Side Door & Blind Light

Hot on the heels of yesterdays work, today I wanted to work on the roof panel and get that in place. Sadly that didn't work out, but I was pleased with what I did do all the same.

As you know, I was half way through doing the side door yesterday when darkness stopped play. So I looked at finishing that off.

It was a lot of fiddling about, and I am glad that I stopped last night, because I would never have done a decent job in low light.

As you know the top and bottom panels were done, the next job was to tackle the window frame. I started putting it all back on the door to see what I needed to do.

I figured out the wooden window frame, the top wooden brace, and the door window sill needed to be covered to make it look nice.

First thing I did was to cut a strip of carpet to cover the very top of the frame, glue both parts then stick it in place, I wrapped some scrap carpet around rhe wallpaper spreader and held it against the top panel while I sprayed glue on to the top of the wood frame.

With that done, I had to cut another slightly shorter strip of carpet for the bottom sill piece of wood, and glued that on.

Next, the frame itself. I rolled the carpet out, laid the frame face down on the carpet and drew a cut line on it with a marker pen. I also marked the cut out in the middle, leaving enough for it to bend back on itself and cover the wooden guides behind the frame too.



Then it was a case of spraying everything, leaving for a few minutes, then carefully folding the edges around, cutting it in to shape as I went, then using my roller to make a good contact. I should have said that I sprayed the wood face all over with the glue to start with. Let it dry. Then resprayed it for the carpet to adhere to, which worked really well, as wood is quite porous and doing that first made it less so.

It ended up like this, not particularly pretty, but remember this is the back of the frame and wont be seen.



Thankfully though, when you turn it over, it looks great ! :).



Next I used my bradaw screw driver, the long pointy one, and pushed through where all the screw holes were as I did yesterday, and started all the screws ready to screw to the wooden frame on the side door, which I then did.









By carpeting the wooden guides behind the frame, it has now made the blind a very snug fit behind, to the point that it bends slightly as it gets to the bottom. Its not too bad, so am going to go with it and see how it goes. Also, the extra thickness of the carpet on the frame, means that it rubs the side of the van as the door is opening, so is going to get dirty quite quickly, I cant see a way around this, so will see how bad it gets and see what I can do through use. The white parts of the door that are left are not bugging me so much at the moment, so as I am happy for now, I am now considering the side door done !

Kind of.

:P. As I have said in previous posts, I have some LED lights that I want to fix behind the frame above the blinds, pointing down and making the blind a big neon type light/reflector.

I REALLY wanted to see how this looked now I actually had a frame covered, so temporarily slid the LED strip, which you can get from ebay for about £4,



...its waterproof too so can be used in a fish tank or under a car etc. in between the blind and the frame. Wired it to a battery temporarily, and was really pleased with the result !









This is how all four of the windows that have blinds will look once they are all wired in.

Again, the side door is slightly more difficult than the others, which have their wires all ready waiting to be connected up, getting power to lights attached to the sliding side door, means putting a split contact in the edge of the door and the body of Nina, similar to the little contact that your cars use to switch on the interior light when you open a door, only works the other way around, the side door needs to be closed for the circuit to be completed. This and the other windows will all be linked to a single switch on my switch box so they can be turned on and off when wanted. Perfect mood lighting, and also creating a line between the outside and the inside, so if any shadows were playing on the blinds that could be seen outside, now all that will be seen is the light. It also looks really cool, I love how the light reflects off the pleats in the blind, its so bright it actually creates a pool of light on the floor too. If sitting in the awning on an evening, if the side door was open, the other three windows could be switched on and the interior of Nina would emit a lovely blue glow from inside :).

Of course, I had to close all the doors, pull all the blinds down. Use my new black out blind on the new roof vent then see what it looked like when it was quite dark inside....



