Well the deadline arrived, and whilst I’d like to have progressed further, we do have a bed and some counter space. But not much else. Not even a mattress…
I was literally working on things right up till we left. The last moment addition was an eye bolt near the roof and a length of string down to the drawbridge bed. This holds it up out of the way so we can access the storage.
Not got any drawers in the cabinets yet, but when we do, its going to work perfectly. I’m far too excited about drawers. Maybe its a sign of aging?
But the bed did not go fully to plan. I had checked the stock levels at Ikea Chester and it said that there were mattresses available to click and collect. But what they don’t tell you is that you can click, wait 2 days, and then collect. They move the stock to Chester once you have bought it. Chester Ikea, it turns out, is very small and holds only a fraction of the stock a “normal” Ikea has. So without any mattresses, we needed to find a solution.
I was so angry because I thought we had a perfect plan and then I was let down. The next nearest Ikea was an hour back the way we had come, and literally would have been enroute. I could have chosen to go to that one! But now we would be increasing our trip by a further 2 hours.
There was a Benson for Beds in Chester, but after popping in, they didn’t do any take away mattresses. I’ve never understood why a mattress shop doesn’t actually stock mattresses… It’s not like they go out of fashion or out of date.
And then Aimi had the brainwave to get a double blow up lylow from GoOutdoors. Even more frustratingly, this worked out even better than proper mattresses. Mainly becasue I still need to work on the van, 2 single mattresses are huge and would need to be stored in the house getting in the way and the lylow avoids this.
Mattress solved, we got some food from tescos (how do 2 bags of shopping cost over £100!?) and finished the trip to Wales. Just as we were arriving we were overtaken by Angus and Freya Lucy who zipped by in their smaller, faster, Ford Transit Custom. I will miss having a smaller nippier van, this one is a little ponderous.
Arriving far later than planned, the big new gazebo went up easily with 4 people. I tried to put it up on my own in the garden when it arrived and while possible, there is a lot of walking around in circles doing each leg bit by bit.
The next day when Aimi, Angus and Scott had gone off to conquer Cribb Gogh I messed around with it and put up the walls. This gazebo, whist big, is going to be great if ever we are caught by the rain. It’s even got a window! I’ve just got to work out how to make a rain gutter that can bridge the gap between the van and the gazebo.
Next are just a few interesting observations from this weekend away in the van.
The unfinished and vacant area where cabinets will be located for the sink and cutlery currently affords us a lot of space for the dogs. It’s quite a nice open area, which I’d love to keep, but sink is needed.
I temporarily put down and cut to fit some old carpet so the dogs had some grip on the otherwise smooth plywood floor. And I really quite like having carpet in the van. No where near as easy to clean, but warm, quiet and grippy for the dogs, it’s quite nice.
We definitely need a step to get up into the bed. 1m high cabinets are way too tall to easily scale at night. I’ve not yet built the steps because they are so compact I want to prototype them first before committing to the green ply.
Also a step to get in and out the van sliding door will be needed. I’m thinking just some more drawer slides and some marine ply would work. Maybe I’ll get a bit of stainless bent to shape. Nice and simple and not £350
Unfortunately, then we had some bad luck. When we set off to drive to Bedgelert, the van went into limp mode and flashed up saying “check engine”. I did so, and there was plenty of oil and coolant, and no obvious hoses broken or pissing out fluids. That is the limit of things I can check by the side of the road so we went to a garage who told us it was something to do with the emissions system, and the engine is complaining about “degraded oil”. This is a little frustrating given I haven’t done more than 1000 miles since buying the van. We resolved to com back to the campsite and tomorrow set off home early and see how far we get. If we have to call the AA, that will be another adventure.