Tag: furniture
-
2018-09-21 Finished the dog bed
I wrote a while back about prototyping the dog bed. We tested it out – it seemed pretty solid, and Loki was happy to climb up there – so I went ahead and built it out of better materials. It consists of 3 main parts: A 60 cm x 80 cm Eurocrate plastic box, that…
-
2018-08-03 Prototyping a dog bed
It’s been a while since I posted an update, so to get back into the swing of things, here’s something we’ve been working on over the last couple of months: a safe place for the dog to lie, especially when we’re driving.
-
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.
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
2017-10-19: Overhead shelf in the cab
One of the first jobs we did after we bought the van was to remove the bulkhead. We toyed with the idea of joining the cab area to the back of the van by installing swivel seats, but that’s an expensive conversion, and we liked the idea of having what amounts to a separate room…
-
2017-08-06: Bench bed and cladding test
We’ve been busy on various jobs since I last wrote, mostly trying to get some basic components built in prototype form for we can take the van on a short trip and test some things out. Almost every design/build problem in the van is a chicken and egg problem. And we tie ourselves in knots…
Andrew Sleigh 