It just looks really cool :). I am wondering whether I should have the left and right sides switching on independantly, wondering if four blinds all lit up like that might be TOO bright :). There are going to be many switches and many lights :). It will be a kids dream to play with all thise switches and watch the lights going on and off :P.

Thats how I left it today, it was quite windy, so didnt want to start on the roof panel as it has to be done outside, and I didnt want to risk lots of bits blowing all over it and sticking in the glue, which also flies off in the wind as I'm spraying. :S.

Come back soon ! :).

Location:Gloucester

More Carpeting....

After the excitement of my new roof light, which looks amazing :), it was time to turn my attentions back to the carpeting.

Since the last post where I started the carpeting, Nina had to be used to pick up and store a load of pallets I was lucky enough to acquire for free. I have a few uses for them, including some decking, a bit of garden furniture, and the main reason I started looking for some, to turn in to some driftwood type cupboard doors for Nina.

I have now found a home (kind of) for the pallets for now, and after moving a ride on mower in her (going to miss the 'lugging' space when Nina has the kitchen built) I took the opportunity (and emptiness) to crack on with a few jobs.

If you remember in the last post with the roof light, I mentioned that the carpeting I had done before had started peeling back down in all this heat we have been experiencing lately, and I suspect the contact adhesive I used to stick the glue up was probably out of date or something. I ordered some more adhesive a while back, and my first job was to peel the carpet right down on both sides to the tops of the window frames.






This was absolutely nescessary because where the roof curves at the top, there were air pockets appearing as the carpet was coming away from the fibreglass.

The new glue was great, it came out of the can differently to last time, the glue was thicker, and it coated really well. After coating both the fibreglass and the carpet, and waiting a few minutes, I started reapplying the carpet, and wow, what a difference, the carpet practically got sucked back on and straight away was stuck solid, one part I did get slightly off, I had to pull back off and realign, took some pulling to get back off, and it was pretty hot again today ! (I did have my small window open, the side door open, the back doors open, my new roof light open and my roof fan going full blast which may have helped a bit !).
A while back I found these tools in B&M to help the carpet contact the fibreglass better, and they worked brilliantly, the wallpaper spreader pushed the carpet in to place and the roller pushed it right in to the curves where it stayed.






I definitely recommend them if you are doing the same thing. The roller is great for going over the edges and seams too.

With the carpet all reattached.....






.....with a little help from Tiz and Barney....



.....I decided to tidy up the wiring ready for the roof panel to go back up, which was all a bit of an organised mess....



.... so taped all the new wire runs together, and pulled the wiring in to the places they need to be for the final wire and connection. I also fed the solar panel wiring to the rear where the batteries will be.

Once I was happy with that, I wanted to carpet the roof panel and put it back up, I'm so impatient to see the tunnel effect when all three surfaces are are covered, then I remembered that the side door needs doing, and the small roof piece above the side door which requires some dismantling. So thats what I started.

First to come down was the side door step light, I am going to keep this light, its very useful, and I have already replaced its bulb with a modern LED cree bulb. It is currently powered along with the rear door one when the sidelights are turned on, but I intend to rewire them to the leisure battery seperately, at least with this side door one so it can be used as an entrance light when rhe awning is in use.




This next part to dismantle is the grab handle that helps you in and out, I did intend to keep this as I use it all the time when going in and out, but now that it is off, I'm not sure. It does make it feel like there is more space around the door area without it, and I can hold on to the door frame if I need to. That said, the grab bar hints at Nina's former life as an Ambulance, and it may be that I out it back, but maybe sprayed a different colour in keeping with the rest of the interior.


Once that was done, I masked up the rubber door seal, so I didnt inadvertantly glue the side door to it, cut some carpet to size, then again, coated both the fibreglass and the new piece of carpet, and waited a few minutes for the glue to become tacky, and at its strongest. Up it went, and after a couple of tries, got it in the right position and rollered it in to the curve and indents.



Again, the join will be less noticeable once the carpet is 'brushed' together with a stiff or wire brush. Trimmed off the excess, reattached the light fitting and its all looking good :).



