Category: Campervan
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Treatex Hardwax Oil
One of many combination oil and wax finishes suitable for wood (Osmo is another popular brand which I haven’t used). It gives good plywood a beautiful smooth sheen, and is easy to apply with a rag. Way better than water-based PU varnish, in my experience. £26 for a 1 litre can.
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Drawer runners
These are 45cm, full-extension, side-mounted, ball bearing runners. If your drawers and cabinets are square, and a good fit, proper runners like these are the way to go (rather than fitting wooden rails for the drawers to slide on). They feel secure, smooth, and let you pull the drawer out all the way when opening.…
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A winter trip to the Lake District
Early December is one of the best times of year to go to the Lake District (one of the best mountainous regions in the UK). So we finished up a few jobs we needed to complete, and installed a couple more prototype bits of furniture and headed north to make the most of it. The weather…
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2017-12-03: Deadlines
We’re feeling the pressure. We’re going away for 4 days this coming weekend, so we need some basic stuff sorted out in the van. And we’ve hit our 6 month conversion milestone, which means a demanding letter from the insurance company looking for evidence that we’ve converted the van sufficiently from a panel van to…
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Sequoia table legs
We bought two of these for our main table. The fitting is pretty straightforward, the floor plate is low profile, and they’re nicely made, but there’s no getting away from the fact that one or two table legs are not enough to support a reasonable sized table without framing or wobbling. That’s why conventional tables…
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Hammerite Underbody Seal paint
We’re using this to protect the gas tank, which is mounted under the chassis – i.e. in a space where it’s vulnerable to grit, dirt and road debris. This is recommended by the suppliers of the gas tank, and claims to provide: Heavy duty protection for underbody, wheel arches and other high impact areas. Powerful…
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2017-11-02: Gas tank – part 1
I suspect there will be many parts to this series… After much debate, we decided to go with an externally mounted, refillable gas tank. This one came from Gasit in the UK, and it’s about 20 litres.
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Hafele Gas Strut
We fitted these to the overhead cabinets, which have doors that open upwards above your head. The struts hold the doors open, but they also have some initial resistance which hold the doors tight when closed. Hopefully this will mean we don’t need to add latches to these doors. They’re easy to fit, and they…
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2017-10-29: Recognisable furniture
This weekend, we’ve made some satisfying progress in the van, with a few new things going in that make it look a lot more like a home. The two base units that form the support for the bed are largely complete, bar a few doors. That means we have a functioning bed, a bench seat,…
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2012-10-26: Make your mind up time
In this build diary, we’re trying to track our progress in converting the van. But sometimes progress is incomplete. And today, we have a pile of incomplete jobs in the van, so I’m just going to write about one of those: the 12V distribution box.
Andrew Sleigh 