there are a few things to figure out before pressing on: How many people…