Paintwork

We had the good fortune of a few days of sunshine late in March and April so Ryan got to work on Waki's paintwork. She was literally peppered with holes and we have been gradually filling and protecting areas with duct tape which had left her looking very shabby indeed. So Ryan bought a compressor and smoothed the fillered areas down and applied several layers of white metal paint with a roller. He also managed to get another coat of paint on the roof so that's finally got a good weather seal on it.

This is really a base coat to protect the body and there is still much more smoothing work and dent removal to be done. The immediate result though was fantastic! No more grubby beige and brown flakiness but an expanse of clean fresh white!

We plan to use a nice white car paint for the final finish, and Ryan's already very handy with a spray gun what with his previous experience painting cars and aeroplanes :) We both agree that she needs some sort of coloured stripes or a design down the sides to break up the white a bit, but we can't yet agree on what yet...

A Loo With A View

Ryan was tasked with cutting the hole in the bathroom wall for the toilet cartridge to go through - he’s been good at making holes in the wall so far, though not all required holes which is why I done most of the batten chiselling in the end! 

View from the loo of blue skies no less!

Our loo is a lovely little bench type with an electric flush and even has a little toilet roll holder built inside so the paper won't get wet when we have a shower. I know, simple things...

We also needed to make the roof vent hole in the shower room larger for the new vent we bought that won’t fit the old size holes that we have. The kitchen vent unfortunately got broken as the plastic was a bit brittle and we had to seal it closed with silicone as rain was dripping through at an annoyingly rapid rate! We've been waiting since summer to get this job done but just haven't had a day free without rain to do it!

So with the help of a much awaited sunny day the old bathroom vent has now been moved to the kitchen and the shiny new vent is now in place in the bathroom. We thought it would be nicer to have the new crystal clear vent in the bathroom where we need the best light anyway for applying make-up and shaving etc, and it will probably get the most use for letting the moisture out from showering and drying clothes. I'm very pleased with it, the first night it was in was a clear sky and I could actually see the stars and the moon from the er, yeah OK from sat on the loo! :)

We got a new shower head, two mixer taps and a nice little corner sink - thanks Richard! The old sink the fold down type and was far too big for the room and made from a brittle ugly orange-brown plastic so had to go! I also didn't like the fact that when brushing your teeth you essentially had to just spit in a bowl then tip it down the back.

We now need to find something to adapt into a corner pedestal to hide the pipes, and our attempts to fibre glass the old cracked shower tray failed somewhat so we've ripped it out altogether.

We've decided to make a new one from scratch with plywood and tile it as unfortunately, as with anything we do The Waki Way, we can't find a new purpose built shower tray to fit our custom loo room. A lot of this project is trial and error, but the end result will be a motorhome that fits us perfectly.

Flooring, floods and filters

Wow, I can't actually believe that my last post was about the Jubilee weekend! Sorry everyone :-/

I've been so busy recently but, unfortunately for Waki, with almost everything but the refurb! The main reason is that I've had the last 3 weekends completely hijacked by major local events where I have been volunteering for St John Ambulance, and my last day off work was used for doing the Swan hotels chalk boards again, though I have thoroughly enjoyed it all.

The fresh water tank in place under the sofa

So what have we done since the last post...?

We now have nice new vinyl flooring in the living area, which extends under the sofa and meant that the water tank could go back into place - though we still need to get ourselves a nice new filler pipe as the old one is definitely past it!

Wickes Beech wood-effect vinyl flooring

Ryan completed this task, glueing it all down with some particularly messy flooring adhesive which meant that we had to go over it with a scouring sponge and degreaser to clean it off - a job that still needs repeating a few more times!

We decided on the planks of vinyl from Wickes as they were well priced and should be slightly quieter and warmer to walk on than laminate (they're also easier to cut and there were several bolts in the floor to fit around). We chose to run them widthways to maximise the look of the floor space which I think works well, see below.

The water heater is under a cupboard under the kitchen area

The pump with the water filter attached

Ryan also managed to fix the existing water heater which wasn't working when we bought Waki. That saves us some expense for sure which is great news! Apparently the previous owner had tried to use it when it was frozen and it hadn't worked since so we didn't hold much hope for it, but Ryan took it apart and reconnected it with the gas bottle in the garden and it worked fine! It actually gets really hot, very quickly and now we can't wait to get the bathroom sorted out to use the shower too.


He then reconnected the pump and sink so we can actually use the tap too! We bought a water filter from Go Outdoors to freshen the flavour - though we also intend on using the Aquapure disinfectant tablets in the tank to stop any bacteria growth and a water filter jug as an extra taste improvement measure for drinking from. 


It was a nerve racking moment in using the sink for the first time since it was put back together as I could just imagine it not going into the waste tank for some reason and flooding the place (because that's generally our luck!) but it was fine so well done Ryan - you can now add plumbing experience to your list of talents! We did however have a bit of a flood moment earlier on when the residual water in the pump pipes went everywhere so not entirely smooth sailing, but then it did help clean the floor! :)

One last area of rot and mess!

When I had a few free hours I managed to cut out the kitchen cupboard openings so we can access the whole space easily. They just had one small door per cupboard which made it a nightmare to reach anything at the end, so we will have a set of double opening doors on either for full easy access.

We now just need to reline the one above the hob as it was a bit rotten inside like everything has been, and make some nice doors and then we'll be able to begin stowing things away. We want to line the cupboards in a plastic sheeting the same as for the kitchen walls so we need to go shopping again!

The Roof

I've kept the blog posts separated by topic to make it all easier to follow, but the truth is that most of these jobs have been running alongside each other dependent on the weather/available daylight etc. So this is the roof story...

Ryan's main job, whilst I've been doing the insulation and interior parts (you see I picked the best job out of the two!), is to sort the roof out as it was clearly still leaking and we don't want our nice new battens getting ruined like the old ones.

Flashing covering toward the rear

Poor Waki had obviously had a lot of hard to find leaks, as pretty much the entire roof had been covered with some kind of roof flashing material!? Unfortunately it was laid on so roughly that it was still letting water in and was actually holding the moisture underneath it instead of just evaporating when the sun came out so it had to come off immediately.

Flashing covering toward the front

Ryan had to scrape it off bit by bit and upon uncovering the supporting roof braces he discovered that the roof had collapsed slightly and was actually around 2 inches lower than the front brace so we'll have a bit more headroom to enjoy inside once it's held back up properly! It bows worse on the passenger side and as we've also removed some of the rotten roof battens we'll just try to avoid walking on that side until it's shored up properly.

Snow covered Waki with her gazebo!

We've covered the roof in a tarp to protect it in the meantime and to stop the snow getting in the way of work, we actually used our old gazebo until we could dig out our large tarp!. The first time I actually went up on the roof (instead of just clinging to the ladder and peering over the edge!) was in a bit of a mad rush to cover it as the first flakes of snow began to fall, you certainly get a fantastic view of the village from standing up there but I was pleased to get my feet safely back on the ground.

Ryan went up the next day to tip the snow off and do some more work but not until he had built himself a little snowman up there, unfortunately I didn't manage to get a photo before it got thrown over the edge into the snow heap! :(

So when the weather improves, or when we can drive her to stay overnight indoors at Ryan's work, she will at last get a good few layers of roof coating paint.