My next job gave me a little bit of a headache, the side door wasnt going to be the easiest job to do, and I think I put it off last time because of that. First thing I did was unscrew the grab bar at the bottom and remove it completely, giving me more access to the door, then I stripped the door down from the inside. Amazingly, the cavities in the door were stuffed with insulation, just as the walls were, when converting to an Ambulance, they did a really good job, and were thorough, thats what makes these ex Ambulances such good bases for camper vans.






By this time, I still didn't have a plan of action, and wasn't sure how to tackle everything. Did I completely cover the side door top to bottom, which wasn't going to be very easy at all unless I took the side door off completely and put it on stands. Should I just carpet the two panels and the window frame ?

It was time for advice, and after speaking to Jen and a fellow DIY campervan builder, Austin (aka Scudocamper on youTube), down in Somerset, we all thought it was best to carpet the panels and leave some white showing, though with the top panel, it would be fairly easy to just carpet right across and cover up all the white.

Thanks for the advice Jen and Austin ! Helped me stop dithering ;).

Once again I cut a piece of carpet that matched the shape of the top of the door, and glued that on.

Next, I rolled out some carpet, and placed the big lower panel face down on it, drew a line around it with a marker pen, and using scissors cut it out to exact,y the same shape as the panel, glued it to the panel, then found all the screw holes around the edge, pushed through the carpet through the holes, making way for a new set of shiny screws to be started, so I didnt have to worry about finding the right holes when I was actually fitting the panel back on.















This helped enourmously, and I will do the same with the roof panel when the time comes.

Sadly, the light had faded, it was around 9.30pm, and as I had removed all the internal lights in Nina to make way for the new LED Christmas Vacation type lights to be fitted with the newly covered roof panel, I couldn't finish off the window frame covering, I actually had to screw that lower panel on using the 'torch' app on my iPhone ! :O.

So I will finish that off tomorrow, and hopefully do the roof panel too, which will mean some wiring of the new lighting before the roof panel is screwed in to place. You can probably see from the photos that the bulkhead pretty much needs to be stripped and the carpet reglued on to that too, though to be fair, I wasn't happy with it when I did it, the carpet wasn't sitting properly, and I suspected the glue wasn't much cop then, but that can be done after the roof lining is put back up, so will leave that for another day. Then I can put the rubber window trim around the window aperature to finish it off nicely.



So this is how I left it tonight, I really didnt want to come in, I wanted to stay out and finish the side door at least, but it wasn't meant to be.

Once the carpeting is finished, the next job is the floor, which I still havent a clue what to do with it yet, those metal channels have to be removed, the either filled, or a new floor put on top before I can fit the wood effect lino. Once THAT is done, well, its all about wiring, and fitting the furniture in the home straight ! Woo Hoo ! :).

Hopefully be a bit more to show you tomorrow ( which will be today by the time you read this if you see it straight away :P).

Location:Gloucester

Replacing Nina's Leaking Skylight

Hi everybody !

First of all, in the last couple of posts, I was carpeting the inside walls of Nina, I used a heavier lining that I used in Scooby, it wasn't so easy to manipulate, and on top of that, I had tried to save myself some money by buying some cheap and cheerful spray contact adhesive from the local car boot.

The combination of the above, and some very hot muggy weather since, has meant that the glue hasn't set properly and the carpet actually started to peel back down !

I have fixed some of it with some new better branded adhesive, but think I am going to have to peel the whole top away and reglue down to the tops of the window frames, where it appears to be most affected. You will see where its bubbled and peeling in the video below.

That aside, the past couple of days I have been replacing Nina's old skylight with a new one, which needed to be done before I lined the ceiling panel and put back up.

