Sadly I didn't leave myself much time, owing to the fact I sat and watched my football team Manchester United get knocked out of the FA Cup by a very lucky Liverpool. That, and I was also folding lots of A4 sheets of paper for Jen and Home Counties Boxer Welfare that had the charities newsletter printed on them, ready to be sent.
Anyway, I decided to make a start on the large side window just behind the drivers seat.
I cut the wood down to size, measuring one and a quarter inches bigger than the window aperature in all directions. This would give me enough to drill and screw through to fix the frame to the wall once done.
So with that done, I needed to decide how big I wanted the aperature to be that would sufficiently cover the gap and the edges of the blind, leaving as much of an opening as possible to allow lots of light in when the blinds are open. I then marked out the sheet of wood for cutting.
As you can see, I need to cut a large panel out from the middle of the sheet which will be my new sized window opening. To cut this as accurately as possible, I used a Dewalt cordless circular saw, positioned it over the straight lines that needed to be cut, started it up, then carefully lowered the blade until it started cutting, mid panel. These are all the straight edges cut, with just the corners left.
Then to finish cutting the panel out, I swapped to my Dewalt cordless jigsaw, and took my time cutting the internal curves.
Which finished up with the middle of the sheet finally coming away.
To finish off, I used the jigsaw to match the internal curved corners, and rounded the external corners. These curves match the curves in the existing window frame.
I then offered the frame up to the window, and fixed to the wall using 20mm screws in the four corners. When lined with carpet I will add some more screws along the edges.
Now it was time to see if they actually did their job, so I closed the blind and ..
Yay ! It does the job perfectly :). The walls and the wooden frame will all be covered in a sand coloured lining carpet, so you will hardly notice the frame when its all the same colour. Also, at the top just behind the frame, but in front of the blind, I intend to put a rail up with a couple of green LED downlights in each window for mood lighting, and to create enough light that from outside you wont be able to even see shadows from inside. These will have their own switch and can be switched off if needed.
This is all you can see from outside with the new frame, just a glow from the roof lighting inside.
Tomorrow I'm hoping to do the other two side windows, which will then leave the side door window and the bulkhead window behind the cab, but these need a kind of box to be made for the blinds to fix to.
The window I did today, cost me less than £15, that includes the blind and the wood. To buy a 'proper' motorhome blind would have cost from £80 and thats if I could have found one that size. I think it looks and acts every bit as good as purpose made blinds. It pays to think outside the box a little and adapt whats available to you, as I hope you can see here :).
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Location:Gloucester
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