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.

The Roof - part 2

As it was such a glorious day on Sunday we got the last beam properly secured and sealed on the roof. The bad weather, fading daylight and then shortage of silicon last time we was up there meant that Ryan could only put one layer of the roof seal on to get it at least weather proof and to stop it actively dripping inside when it rained (or when the snow melted!).

So Ryan scraped the layer of roof paint back off to redo the sealant on the bolts, a messy job as usual for him, and once it had dried I got up there with a paintbrush and got a good couple of coats of the roof paint over it all and around the edges again to use up the rest of the tin.

I had a succession of pointing children asking their mothers "why's that lady on the roof?!" and a few odd glances from Ryans family, but eventually finished and climbed back down to normality - well almost normality, it is me we're talking about!

I'll definitely have to try and keep a section of the roof clear of stuff as it makes the perfect sunbathing spot, and I enjoyed a moment of laying down with my hands behind my head and my work boots crossed but had too much to do to be able to stay there too long. For now I've just reserved the idea for when we find a nice spot on our travels, around the Cornish coast perhaps? :)

So now that the bolts for the roof beams are properly sealed we can finish the battens on the ceiling inside and get the insulation and cladding done there, after the front window has been replaced of course, and the bed finished, and the walls papered... *sigh* better get back to work then! :)

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.