Caravan Rebuild - Part 12

It has been a long two weeks getting these curtains made.  There were four pairs of curtains and the door curtain a swell as the pelmets to cover.


I got one door curtain sewed and thought, wow this is going to take forever!!  So I moved onto something a little easier.  With the help of my brother Lee we got all the seats back into the van and secured, this meant I had something to sit on and could set up the caravan table and my sewing machine, and I cracked on with doing the pelmets.


Once done I got these screwed into position and was a little shocked at the colour as it seemed more vivid in the photos than it does in the van.

Still have to clean the paint of the window rubbers....but that's an easy task.

As you can see, I shop at Harrods of the North for my haberdashery items 'BOYES'

The floor does look busy next to the seating, but I plan on putting a runner in the living area so this will be a block colour, the tiles are to give some extra insulation.

My lonely door curtain done, I put that up (not an easy task).

Due to the length of time these curtains were going to take (not the two hour job I initially thought) I carried all my equipment back into the house and over the space of an evening and a morning cracked on with sewing all eight curtains....my daughter (aged two) tried to sabotage my sewing machine, but once I figured out how to put it back together, I was back on the case.


In the meantime, I had bought a runner, which unfortunately was not quite wide enough for between the two seats so we decided on carpet tiles from Homebase.  I fitted these so they went under the seats, so a half hour job unscrewing the seats again to do this.


All curtains made, pressed and cushions made as well, they were bagged up ready to go into the van and hang.  Before hanging the curtains I put the corner edging (bath trim) into place, this is self adhesive.

This is in the shower room and really tidies up the edge.  There are still the ceiling plastic strips to put on.

The edging has come away slightly but is easily pressed back into place as it's self adhesive.

All of the curtains in place.

Here you can see the 'sand' carpet tiles in place, they certainly add a bit of warmth.

Unfortunately on the photo's you still can't see the orange fleck in the seat covers, but it is there and the curtains do go.

Caravan Rebuild - Part 11

On the evenings of this week I will be attempting to make the new curtains for the caravan.  I started by using the original curtains as a template, as they fit and they fit well.


I have decided to use black out lining, mainly because I had a large pair of blackout curtains in the airing cupboard from my son's childhood.  I spend Sunday evening measuring the curtains and cutting the black out lining exactly the same size.


I then gathered all my tools together with my fabric to start work.

I then laid out my material and put wrong side fabric to wrong side lining.

I then marked a 2.5cm hem allowance around the lining using tailors chalk.  As so...

After I had cut out the first curtain I did check that the allowance worked well with the lining to ensure they were the correct width.  I put right side to right side and pinned a 2.5cm seam allowance down each side, I then folded it inside out so the curtain fabric was the right way and everything measured up nicely.  I may have left the hem allowance a little tight on the side curtains but I can adjust the allowance at the top of the curtains to give me a better hem - so shouldn't be an issue.

Here you can the lovely terracotta fabric which has an honeycomb effect.

This is the curtain fabric next to the upholstery fabric on the seat cushions, I was hoping the curtains would bring out the terracotta stripe in the seat fabric....not sure if it does.

It took me about an hour and a half to cut all the curtains out.  Here they are ready for pinning and sewing.

Now it was onto covering the buttons on the pelmet, this is a fiddly job but one you can do sitting on the couch watching television, which is what I intend to do.

Caravan Rebuild - Part 10

Well after releasing some of the one shot, the next task was to remove it....so I had to get this off...

Which I did with a saw!  It took some doing....phew, finally removed my brother's boss had kindly lent me a decent sander, so out I went this morning, opened all the windows and started sanding.


Once that was done, I let the dust settle and returned an hour later to hoover up the dust.  Now I could start laying the floor tiles.  These vinyl floor tiles were bought from B&M and cost me £1.99 for 7 tiles, I bought 8 packs to do the job which would be more than enough.  I decided to start over the centre axle mount that is bolted into the floor to ensure good coverage, I used the grid lines from the delamination for a straight edge and then started in a stepping pattern from that point.


I didn't take any photo's as I went along as this is really messy job with the tiles being self adhesive...my hands were covered and sticking to everything I touched.  All in all it took me just a couple of hours to cover the whole area, and that was mainly because there was some fiddly cutting with scissors around some of the areas.  


