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…
After another round of SketchUp work and some more van measuring we ordered our second parcel of struts. Upon receiving them we eagerly headed out to set them up. Framing Continued… This week we were concentrating on the rear of the van working on the bed and seating area. The plan for the rear is to have a 2100mm long sleeping area at night that converts to 1050mm of bench area (this will act as a roof for the garage…
It’s been a long week waiting for our struts to arrive so we can start the furniture build! Let’s Get Slotting An extremely large parcel arrived first thing, it’s our first batch and contains all the struts we’d need to get the kitchen unit and shower units built. We were both super excited and rushed outside to make a start. The parcel had been packed extremely well and it took some doing with scissors to get into as the struts…
Efforts this week have been ploughed into research. We await the arrival of the struts so that the furniture build can commence! With little physical work to get our teeth into this week and in a bid to keep things moving along, Ben and I concentrated on researching some of the other elements of the build. We are excited about the impending delivery of the struts, but as always there is much to do. We decided to divide and conquer…
We mentioned last time that with the new appliances we needed to make some changes to the layout. This section of the build started with the frantic rehashing of the layout in SketchUp. With some minor adjustments made to our original layout, we have now reached the stage where we can start to build the skeletal frame of the furniture. It’s exciting to reach this phase, I’ve been looking forward to starting on the furniture and seeing the van come…
With the base of the van a good way to being ready, it was time to turn our attention to the furniture side of things. Thus far we’ve avoided buying much in the way of interior bits or appliances, as things often seem to change at the last minute and we don’t have masses of storage at home. In order to progress past this point we needed to firm up our choices of appliances. Armed with a comprehensive list of…
Before work on the floor began we decided to take a week off van work. It’s been a hard slog to get to this point and in addition to my shoulder needing some rest after the ceiling, we also we felt that we were owed some time to do things we enjoy. Back to work…. After a nice week off it was time to get back to it. This week we plan to get the floor down and hopefully make…