Making the bed...

has never been so easy!

I managed to get the upholstery done with no big dramas, except for the first cushion i made which had the zip in the wrong place! DOH!

how's that

for a lovely neat corner!

I managed to work out all by myself how to solve the problem of the cushion shaping round the wheel arches at the back and i am very happy with the result!

The cushions were a very steep learning curve for me, i have never attempted anything on that scale before and it was very daunting but i am so glad that i persevered as they look just right and however vain it might be i can boast about how i did it all myself :oD

More T4!!

Work is coming along really well on the van.

The lino was laid last Saturday...

and all this week i have been staing and varnishing the backrests and the bare wood parts of the interior...

On Saturday i helped out with table making in the morning but as i had worked so hard during the week i was given a free pass and so i headed off to my knitting group, when i came home Roj had made the hole for the table leg and also got it all assembled!
The drawer (at the front of the picture) was made yesterday, it was a lot of work as it had to be measured precisely and the actual drawer has been custom built by Roj too.

So far, so good!
We hope to have made the interior as versatle as possible, with plenty of seating for visitors but also a cosy snuggle space if we are camped on our own :oD

This week the foam and fabric are arriving and next week i start sewing!
We ended up getting the fabric on Ebay, i have spent several days visiting local (and some not so local) markets and fabric shops but nothing suitable has presented itself - we have taken a gamble on the colour and hopefully it'll be perfect when it arrives!

A few things have altered along the way, we were going to attach the backrests with magnetic catches but they aren't strong enough so we are now using roller catches and another thing which we are now talking about is whether the drawer section on the other unit should be one big drawer like we've just done, or two smaller drawers - we'll find out what the decision is next weekend as that is Saturday's job ;o)

The conversion so far...

I've been meaning to post for ages but i'd rather blog about knitting ;o)
We decided to get a new van for camping last year cos our lovely bay is getting a bit knackered, lots of rust and related goings on and it needs a lot of fixing up. We'd planned on doing that this year and using the (new T4) as our camper during the year so we don't have to lower ourselves to tenting!! hehe
So, this is our T4 conversion so far. We're trying to do as much of it ourselves as we can, and so far we've managed, i'm a bit hesitant about the upholstery but i'm sure we can work it out between us - both our Mums know how to put a zip in and we can both work a sewing machine ;o)

So, here's our progress so far, the van used to be a mini-bus with two lots of seats but as they are surplus to requirement we started our project by gutting the interior...

27th Feb

All seats and carpet taken out, ready for the floor to be laid

28th Feb

New floor!

7th March:
Took a trip to Rainbow Conversions in Cambridgeshire to pick up the laminated ply for the units so no work done that weekend!

14th March:

The bench seats are taking shape, there is more thinking and planning going on than building at the moment, but it's getting there!

21st March:

Some more work is done to the bench seats, backrest supports have gone in along with the backrests on one side

22nd March:

Backrests on both sides now completed, along with the "lids" of the seats on both sides.
The two "open" boxes at the end will have non-removable lids as they are both drawer units.
The backrests are removable and fill the gap inbetween the bench seats to make a full-width bed.
We are very happy with our progress so far, it's really coming together well!

Tomorrow i am off to Kingston Market to try and find the right upholstery fabric!!