Days 4 to 9 Campervan Conversion Leave: Too busy to blog
It’s the evening of day 9. I’d like to say that it is because I was working hard from dawn ’til dusk that I didn’t have time to blog until now. That’s only about a quarter true. I have been working hard, but only for short periods in between episodes of anxiety-driven procrastination (sometimes my desire to achieve perfection overwhelms my ability to do anything in case I stuff it up). It’s mainly been the painting that I have been procrastinating, so I have been doing small stints of paint prep interspersed with calming periods of watching Harry Potter with cups of tea, and stints of doing other campervan tasks.
Quick summary of where I’m up to (not necessarily in the order I did it):
All 4 ceiling panels are now covered.
Two ceiling panels are insulated with 3mm EVA foam. Ran out, need to buy another sheet from Clark Rubber. No pictures. That’s some of it in the above picture draped over the mattress (the blue stuff that looks like camping mat).
Window seal goo cleaned off. Windows masked up. Sliding door sanded.
Floor degreased, scrubbed clean and partially sanded where scratched. There was a lot of greasy dirt stuck all over the sound deadening, which looks much cleaner now, and there are fibres from the old felt carpet underlay stuck to the bitumen, and I am going to have to spend more time picking them all out so I can paint over it.
On the topic of the floor, I hope painting the floor is going to work. You see in the above photos the patches of grey stuff? That is the sound deadening which was installed at the factory. I did a bit of an exploratory peeling-off of one corner, and it is bituminous sheet which has been stuck down after the floor was primed, but before it was painted. The white paint on top of the black bitumen has cracked a bit, and makes it look this grey colour. So obviously it is possible to paint over bitumen sound deadening, but I’m not sure how well my paint will stick to the cracked paint on top of the bitumen. So I plan on priming the bitumen areas first in the hope that the primer will help the paint stick. Then I’m going to use black paint on the floor, so if it cracks again, it won’t be as obvious as black bitumen showing through cracked white paint. However, I believe this White Knight Rust Guard paint is quite flexible, so if I put a nice thick coat down, hopefully it won’t crack and it will be a nice waterproof coating over the whole floor in case I accidentally forget that I am filling up a water container in there with the hose, and realise later when water is spilling out of the back like I did preparing for last Easter’s camping trip.
Where was I…
First curtain is now lined with blockout fabric and waiting for the trial hanging when the curtain wire is installed in Kevan, after which I can complete the bottom hem once I measure the length exactly. I was originally going to scavenge old curtains from Tiny’s Green Shed and use the lining from them, but I found blockout curtain lining in Lincraft for $2.99/m, and I got it half price in a sale! Since there were multiple kinds of blockout lining, I researched the difference between them. They come in ‘2-pass’ and ‘3-pass’, 2-pass meaning two layers (a white cloth layer bonded to a black rubbery layer) and 3-pass meaning three layers (a white cloth layer bonded to a black rubbery layer bonded to a white rubbery layer). The stuff I bought is 2-pass and was the cheapest, so I got double the quantity so I could use two layers.
lining pinned in and excess length cut off the bottom of the fabric
I didn’t think through how I was going to do the corners until now, and when I folded in the side seams it was a bit bulky, so I unpicked the stitching along the header a bit and tried to fashion a mitred corner like this:
It was all a bit hard, so it ended up not really mitred at all, but with a bit trimmed off to make it less bulky:
Incidentally, I would like to thank this blog for the great tutorial on how to make lined, hidden tab curtains, which I relied on heavily, even though I ended up doing it completely differently (because I had already started with a rod-pocket-style header and changed it to this):
Trip to Bunnings to get more paint, because I realised I didn’t have enough.
Took day 6 off to do garden stuff- weeding, covering weeded beds in fallen autumn leaves as mulch, covering all the leaf mulch with sticks so it doesn’t blow away, making garden edging out of sticks, staring at the nectarine blossom tree, playing fetch with Clifford.
You can see some of the leaf mulching and the garden edging in this pic
What else… uhmmmm, oh cr^p, is that all I have done? I’d better get moving! I swear I will have painted SOMETHING before my next blog post.
I am exhausted watching all that you have done( that is amazing work:-)..I hate sewing or doing anything like that so I admire your ability to do that….projects that motivate us make a person feel like a little kid playing-lol–it is work,but you seem to enjoy it too..or so it appears….You are..in the zone!”sometimes my desire to achieve perfection overwhelms my ability to do anything..” Oh so well put! Sometimes you just have to let one project go while you get the other done..it is a balance life—but we do get it done eventually