Cupboards……

This is one small job I have put off for way too long, however in the wait I think my plan of attack was sorting itself out in my head.

It was a cupboard end by the door that hadn’t been closed in as it was awkward and required a piece of wood for the hardware store. Mitre 10 at Aberfoyle Park have been awesome over 2 years with our caravan saga. They cut me a piece to fit for free out of scrap as I had a few other items I was buying. Love them!

I then glued, nailed and stuck the wood supports on, put the ply on and edged it in my favorite plastic strips. Done!

Foreman Oscar.

Adelaide Caravan & Camping Show 2013

Ok so we knew that this would get out of hand, and spending money was inevitable.

We ended up buying a replacement strap on mirror for the one Paul cracked before we even used it.

And a water hose, sullage hose, gas bottle gauge, table leg kit, water tank cleaner, water tank water purifier, a deck chair for Paul, a copy of the Still Swinging the Billy book and my mum bought a thermal cooker which we are looking forward to cooking in.

Yeah $300 later. Lots of fun, and overall we saved about $50 ish on all of the items we needed.

I have since installed the table leg kit by drilling a hole through the floor the size of the screw piece, bolting the plate over the screw hole, and fastening the base onto the plate. The table this way will not move in transport.

I will now have to order the table top to match the kitchen bench top, and get a shorter piece of tube that will allow us to lower the table top to act as a base to the bed/ seat conversion.

Kitchen Sink Pipes

The kitchen sink and tap is something I thought about a lot, in how to have to taps, one for the mains water connection and one for the foot pump on the floor from the tank underneath. It actually came like an epiphany one night. The flick mixer has one inlet for cold and one for hot, so the mains water is to be connected to the cold side, and the foot pump water to the hot side. Genius I know!

We had to go and buy a special brass connector and pipe to fit to the under side of the van and come through to connect to the flick mixer tap. We knew we had to buy some sort of food grade and sullage hoses for the sink and waste water as well.

Thanks Dad for coming and doing it for free!

 

Electrical Work Continues

We have finally managed to get our electrician Bob back to do the next/ last stage of the electrical work. At first I was Bob’s right hand woman and learnt how to cut all of the holes for the power points to be put in. I put in all the brackets and he followed behind me in connecting up all of the wires. We then (after like 3 hours) started checking which cable went where at the connection point and began checking for any faults.

About a week later Paul was on holidays so I left all of the supplies and instructions for them to continue on without me. Two of the ceiling lights were put up and the air conditioning was checked and re installed on top of the roof. It took two days in total to get most of it done and correct an issue with the rear tail and side lights.

For safety, Paul and Bob had to go back and forth tripping the safety switch and turning it back on at the house, just to ensure if any faults happened all of the safety aspects were taken care of.

I came home to a lit up caravan with the heater on! It was a lovely sight and I have loved it all ever since. We then had to track down a spare part for one of the ceiling lights as it was missing from the packaging and we bought it over a year ago. It turned out amazingly, as in today’s society nothing is free, or ever goes our way. However this time the customer service woman from the lighting company not only found the obsolete spare part but sent it to me FREE!!!!!

Eventually we put up the remaining light and fixed the new outside light on, including some expensive reading lights that I purchased over a year ago.

 

Mattresses and Seating

I have know for a long time that mattresses were going to cost approximately $140 per single mattress from Clarke Rubber, however this would then cost me about $500 to do the beds and the front seating. So as always I shopped around and found that Super A Mart had hypoallergenic mattresses for about $80 each, and with some serious planning and graph paper I worked out that I would need 3 single mattresses to achieve the beds and seating cushions.

Once bought and dropped off by my dad, I got to work marking out the lines in permanent marker, and then using a sharp serrated bread knife I cut the shapes to size.

This was just to test out the mattresses without the cutting to size.

At this very moment they are with my mum being covered in a dark blue upholstery fabric, using zips recovered from plastic bedding bags. We timed it perfectly and got the fabric from Spotlight at 40% off of $20 a meter. Yay!!!!

Glamming Up the Kitchen

As part of the finishing touches for the kitchen I wanted a stainless steel splash back, as well as a piece to cover the front of the fridge. The two pieces were going to cost $150 from a local supplier, which was a bit much for me to justify. So plan B was put into action.

