Tag Archives: Converting a campervan step-by-step

Another day, another trip to Bunnings

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This morning, like most Sunday mornings this year, started with a trip to Bunnings. Indeed, Paul even leapt out of bed saying, ‘Got to get up, got to get to Bunnings’, with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for those days when you’re hoping to find an overflowing stocking at the end of your bed.

For people reading this blog overseas, Bunnings Warehouse is a chain of massive DIY stores. They have a sausage sizzle at the entrance and a cheery lady in an apron who welcomes you in. Paul visits at least twice every weekend. And not just because he doesn’t get fed at home (he doesn’t always have a sausage) but because he usually gets sidetracked and forgets something, so has to go back.

Although I probably don’t approach a trip to Bunnings with quite the same vigour, I still tag along every couple of weeks. Last time I spent the time wandering the length of the aisles trying to work out how many products they must stock. A serendipitous visit to their website later revealed the answer – it’s over 45,000. So there you go – it’s very big, and if you’re into DIY, it sells absolutely everything you could want. I am not into DIY, and still usually end up with an armful of treasures I didn’t realise I needed.  The trouble is, Bunnings uses the same technique as Ikea and places all the intriguing and bargainous bits at the end of the aisles. You know this is a cunning marketing trick. You know that you don’t really need another miniature torch for your handbag or any more self-cleaning eco mops, but somehow, they find their way into your basket.

Anyway, there was a point to this post, which is that so far, we have bought almost everything we’ve needed for the campervan from Bunnings. Along with three torches, this has included:

All the cabinets

Laminate flooring and insulation

Bathroom sink

Waste water and fresh water tanks

Panels for bathroom walls (sold as pantry doors)

3,000 jigsaw blades

Initially we thought we’d have to get most bits from independent suppliers and caravan stockists, but they’ve been much cheaper and more readily available from Bunnings. We’ll still have to buy the specific electrical parts from a camping store, as well as things like the water heater, but if anyone is approaching a similar project, try a DIY store first before spending a fortune at other places.

Having spent the morning extolling the virtues of Bunnings, I think I will email them now in case they would like to sponsor my site.

Campervan upholstery (Part2)

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I’m already anticipating many, many parts to this sewing saga. It’ll be like an Enid Blyton series: ‘Even more campervan upholstery’, ‘Having fun with campervan upholstery’ and a climactic ‘Choosing a professional campervan upholsterer’.

This weekend Paul came with me to Spotlight. It was a far more efficient trip and within five minutes he was standing at the cutting counter with five rolls under his arms. We got metre-long samples of a few completely different types that we could try out in the van, including the stripy deckchair fabric I’d seen last week in blue and red. Unfortunately, what had looked cool and beachy on the roll looked more NHS hospital gowny in the van. Particularly the blue one:

The red was a bit better:

Overall it’s going to need something quite bold and bright. My seats are going to make a statement!

The stripy one below will definitely make a statement. It is Paul’s current favourite:


I wasn’t sure in the shop. I’m still not sure, but it did look quite good when we laid it out in the van:


The only trouble is Paul is very keen to use gloss red cupboard doors underneath the seating, which might be too much red. It is hard to tell though when our laminate samples are two-inch squares, and I’m not keen on returning to the kitchen showroom with my extra large handbag. So yesterday I put my Art GCSE to good use and made a cardboard model of the seating arrangements. Paul likes using Google’s Sketchup but I need something a bit more tangible to visualise the finished concept. Any excuse to get out my double-sided sticky tape and… a craft knife!

It was quite a basic model. I could sense Paul was getting a bit agitated because I hadn’t curved the window properly (i.e. at all), I’d put a worktop where the gas stove is supposed to go and ‘why are there bars on the window?’ (they were venetian blinds). Grrr. So yes, it wasn’t to scale and did keep collapsing but it was helpful to see some of the colour combinations. Here are some of the front-runners, any comments and preferences very welcome!

This is Paul’s choice. It wouldn’t look quite so overbearing in the van (I know, I know – I should have done the model to scale), but it still quite red.

I was being a bit of a cheapskate with this blue fabric, it was from the luxury selection so I thought I could get away with a free ‘finger sample’. Unfortunately the lady in the shop had very small fingers so you don’t get quite the same effect.

I quite like this one and even included Paul’s stripy fabric in the curtains for good measure, but he’s not keen on the eggshell blue.

This is quite nice, and would go well with the wooden floors. I could jazz up the curtains – maybe even do the tie-backs in the stripy fabric! Although I might be overestimating my sewing ability, I’ll get the cushions done first.

