I am almost at the stage to get some flooring done as well so that will provide some nice finishing touches.

Tomorrow will be a steady day cutting and mitring the framework and cutting the 5mm ply to size.  At this point all the main cupboards will be covered to prevent stuff flying out when driving.

I am hoping to get my satelite internet system next week so my choice of campsites will dramatically increase.

The two big jobs are replacing the bus doors with a sheet of powder coated steel over a box section framework and installing a Motorhome style door in half of it.  The other big job is pulling out the glass in some windows and replacing with sheets of powder coated steel.  I think these jobs will be done nearer next winter when I may be able to afford the Seitz windows to go in them.

The other biggish jobs that still need doing are buying and fitting a grey waste tank.  I will need to get all the ancillary gear as well.  I will be fitting a Rule Shower Sump Pump at the same time to aid emptying the shower and bathroom sink.

I also need to save up for some new foam and material to cover them for the two bench seats.

The floors need lino and carpets doing as well but I am not doing those until it is nearly finished.

One other job that I need to look into but have not committed to yet is making a raised section in the roof in the bathroom over the sink.  It is just a little bit too low for my liking at the moment and an extra 4 inches would help considerably.  A raised section like this would not affect the overall height of the bus as the roof windows and other roof gear is already over this height.  I will try and get this raised section made from aluminium and bond insulation to it.  I will cut a hole in the roof then bond the raised box section over the top.  The only thing stopping me from doing this straight away is I need to investigate where the structural members are in the roof first and I have more important things to get done first….

Those are the big jobs that still need doing,  all the rest of the jobs are much smaller and can be done when I am on the road….

I got the shelves built for  for the bedroom above the gas locker box.  I now have somewhere to put my clothes other than stacked a metre high in the wardrobe.

I re-routed the shower waste pipe so that I can close the doors which means the bus is going to be a little warmer tonight.

I sanded and applied the second to last coat of varnish on the doors that separate the living area from the drivers area.  I will give it a very light sand tomorrow and apply the final coat.

Fitted the toilet roll holder, shaving mirror and towel rail.  They will need to come back down when I line the wash area of the bathroom though.

The list of jobs to do is getting shorter now and it is really only the big jobs that I need to save up for now.  The list for tomorrow looks like this.

• Tidy Bus and sweep out.
• Install junction box for lights and connect kitchen light properly.
• Gas cabinet vents
• Fit monitor bracket and devise a method of securing monitor for travel.
• lower the computer desk by 5 inches. (little bit too high to use at the moment)
• Make cover for Bus service panel.
• Get some sticks like sh&t  and make rails for blinds.
• Fit bolt to front door.
• Order sliding door mechanism for kitchen doors
• make trim for kitchen doors and bedroom doors.

The last job is a case of cutting some wood into strips about 2″ wide by 1″ high.  Cutting rebate along the length that the ply panels can slot into and routing a profile on the front.  I will make 2mtr long strips of this that I can just cut to size and mitre when I know the size of the doors.

Once the sliding door kit has arrived I will be able to see the depth and height of said fittings and fit out the carcass for the kitchen.  The doors will just be a case of cutting the lengths of wood in previous paragraph to size, mitring them and cutting some 5mm wood to size.  Bit of glue and nail gun to hold them together.  I reckon the doors will take about 2 hours to finish off and mount.

I have now refined my plans for the kitchen area a little more.  I will be putting 3 sliding doors across the whole of the kitchen work surface/cabinet.  The two outer ones will be on the rear rail and the middle one on the front rail.  I can slide the front one either left or right and the back ones obviously only in one direction.  The beauty of this plan is that it will cover the fridge which is a second hand one and that fitting 2 rails (top and bottom) is a lot quicker and easier than fitting half a dozen doors.

Talking of doors the sliding doors will be made of a thin grade ply with a solid pine frame that will be routed to a pleasing shape.  For those of you thinking “But won’t the doors jump off the rails when you go over a bump.  They would indeed so what I am doing is fitting a front panel over the piece of wood that the rails are mounted on to stop the doors coming out forwards.  This panel will be a long strip that goes all the way from left to right and over hang the door by about 1 inch preventing it falling out forwards.  The internal shelves and uprights will prevent the doors jumping out backwards.  To stop the doors sliding when I am driving I will be using a recessed locking mechanism yet to be decided on.  I have a couple of choices but no firm decision will be made until the doors are in and I can see how they work.  The rails I am using are from screwfix.  I have ordered them and they should be here Monday.

Tomorrow I will be finishing varnishing the entrance door and carcassing out the kitchen area ready for the sliding doors.

