Diary Of A Camper Conversion
Well… I spent the whole morning going door to door, picking up screws, timber, plywood and gas bottles ( with a sneaky set of new t-shirts in there too )
I was in GoOutdoors anyway for the gas and honestly, Montane are doing something no other clothing manufacture can do – design a proper every day t shirt. I didn’t even try them on, I just bought them and when I got home they unsurprisingly fit perfectly.
I had to get the gas because we are going to be camping in the tin tent of a van. I wish it was further progressed, but it will be what it will be at this stage.
I had stopped in at “The Gas Man” to see about getting myself a bottle, but they were out of stock of the 4.5kg ones.
Next, the obligatory Screwfix stop for screws and some metal plates.
Howarth timber for 2x thin and 1x very thick bit of plywood
S Keeling for some custom size planed timber lengths. PLANED – being the operative word. They got some oversize stock, run it through a huge table saw and let me have it. It’s the right size, within 2mm, but the finish is ridged from the saw teeth. Luckily it’s going to be fully covered, but it’s annoying watch someone cut corners as they cut my wood.
Back home, Aimi had to help me get the 25mm thick plywood out of the van. There was no way I was doing that on my own. And then just as I was starting to set up the cut, the heavens opened and rain came down.
nightmare, I can’t lose any time to bad weather. I threw a tap over the plywood and continued pootling about in the van until it stopped. I was measuring and re-measuring to make sure it would be correct the first time.
Once cut approximately in half, the worktop was a lot easier to handle by myself, although still very heavy. I used some scrap to scribe the slightly bowed shape of the wall and then carefully cut this off. It fit perfectly first time which I’m very proud of and the chunky plywood looks fantastic. I may just leave it like that.
Next I cut a slightly wider but much shorter section of worktop. This will be the first thing you see when you open the sliding door so I made sure everything was perfect. It takes a lot of measuring and checking and lining things up, but once cut it fit like a glove and again I’m very happy with it. For now it will just be a piece of worktop but later it will have the gas hob embedded in it.
Those two lengths of worktop took me half a day to install but really pull everything together. After dinner I still had a bit of juice in me so I set off on a side quest.
I already made boxes in the walls ready for lights and phone charges to be installed. But they needed opposite handed bits of wood to mount them to. This was a small easy project with a couple of holes drilled ready to install when I’m wiring everything.