A must to avoid.

 

I'm sure you've heard it all before, doing something right the first time around means you can avoid all the extra work that repairing it and making it right will entail.

I know there were excuses (reasons really) at the time for not peeling off the protective film on the cupboards or getting the cupboard sealing strips tidy, but they've been a thorn in my side or a stone in my sock or whatever and the time has come to sort them.   

As I recall, the only mitigating factor for what was really the only part of the job I have been genuinely ashamed of, is that when the time came to add the strips, I was straddling cupboards which were being packed by torchlight at almost midnight on the day before we were due to leave, and we still hadn't bolted in the bed.    Naturally the rubber-like strips I'd selected was the least forgiving product on the planet, so every little divergence from a straight line, and there were many, was there to stay.

Now, it's difficult to even sand the stuff off, but sand we will, and a few years of use have made that thin layer of clear film a real treat to deal with too, but with the few other little detail jobs on the cupboards almost complete we're hopeful the carcasses will be back in the van by the end of the weekend.

These are poky little repair jobs really, but the completion of each is quite each is satisfying in it's own way.

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarium.

 

He thought he caught the faintest whiff of "Old Hippy" as the panels were going in, which sent his mind scurrying to simpler times, when vans had vaguely rude signs on the back windows imploring parents not to laugh lest their daughter be within, and something about "rocking" which no doubt was a reflection on shock absorbers no longer at their best.

Then he realised the scent was a mix of Ikea and the water-based varnish he'd been breathing all day, and the bubble burst, and the cost of getting to this point flashed before him, dashing all those illusions of "cheap and cheerful" styles so enthusiastically espoused by every DIY programme on television.   

In that world, someone glamorous in a pair of brand new gloves so they don't get icky, manages to look straight into your eyes with a straight face and tells you how simple the job is, then cuts to an ad break and it's done!

On the other side of the screen, it goes like this:-

• Buy a van, have an idea, buy enough quirky patterned fabric to do the job.
• Do a half-baked job of the fit-out, make a temporary ceiling panel, and spend a year falling out of love with the material bought in haste yet never installed.
• With the van in pieces and a solution needed, find a quilt cover with some turtles on them that might do the job.  For added interest, do that at around midnight and discover there is only one left at the nearest shop which is only eighty or so kilometres away, and no they won't "click and collect" on that item.
• Safely home, after a trip to Sweden and a pensioner's morning tea and because you "know about this stuff", immediately cut up the pillow slip and start testing glues, and while you're doing that, give the panels that are to be treated a freshen up with some grey "cover all" primer.
• Three unsuccessful attempts later you realise that the stretchy lightweight cotton/rayon blend really wasn't designed to be stuck down, and the grey primer has sucked the life out of the colours.
• Then you remember that glamorous person with the brand new gloves waxing lyrical about a product she was using to stick glitter stars on the outside of a saucepan, and in desperation you fork out twice as much as the fabric cost for the glue to stick it down, and for good measure half as much again for some white primer in sufficient quantity to cover the grey.
• You don't test it this time because, well, testing is for pussies, and all goes surprisingly well except for the bubbles which you convince yourself will be fine as they sort of go with the underwater scene, don't they?
• Six coats of varnish later everyone is still wondering why it's taking so long.

Well it's done now, and if it falls apart or we don't like it any more, we'll do it over again. 

I suppose.

How much of this is “just because I can?”….

In answer to the question posed by Don and Cathy Jo yesterday we would say - 

"Why, ALL of it, silly!"

Everything from deciding to do the work ourselves to going to the ridiculous extremes of making hat racks out of bespoke parts, are simply being done "because we can".  

I am not sure if we will derive any more pleasure from the van with its finishes than we did without, after all it's essentially the same fitout, just painted a bit so the grubby fingermarks don't show on the white plastic quite so much.    Of course they will show even worse on the grey felt and may not be as easy to clean, so there's that, but we no doubt will have a rule about not touching the felt with grubby fingers.   Let's see how that works for us!   Never the less the process thus far has been a joy, a painful tiring joy, but one we've both enjoyed.

 A lick of paint here, a dash of sandpaper there, some holes filled, some drawers eased, and five coats of seal on the roof panels all contributed to today's progress.   

The simple little hat rack end is probably my most complicated in place print yet. In a forty millimetre diameter we have three zip ties, two screws, an embedded nut, and a machine bolt as well as room to turn the elastic on itself.    Yet there it is.   Finished (except for that one screw top-right which I hadn't tightened at the time of the photo).   Every time another little part is complete a new wave of satisfaction washes over us, and we expect a tsunami of that over the coming week.