When I took the ceiling panel down, I had to remove the lower half of the existing Ambulance skylight, and ever since, it has leaked. So I decided that as it all had to come off and be cleaned up, and resealed, it would be better if I replaced it altogether and took advantage of a Fiamma 50 vent, that also had the flyscreen and blackout blind attachment.

In this video you can see how easy it was to remove the old one, and the task
I had ahead of me cleaning off the immediate roof and removing the old sealer and ridge fillers, which were made from plywood and black from the damp getting in rotting it all.






Once everything was cleaned up, I temporarily fitted the skylight, but removed the top cover, so that I could pop an arm through and draw around the new skylight base, to see where I needed to put the new ridge fillers, which I made from a foam tile, the brightly coloured jigsaw type ones you get from Tesco etc.

In this photo of me popping out through the big hole, you can see the old sealer and the disgusting mess that is Nina's roof.


I had actually started cleaning here as you can see from the photo, some strong bleach kitchen cleaner, a non scratch sponge scourer, and lots of paper towel.









Lots of determination on my face lol, :P, got the job done as you can see below.


Once it was all clean, I started making the foam ridge fillers, cutting them from a foam tile to size, then using Sikoflex sealer, I started gluing them in to place so they wouldn't move when I was placing the new skylight.

This is all the foam pieces in place and ready for a layer of sikoflex to go all around the top just before I fit it.


Such a nice blue lol, all to be covered up though, so don't get used to it. By the way, how awesome is my solar panel looking ? ;).

So after this photo, I started putting a generous layer of the sikoflex on top of the blue foam pieces and the ridges, as I had done underneath the foam. By the way, Sikoflex is the way to go, its not cheap, £8.65 a tube I think, but after the spray contact adhesive fiasco, I wasn't going to take any chances with the skylight, A: I don't want to have to do the job again when it leaks, and B: I don't want to ruin my nice new carpet lining on the ceiling panel when it goes in. I get it from Screwfix. I used 1 and 2/3 of a tube for the whole job.

Anyway, once the sealer was on, I carefully placed the new skylight down on top, offered up the bottom panel and started screwing them together, effectively sandwiching the roof skin, the foam, and all the sealer together.


This is what it looked like from the top when I finished, don't worry, I was only finishing for the night to let the sealer go off, I intend to go all round the edge again with more sikoflex the next day.

And this is what it looks like from underneath with the posh panel fitted :).


This is 'straight through', those handles have locking lugs built in, so the skylight can't be 'popped' from the top.


This is with the flyscreen across, handy when cooking, the kitchen will be directly under this skylight, keep the flies out put still have ventilation.


And this is with the black out blind across, these skylights let in an enourmous amount of light, if for any reason you are trying to sleep in the day in here, this will block it all.

Of course, it will look heaps better when the ceiling panel is back onand I have repaired that peeling carpet.

I let the sealer go off for 24 hours, then the next day I got my trusty Maplin platform ladder out, climbed up on top, and sealed all around the outside. There is no way water is going to find its way in via my new skylight.... I hope :S.











I was so pleased with myself, I couldn't resist a cheesy 'Selfie' with my masterpiece in the background. Yes, yes, I know the roof needs a proper clean, I WILL get around to it. Honest.


Might even get my hair cut and have a shave too ;).

While I was by the camera at the back, its been playing up lately, the picture keeps spinning like a fruit machine. The little rubber grommet that the wire goes through in to the roof had popped up and let water in, cleaned it all up, popped the gromet back in, and stuck a load of sikoflex around it, works fine now :).

The next job is to line the huge roof panel that goes the length of Nina with carpet, and put it back up, hiding all those cables. Oh, actually, before that quickly fix the wall carpet lining so its not peeling away.

Still loads to do, but things are starting to happen now. I aim to get her finished this year, and next year I have my first official overnight camping trip in her planned, for The Oldies Club's tenth birthday celebrations on a camping site nr Oxford hopefully. So no excuses, Nina's wait to become a camper is almost over :).

See you next time !

Location:Gloucester