So that’s where we are with the seating. For anyone more interested in the actual construction of the campervan, I promise I’ll revert to dust and drilling in the next post, because while I’ve been dithering with fabric swatches, Paul’s been steadily making impressive progress on the interior.

The wonderful world of campervan upholstery (part1)

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Other than being on hand to provide moral (and calorific) support over the last few weeks, I haven’t been physically involved with the van’s evolution so far. But now, I have a job. I’m going to be responsible for upholstering the seats.

This is quite a big responsibility as, space-wise, the seats take up a fair chunk of room in the van. They’re also very… visible. There’s no hiding them behind a screen or a gas bottle if I mess up the seams (that’s not to imply Paul is hiding anything behind the gas bottles, he’s a complete perfectionist). Anyway, I figured if he can work out how to convert a taxi into a campervan, I should be able to cobble together some cushions.

And I’m not a complete beginner when it comes to sewing; I did cross-stitch a placemat when I was at primary school in 1990 (I remember the date because that’s what I appliqued onto the mat – I’m hoping I’ve retained some of that creative imagination). Since then though, there’s been something of a sewing hiatus.

So last weekend I went to a fabric store to get the lay of the land. And a scary land it was. Aisles and aisles of different styles and colours and weights of upholstery material. One of the nice sewing ladies took pity on me as I was feverishly trying to capture each one on my phone. She seemed to be partly speaking in a different language, but the main thing I gleaned was, as long as the fabric doesn’t have a plastic backing, it’s just a matter of taste. Well that should be easy then.

This was my absolute favourite:

A sort of Cath Kidston inspired surfer-chic. Unfortunately I knew it would be vetoed as soon as I got home. It was. As was this lovely floral:

And this one:

So much for taste. I looked at some more neutral, sensible colours:

But they weren’t very inspiring. A bit too caravanny.

These were a bit brighter and quite hard-wearing, a possibility:

And I quite liked these:

A bit like deckchair fabric and nice and soft, although maybe not quite tough enough. Paul thought these could be contenders – two out of 200 is not bad I suppose.

Next weekend I’ll be brave and ask for some samples.

Campervan kitchen – in go the cabinets

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We’ve had to bring in reinforcements; Paul’s parents, Jean & John, were staying last week and earned their keep by knocking a few cabinets together. J & J are also keen campervanners and have just embarked on their second tour of NZ in a v posh 4-berth campervan.

So the task last weekend was to build and fit the kitchen cabinets that will house the sink, gas stove and fridge. The ‘build’ part was made easier by buying ready-built cabinets from Bunnings! Well, they were flat-packed but still easier than just buying a load of wood. Amazingly they fit perfectly width-ways, so Paul just had to take some of the height off the bottom, and cut round all the wheel arches etc at the back.

So from left to right is the bathroom basin, then there’ll be a wall, then the kitchen sink, then the fridge.

The cabinet on the other side is for the gas stove and grill.

The fridge is a Waeco CoolMatic (80 litres), which is bigger than we thought we could fit in, and has a little ice box at the top for our frozen peas. It’ll be wired in with 6mm cables to the 12volt battery and should last about 3 days before the battery needs to be recharged. That should be plenty long enough, as I can’t imagine we’ll ever go that long without plugging into power somewhere – not intentionally anyway, and if the worst comes to the worst, we’ll just have to have a couple of meals of warm beer and defrosted peas.

The next job is to source and fit the two water tanks underneath the bathroom and kitchen sinks. Paul thinks he might be able to get them from a 4WD shop this week. He also wants to figure out the seating / bed combo; this has already prompted many colourful conversations between him and his Dad, as they both have very different ideas about how to build it. I think Paul is going to take advantage of J & J being in NZ for the next few weeks to make a start on it.

Thetford cassette toilet C200, swivel, flush tank, rear entry

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This is the (slightly disconcerting) description of our campervan toilet.  I have been assured, though, that the rear is actually the best place for an entry point, and just refers to how you access the waste tank. Phew. And the swivel aspect means we can position the toilet with the rear facing towards the back door (for optimum cassette removal), but swivel the seat round so we don’t have to sit facing the wall.

As the photos below probably do a better job of explaining.

The toilet is freestanding at the moment, but will be secured to the wall that separates the bathroom from the kitchen.

And we have got the crème de la crème of campervan basins! It is twice the size of the basins in our house, and plenty big enough to have a personal wash twice a day. (Sorry, these Gavin & Stacey references just keep rolling off my tongue – anyone would think I was obsessed.)