Once the floor was down, I then cut the door bars and secured them with screws onto the floor.  What a difference...

The rest of the floor does look a bit busy, but I guess that's because the seating isn't back in yet, so once that is back hopefully it will look a lot better.

This is the door opening.

The terracotta curtains should look lovely against these tiles.

The great thing about the self adhesive floor tiles is that you get a really neat finish around pipes and flexes because you can just cut them with scissors.

Now the floor was down, and it had had a good hoover, I decided to tidy up a little bit.  I cleaned the hob, grill and cooker...

Struggling to removed the black from the hob rings...any ideas?

Still need to do the oven rack.

The fridge is still to do....

I even managed to mount the clock on the wall..

I then cleaned the bathroom and the cupboards, and am still astounded by how much storage space there is.

So now, one more coat of paint, and then hopefully next weekend we will be able to put the seats back in and put the curtains up!!!  One step closer.

Caravan Rebuild - Part 9

Well this weeks work was spread over a few days.  It started last weekend with me starting to mark a grid out on the floor for the delamination kit.  I bought the 'one shot' stuff which is manufactured by Pennine Leisure.  I paid over the odds for my bottle, I now know but hey ho you live and learn.  Yes I did say bottle!  By the time I had marked out the 4x4 inch grid, for each 8mm hole drilled I would require 180 dowels!  Not a small area.  So I took a day off work and my brother Lee came back to help out - we started on the middle section where we believed the delamination to be worst and we covered an area 12 inches 24 inches with just one bottle!!  We plugged the open drilled holes with dowels and had to leave it and I went on my merry way to source another 5 bottles.  Looking at what we had just used we guessed that would over what we needed but better to have it than not.  The following day the additional 5 bottles arrived and we entered the van to begin again and we got a shock.  Holes around the area we hadn't plugged the green fluid had leaked out of as it had spread, so we had covered a bigger area than we thought. So we cracked on with adding the 'one shot' resin to each drilled hole until we had completed the whole area  (a total of four bottles were needed so I am left with two spare).  We ensured we had placed a dowel in each hole and then retreated to leave it to set for 48 hours.


Saturday morning I entered the van to find the floor very firm in the worst area of delamination as you can see in this pic.  The grid pattern 4x4 inch and the sawn off dowel heads.

You can see remnants of the green resin that did leak out around some of the dowel heads.  This could be sawn off easily too.

Was very impressed with how level it was considering the instructions made no mention of putting any weights on the floor.  However when I looked toward the front of the van where the delamination had been minimal, we had obviously put far too much in.  The floor was domed and it was very noticeable - I was absolutely gutted - all this effort and the floor was ruined!  Trudged back into the house to get hubby to go out and take a look...he came back in 5 minutes later saying the floor where it had been worse felt great however, yes the front was still a little spongy!  Eh, spongy, it should be rock solid - so there I went again and true enough it was spongy!  Hope!  I guessed that because there was so much resin underneath the floor it hadn't managed to expand and react as it should to form the hardened resin that it ends up as.  I hammered a couple of 2mm test holes and heard a rush of escaping air followed by an eruption of seeping resin.  24  hours later I came back to this.....

Obviously far too much resin, but once this escaped the floor began to find it's level.  Now just to saw off this mess and all good again!  This is a learning curve, I will know for my next delamination job.

Now that floor was done, I moved on to paint the inside of the van with matt emulsion to blend in the new wall panels.  I started at the front and worked my way to the back.

I still have to clean up the window rubbers and put the edging down the sides.

Looks a little patchy because it's wet in parts, but will need a second coat to get good coverage.

Once the seats are back in, should look rather nice.  The pelmet plinths have been removed to allow the painting of the wall.  Tape to be put over where panels join.

The insides of the cupboard are still to do.

Kitchen window blind removed to enable painting.  Taking shape.

This is pretty much a true reflection of the colour, not too cold, not too dark.

The skylight trims were removed to enable painting.  You can see the door shutting closed in this pic, something it wouldn't do before we fixed the floor delamination!

Looking a little patchy due to it still being wet.

Really pleased with the way it's turning out, ceiling edging and trim still to fit.

So now to let this dry before second coat applied.  The bathroom has already had one coat, no pictures to show of that.  Next job to sand floor and fit vinyl tiles.  Then the seats can go back in and I can start making the curtains!