Hi Folks.
I am hoping today is the start of daily pottering about in the back of the transit as I get on with the conversion in earnest.
But like everything in my life, it is ruled by my health, but if I can get at least an hour or two a day working in the transit I will be happy.
It will not get things done as quick as I want, but steady progress is better than nothing.
After the trip to Andrews Timber, i have some wood n bits, sitting on top off the old bed frame, we sat the bed on...
And it is now in my way...
So I stack the timber on the rear wheel arch box cover
and then carefully slide the hardboard, between the bed frame and the wheel arch.
That's better
Now this frame is not attached to the floor, it is held in place purely due to its weight!
And in all the years it has been there, it has not moved 1" :) :)
And it's not that well screwed together either ....
So after undoing the 3 screws that held the cross bar near the rear door
It's time to start stripping the frame down.
The front is held in place with 4 screws, so it comes apart easily.
and it is ready to stack against the hard board :) :)
out of my way for now....
and suddenly we have loads of free space.
But I bet once I start building it all together there will not be that much fee space left.........
I am not sure yet, whether to lift the halford's tiles or build on top of them, common sense says lift them and then cut to fit after all the units are built.
So I suppose before I move the kitchen unit, I will remove the tiles were it's gonna sit.
I need to find the circular saw and get these MDF boards cut down to fit the bed frame, that is now in the spare bedroom and get them screwed into place before Emma & Timmy arrive on Friday!
But for now I will move them to the side with the rest of the wood.
The cold is creeping into my back, so it is time to nip in doors and warm up and rest for an hour or so and hopefully get back in here a bit later.
It took a bit longer for my spine to warm up that I had hoped, but I am now back in the Transit and as a bonus Lynne has joined me as well.
In all the years I have owned this van, I never noticed that this wheel arch was not boxed in!
So it is a job to be pencilled in in the next few days.
I should have some 3 ply to cover it over, so I just need need to go to Andrews Timber and by
a couple of lengths, so that I can hopefully carry on working on the conversion over the xmas period...
I will give it a good clean and make sure there are no holes, before making the frame and adding the insulation and finally cover it all in..
The other side, I do not know if it is insulated, so will have to remove the covering somehow and find out!.
I start to remove the smaller 3 ply boarding, whilst Lynne starts on the bigger sheet and we should meet up to remove both panels.
We have kept the screws and put them in kitchen drawer for now.
That's the board I have unscrewed and removed. The sheet is too damaged to be re-used, so I will use some of it to make the rear wheel arch cover..
And I am sure the rest will come in handy somewhere.
Apart from cob webs the paint is in remarkably good condition, so a good wash and scour down and it will be ready to insulate this section.
I tried to find the screws, that are holding the bottom board and rails in place, only to find they are 8 or 10 mm bolts.
So that's as far as I can go here for now. Tomorrow morning I will buy a socket set, that will stay with the van, when I go to Scotland.
Lynne n me finally get all the screws out bar one, as Lynne says there is no head on the screw!
But after finding some hidden screws we finally get this sheet removed and stood up on the other side of the van.
The sheet is in good order and will only need a light sanding to be ready to paint way down the line.
As we lift up the floor tiling we find some hinges in the floor, we soon have them removed!
and put in the drawer as they may be useful later on...
we have found some holes.
Not sure what we are gonna do with them at this point.
If we need a hole we have a starting point, if not then will nut n bolt the holes with some sealant, so either way something will be sorted with them.
when we measured up the toilet & kitchen, we did not notice the rear wheel arch is gonna be in the way!
So the plan is to make the arch cover square and modify the kitchen carcus to match.
I can use the same size timber so we can strengthen the carcus and also can double up and mounting points to screw the unit to the wheel arch cover.
I am glad now that we have not yet decided 100% whats going were in the kitchen unit and brought the items we needed.
Lucky break there !!
The kitchen unit, is going to be stripped down and washed n cleaned and sanded and then painted, before screwing it all back together.
Not sure what colour yet, but we know that the framework could do with strengthening, so will be doing all the jobs in one session :) :)
Lynne removed the tiles and we re-found out that we had botched the floor as there was no wood there!!
I presume the previous owner had worn it away, with his gardening tools or what ever.
So another job to add to my list, we will remove all the tile bits we put there and try and cut away the bad wood sheeting and get it all square and then use that 3mm sheet that is not good enough to go back on the sides to effect a repair here.
Should keep me quiet, if I am lucky I can just remove the remaining section and cut in a new piece, but knowing my luck I doubt that...
The kitchen is not too far away from were it will be fixed.
So we re use some bungies to hold it in place whilst I am driving.
we seem to have come to a natural point to stop for the day, which is good as both of us are feeling the cold getting to us.
All in all around 3 hours spent pottering around in the transit today, ok a lot was spent sat down , thinking about the issues that have cropped up and trying to come up with plans to resolve them, without holding me up too much.
I am hoping to spend more time in the transit tomorrow, but have a few other outside jobs to get done also tomorrow.
So we will see how my spine n legs are like after a good nights sleep....
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