Paul bought the bathroom cabinet and basin from Bunnings, and just had to saw 10cm off the bottom of the cupboard, and cut around the wheel arch and a couple of other protruding objects. I say ‘just’ – this was in 35 degree heat yesterday. The cabinet still needs to be bolted onto the floor, but we need to fit the waste-water tank underneath the basin first.

The next job is to fit the dividing walls, so we can start fixing things into place. Having tried out almost every conceivable colour for the walls, I think they’re going to be white.

Operation flooring – how to fit a laminate floor in a tiny campervan

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The only colour and material we had definitely decided on last week was for the flooring – after eliminating about 16 pale wood-effect laminates from our kitchen shop samples, we finally chose a really good one. Of course, we then went to Bunnings to buy it and they only had a choice of 3, all of which seemed quite different. Anyway, the palest was on special offer (it was also the thinnest – anything to increase our head height!) so we bought 60 kg of it and Paul made a start yesterday morning. Overall it was fairly straightforward. There’s a layer of insulation on the bottom, then hardboard, then another layer of insulation (all to reduce the noise) and the laminate goes on top, the planks locking together. The difficult bits were cutting around the wheel arches and the gear box at the front, which resulted in a completely blunt jigsaw blade at the end of the day, but it looks great now it’s finished.

Also, this is Paul’s ingenious new tool to draw the curved shape on the wood. Are you reading this, Dragons? Theo – surely a winner in the retail market?

Decisions, decisions – a guide to campervan interior design

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I am starting to have concerns about my project manager’s taste in interior design. We’d always planned to keep the colours inside the campervan quite calm and neutral – white tops, chocolate seating and splashes of coffee or beige if we were feeling adventurous. But Paul has recently expressed an interest in a fairly alarming combination of sunbeam yellow and peacock blue. Clearly the campervan’s not large enough to accommodate nicely spaced feature walls, so I fear this could be a little overbearing. Maybe a bit too cheerful. I have to say though, choosing exact colours is quite a tricky business. The ceiling and very tops of the interior sides are covered in an attractive grey carpet, which has to stay, but we still need to choose colours for the bathroom wall, cabinets, work surfaces and floors.

Last weekend, we spent a morning trawling round a few kitchen showrooms to get an idea of different materials and colours. I LOVE kitchen showrooms and before I knew it, I heard myself explaining to the sales lady (or ‘hostess’ as she was called) that we were renovating our kitchen and how much are these lovely white stone cabinets with self-closing drawers and glass mosaic tiles? That was all very nice, but it made it a bit awkward to then try and steer round to the racks of cheap laminate samples to get a more realistic idea for the campervan. Sadly our budget and weight limit in the van preclude anything with granite or stone in the name, but at least there’s a massive choice available. We finally left two hours later with a handbag full of samples and a $20,000 quote for our own kitchen (maybe next year).

Back home, we narrowed it down to these, and spent the afternoon lining them up inside the van:

So it’s a fairly neutral and calming colour palette (like we’d planned), but maybe just a little… dull. We both like the idea of including something a bit bolder and brighter, something that will make you smile when you open the door. After all, that’s the whole idea of taking off in a campervan. So Paul’s started experimenting with different colours using Google’s SketchUp (a great program where we’ve got a 3-D model of the campervan), and it does seem to suit something more exuberant. Perhaps not quite as exuberant as peacocks and sunbeams, but some glossy red or (the ubiquitous) aqua could make an appearance. So the jury’s still out on that one for the moment. We have, however, chosen the floor – update in the next post!

Online ordering is overrated

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This morning we drove to a few suppliers of all things campervan whose warehouses are scattered around Brisbane. They pretty much stocked everything we’ll need throughout the project from solar-powered ceiling fans and whistling tin kettles to the more essential batteries, switches and sockets. There was so much choice we ended up leaving with nothing, but at least we know the range they have available now, and can use their catalogue to make a full list for each stage of the build.  And having seen some of the prices ($850 for a toilet, $1200 for a pint-sized fridge and $3000 for an awning!) there may be many stages all quite far apart unless we can negotiate some sort of bulk discount. They even charged $2 for their catalogue!

The warehouses are mostly in industrial parks a fair distance away, so it was great when one of the guys there said we could order online (despite being perfect mail order businesses, some of these places don’t even have a website). ‘Of course, the prices aren’t displayed online though’, he continued. Ah. That might make ordering a bit tricky then. Apparently, this is just a different version of online ordering, where you decide what you want from the website, and then go to the shop to place an order. I’m not sure it’s going to catch on.