I called around all of the Aluminium suppliers and tried to locate some brushed aluminium with no luck. It seems that they don’t really make it anymore.

So the more searching I did the more interesting things I found. Adelaide Pressed Metal stood out with their amazing patterns, and once contacted I found their prices were reasonable at about $70 for a sheet, 60cm x 180cm ish. They soon informed me they had some seconds in certain patterns for $30 a sheet, which turned out to be one of the patterns I actually liked.

Once there we (me & mum)  found a sheet with the least scratches, and chatted to the salesperson for about an hour.

Then to bend it into the car proved a small challenge, but with some headrests removed it curved in over the parcel shelf and onto the floor.

We were told to get some straight sided snips, but I knew that would be another $30, so instead I very carefully scored the back of the sheet with a sharp stanley knife and then gently bent it back and forth and it snapped cleanly along the scored line. Perfect.

Using some liquid nails I then glued one square at a time using the microwave to apply pressure to the front of it while it dried. I did this a couple of squares at a time over the next few days and soon it was all done. I finished up the job by applying a metallic silicone to the joint along the counter top.

The fridge front was only done a few weeks later, but I applied liquid nails in small dots to the back of the sheet, and used a small hot glue gun to apply some lines of glue along the sides. This allowed it to set instantly and then hold it in place which the liquid nails dried. But not without a tyre leaning against it in the middle just to make sure. 🙂

The new jockey wheel!

So while trying to squeeze her into the mechanics we found that the jockey wheel was seized. Here is the new one!

Brakes

So as we are nearing the end, we have decided to spend a whole lot of money putting a new axle and electric brakes on the caravan.
As it is having a new axle we now also need new rims to match! More money. And as we don’t have a spare wheel we need an extra, plus a new tyre. More money.
Anyway I found that a lady through work was married to the mechanic who works on our Main Street. So he has quoted us for the entire job, as well as fitting the car with the electric brake controller.
We then had to remove the A/C from the roof so he could get it through his workshop doors.
Man was it good to see her hooked up on the mechanics ute, all lights blazing and gliding along the road!
Thanks Brendan.
So now I gather my coins and wait to pay for it all.
The next step is to buy foam for all the mattresses and seating areas, which I have found will also cost us a pretty penny, approx $140 per bed mattress!

Blinds Blinds Blinds

Blinds…..
Oh how I have waited for this moment, the time for decorating!!!!
I hunted in ikea, spotlight and on the net to find suitable blinds, but some were so expensive. Then I found Alex’s blinds and curtains on eBay! Man they were cheap, I managed to get 7 blinds for $155 delivered!!!
So I begin the task of watching Utube to work out how to cut down blinds to fit your windows.
I took the caps from each end, and ended up using tin snips to cut the excess metal track off as a hack saw didn’t hack very well.
The next part is where you really need to pay attention, the brackets you put up must not cover the rotating parts on the inside of the track, or when you go to put them up they won’t clip in properly. Learnt that ASAP after the first blind and had to redo!
Once the blind is clipped in, let the blind down and see where you would like it to end under the window.
Take a good look at how the different strings hold it all together so you can readjust and reassemble later.
Take out the plugs on the bottom bar and remove the cord (the cord that pulls it up) from the excess metal blind strips.
Take out and cut bottom bar to match the length of the top track.
Pull out all excess strips.
Cut off the excess ‘ladder’ string that holds the strips but leave enough to poke back into the bottom bar.
When putting all of it back make sure your blind is in the open position so that the bottom bar is held in the correct position and doesn’t slant.
After that is done I marked the excess strips on each side so that the widths match the tracks. New scissors did the job.
Repeated 6x (minus the first stuff up)
Done!!!!!

The New Seating

Now that the kitchen is in, I have begun on the U shaped seating in the front of the van. We did the end frames a long time ago, but found some scrap to begin the top lids.
The frames were painted and the lids put on with some new hinges.
After that was complete I measured everything up and had my local Mitre 10 cut some 3mm white melamine sheets to cover all sides.
With some plastic angle edging they came up a treat. Now all I have to do is work out a way to lift and then put down the lids without squashing my fingers.