New Door Installed

The left hand panel will be covered.

Main entry door.

This involved cutting 2 sheets of 12mm ply into a shape that would fully fill the entry way and it was  a weird shape.  I then cut the door shape out of the full sheet, I say door shape as it has a slope on one corner.  I then had to cut a load of 25mm wide strips out of 12mm ply.  These were then glued and nailed to all the edges of one sheet to give me a tray shaped sheet of wood.  A quick trip to Travis Perkins for some kingspan or its equivalent which turned out to be much cheaper than I had paid for at Jewsons at  just over £12.   I cut this and filled the tray shapes and put the other piece of ply over this.  My door frame is now a fully enclosed box of 12mm ply filled with kingspan.

The wood removed from cutting out the door shape was now split down the centre and more 12mm ply glued and nailed to it.  More kingspan was then glued into this and the other side glued and nailed on.  Next it was over an hour of sanding with an industrial sander to get all the sides fully flush and the faces looking pretty ready for varnishing.

After this was done it was time to mess with piano hinges.  I had two of these 2mtr pains to fit.   After figuring out which way round and on what faces to attach them I clamped the to halves of the door together.  I then put a screw in each end.  After screwing in the rest of the 40 odd screws I stood the doors up only to find that the piano hinge was all over the place.  To cut a long story short I ended up messing around for another hour getting both hinges fitted.

Boy that was hard work.  I then stood it up and attempted to close it.  I say attempted because the top of the doors rubbed and wouldn’t close properly.  Back to the industrial orbital sander and 20 minutes later the doors shut.  Somehow though there was a 14mm gap down the side.  A quick run round the workshop found me a piece of timber close to what I needed.  Chop sawed it to length,  circular saw to get the width right, big planer to take 12mm off the depth then onto the surface planer to take 1mm off each side to make it square and flat.  I then glued and nailed this to the edge of the door.  The colour doesn’t quite match the face of the ply but a little stain and varnish tomorrow should see the job done.

Tomorrow I see if I can get it into the Bus and fit it.  I am grateful to my friend as if I had tried to do this using hand tools and without the advice of expert it would have taken me a full week not a day and would have looked crap.  As it is it doesn’t look too bad and only took me a full days hard labour.

Computer cupboard doors almost done.

The middle shelf needs raising by 1/4 of an inch to allow the door catches to lock properly.  Once that is done it is time to varnish the wood.

The spaces on the left and the right hand side will be used to mount the speaks for the computer and at the top left the control panel and battery monitor will be installed.

Stripped back down to the core framework

This was the next stage on the previous build.

2nd build out. This didn't last long.

We got a little bit more installed than this but I didn’t take any photos.

Next comes the current build.

The problem I have at the moment is that my house is in the process of being sold so I have had to empty the garage out.  My brother in law got promoted and posted so the stuff I had stored at my sisters had to be cleared out.  My bus is now my workshop, home and storage warehouse so it is very cluttered and very messy at the moment so excuse the state.

New work area but being redone.

This is my work area,  you can see the Victron Power management system in blue at the bottom right hand corner.  This is going to be boxed in.  The shelves at the top are being redone as per previous post and once the new front is fitted this area is all but finished.  The black curtains (sheet) to the right will have a white window blind fitted.  The right hand door panel is just a bit of wood screwed over to stop stuff flying off when I was driving.

Main entry door.

As you can see it is still a work in progress and very cluttered.  The wisa ply you can see to the left is the original bus door covering.  This will be coming out and a properly insulated piece of wood put back in its place.  The top of the door frame will be straightened out and a two part door fitted here.  The door will be split down the centre and fold up to the right hand side.  I also need to glue the end piece to the computer desk.

The cushions you can see in the bottom left are going and this area will be my new lounge style bench seating.

Looking towards the back of the Bus

As I said a total mess.  The blue cable is a temporary light for the bedroom area which you can just about see through the temporary curtains.  This picture is really to show the new walls which are looking much better than the previous ply effort.  The air vent on the floor will be run under the false floor shortly and the boxes to the bottom left are on the other bit of bench seating.  The temporary curtain the separates the bed area is there for my privacy as the windows over the sink don’t have their blinds fitted yet.

Just through the curtains on the right hand side is a 1mtr wide wardrobe which has the boiler under it.  To the left is a changing area which has a load more storage up the toilet room wall.  Under the bed which is 4ft wide is storage the full width of the bed although this also has the fresh water tank in .

Once I have built the cupboards in the bed area and can get more stuff stored away I will take further photo’s.