My plans to fully document the build of our van have not gone as I had anticipated. I only manage to find small windows of opportunity to get out and carry out work on the van. As a result I find I do not want to get the camera out and record what I am doing, as it feels like a waste of the time I have. Likewise my photography has also had lower priority until van is built. But fear not slow and steady progress has been made, we are now 13 months into our build, I estimated 12 - 18 months to complete it at the start. I now believe the mundane preparation work is all but complete, well almost more about that later. Now the exciting fitting out works are about to start so read on and I will try to explain in words and pictures where we are.
Purchasing the van, and starting the project at the start of winter, we purchased van November 2018, does have its drawbacks. Working through the winter months with minimal daylight, well non at all in the evenings, and the cold wet weather does hamper progress. During the first winter progress was hindered due to lack of insulation which meant condensation build up was an issue on the walls of the van. Not wanting to trap the moisture behind the insulation resulted us being to a slow start. I have had power (230v mains and 12V) and lights in the van for a while now which helps a bit in terms of working on dark cold evenings, I can have the lights and a heater on however, the larger jobs which have to be done outside are undertaken at weekends, and on days off work, when not committed to doing something else not associated with the van (life sometimes just gets in the way :-) ).
Potted history to date
Until you have a van and start building it you don’t realise that you will want to get in it and take it on trips, not just to buy materials but to start realising the dream of travelling and living out of the van. I was intending to keep you updated on the trips so far I have released one and rafted another, which may be released soon see links below, but as a quick catch up and tell you where we have been -
June 19 - two weeks Cornwall Blog Post
September 19 - Weekend Cornwall
November 19 - one week Cornwall, although we did not sleep in the van.
December 19 - Christmas Day out to Portland Bill
I know there is a travel trend going on here with Cornwall being our go to location, however a point to note is that each of these trips has required works to be undertaken on the van that required us to stop work and carry out temporary fitouts installed so that we could be comfortable when using it.
The Insulation and vapour barrier are 90% complete. I still have to insulate the floor with 25mm Celotex, I want to ensure I have a defined location for the underfloor services and have any fitments in place before the permanent floor is laid, this is my next job which I will expand upon next.
Underfloor services, I have purchased and fitted (big thank you to our son-in-law Nathan in facilitating this) the LPG tank, 25ltrs, from Propex (Link) and also the fresh and waste water tanks as supplied by CAK (Link) I have yet to install the pipework for these but will do when the weather improves. The water heater (Link), heater (Link ) and pump (Link) all supplied by Propex are also purchased and await fitting, again when weather improves. The water heater will be under the van but heater and pump will be inside the habitation area as there is no available space underneath unless I wanted to ‘loose’ the spare wheel.
Ply Lining for all but the doors is complete, I have cut the ply for the doors but we have decided on a couple of changes the require some of these to be redone.
First of all initially we were going to have curtains across the rear windows, which we have used on trips up to now, but these do come with challenges. Making a curtain that has thermal capabilities and also give us the blackout capability we want felt like a compromise in our situation we therefore decided to use blinds (Link) these provide us with thermal and blackout properties. The offside blind is done but the near side sliding door cladding needs to be recut to suit the blind installed. Later, If we decide we still require curtains for the ‘homely’ feel we can add these external to the blinds.
Secondly the rear door cladding, having just cladded the doors there is a large void between them. When we visited a motorhome show we noticed some of the manufactures had extended the cladding over this gap resulting in a more complete feel so I need to redo the nearside rear door cladding to cover the gap.
The cladded walls of the van have now been finished with a silver 4 way strech carpet material from EBay (Link) this covers all the walls and exposed metalwork for, we think, a plush feel. Both the van sides were carpeted in a single piece of the material for a complete effect. For the ceiling we have used 5mm white plastic cladding from Claddtech.com (Link) which is very lightweight and we chose white to hopefully make the space feel bright and airy.
For me, and people who like their gadgets I decided to group all the controls and displays in one area, this is going to be the control centre for the van and it is above the sliding door (see below). Boxing in the gap above the door to give me the room required to hide the cables and connections, this is work in progress as I have not purchased all the controls as yet, which is frustrating me somewhat, as I cannot finish this area of the build.
In Conclusion some tips you may find useful if you are about to build a van -
Try it out regularly, there is nothing like using you van completed or not to find out what works for you or not as the case may be, read previous blog on the adjustments we have made so far from the original try.
If you are lucky enough to have spare cash purchase as much as you can up front, it is great having things to hand as measurements are fair enough but seeing it in place is priceless and having the items to build around lets you tweak just a few mil here and there so can be a space saver too.
Don’t be afraid to change things around to make it work for you, after all you are the ones that will have to live with it.
Next Blog - Items I still need to purchase and build, coming soon , I hope.
I will also be releasing a video tour of the van soon.
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