And of course we now have somewhere to hang our hats.

Working with plastic.

 

I've made mention of the poor little 3D printer pumping out parts all day without complaint, although the filament it's using doesn't like the humidity particularly either, and the ambient temperatures do create a challenge from time to time, so in that sense it almost seems to be a living thing.

When one of us is asked "what do you print", most often he lapses into that rarest of conditions; "lost for words" relying on the other to fill in.  She has a well-practiced speech which begins with the word "everything" and ends exactly where it began.  When there are no gaps in a one word sentence, there's no need to fill them.

We continue to be amazed at the opportunities the machine provides to make stuff that doesn't exist, to modify stuff that does, or simply to create a bracket or jig in less time than it would take to drive to the hardware shop to buy one and at far less cost.

There are hundreds of custom made parts in the van, perhaps the most obvious at present (if you don't count the dashboard parts) are the luggage racks which will comprise more than a hundred individual bits when full assembled, but they are the least of them, and what's visible in the photo accounts for a tiny fraction of the project components.   Over the next couple of days a quite large collection of drawer trims, vent grilles, plumbing parts and cover strips will miraculously appear to add the finishing touches, while the machine rattles away day and night without complaint.

Welcome to the 21st century people!

Working with wood.

It's not actually a change, but  eighteen months have confirmed reservations about the durability of the lightweight PVC in some places subject to impact, nothing terrible and nothing that can't be improved upon.  

The curved beam at the head of the bed has suffered a couple of little dings that will show through the finishing wrap, and in truth if I hadn't been quite so clever and made the top all rounded it would be a nice place to rest tins of beetroot on while getting things out of the fridge.   It's getting a nice flat timber cap as we speak/write/read/whatever which will trim everything nicely and will be a bit more resilient when I'm throwing sheets of ply in there to carry home for the next project.

The bed also is being treated to a timber edge (part of the plan) to keep the mattress in place, and to stiffen the edge when it's lifted to access the storage bin under, and the cupboard sides surrounding the only bit of internal floor have a few scuff marks, because that's where we carry stuff when we are using it to do that - so I'll add some timber battens to make the scuff marks less obvious.

So that's it. Another day when the temperature was a bit too uncomfortable to actually work inside the van.  Another day of no progress, yet lots of baby steps taken towards actually finishing something and it was nice to be making a bit of sawdust.

What would we change?

 

We've often been asked over the past eighteen months if there's anything we'd change after using the van for a bit, and the answer is "nothing - we've already put half a century of camping experience into it", and while that's true, we're always on the lookout to see what we can leave out to save a bit of weight and generally simplify our lives aboard.

The plan was to build a set of pigeon holes on the back panel on either side of the bed to hold our clothes,  which we always keep sorted in little zipper suitcase bags in any case.  Building that in a way that was light enough, big enough and simple enough was a challenge that neither of us had got our heads around, opting for the lightest, simplest and biggest interim solution, which was to do nothing at all and sort of shove things beside the bed.

When inspiration finally came it was from a panel van lined with racks of those little boxes full of screws.  Yes I know one or two observant types have noted that we have had some screws in the plywood all along, it's just that it was a lot easier measuring the location before they were on the wall.   Each of these modules weigh just 200 grams including all the fittings so by my sums, six of them will add a bit over a kilogram to our payload.  They are quite experimental in terms of durability so we're both hoping they stand up to the rigors of life with us.

While one of us busies herself for the next day or two, slicing up pieces of RipStop and mesh and reassembling them in different configurations, and the poor little printer works twenty four hours a day churning out the parts, the other is thinking seriously about having the rest of the day off while it all happens around him.

It's the little things

They say it's the little things that take the time, but I can't be sure about that although I must admit there are an awful lot of them.  

For instance, the one length of cable we couldn't hide is located under the jack and runs exposed for about 150mm in a place where no one would see it, but the thought of a bit of wire poking through a slit in the wall liner did not sit comfortably at all.

The 3D printer is working fairly long hours at the moment, but I managed to get it to squeeze in this little grommet just to tidy things up a bit.   I think that the ten minutes i took to draw and send it to the printer and the two minutes to screw it in place were worth the delay.

It's not as if we've been slacking off, the roof panels have their fabric glued more or less successfully, all of the fuzzy stuff is in place except for one panel which needs a little magic to get it to sit right, the door rubbers are clean and back where they should be, and the plastic covers on the back of the seat bases have (finally) been adapted to make them removable.

Meanwhile, yes folks it had to happen - the other of us is also fully occupied manufacturing bits out of fabric and polyester mesh.

Stay tuned, there's something of a crescendo coming methinks..