We’ve had another steady week chipping away at various jobs.
On Tuesday we travelled down to Brisbane to pick up our shower. What a day for it, it poured rain most of the day and Brisbane had record rainfall. We weren’t to be deterred though and were lucky enough to jag a small reprieve in the weather while loading it. It was short lived with the rain picking up again for the drive home. A big day but well worth it as the shower is great. This time we opted for a fully moulded shower, no grout to worry about. Cleaning should be a breeze! I’m thinking of Fred of course lol.
During the week Fred continued tackling jobs in preparation to get the first floor on. Our water pump arrived so he built a bracket and attached it to the back of the truck near the water filters. To finish it off we will get a bit of conveyor belt to attach to act as a guard to protect them both.
He also fabricated the final 3 dividers for the false floor and I whacked a couple of coats of paint on them. By the way, my painting hasn’t improved any with all this practice.
It was now the weekend and we decided that we were going to give getting this first floor on a real crack. There were a couple of jobs needing to be done first and one was to attach the piping to the grey and black tanks. A trip to Bunnings for the appropriate bits and bam done.
Now that we are getting closer to attaching the floors and walls, we need to think about preparing for the fit out. We visited a cabinet maker and picked out a colour scheme. We are no interior designers and ended up selecting a similar colour scheme to De Busta. We are happy with that. We have a brother of a mate (you know how it is) who is a cabinet maker so we had a chat with him about materials and design etc. We have a design in our heads, and some dodgy makeshift plans I’ve drawn, to scale I might add, and wanted to get some solid advice from a professional. He wasn’t phased at my drawings and is happy to help when we are ready. Of course we can’t do much until we get the walls up to get some “real” measurements and not my guesstimates. We are still trying to source the materials and were hoping to get 12mm stuff as opposed to the standard 16mm kitchen gear but to date we haven’t had any luck. We know where to get it from but these places have minimum orders that are way out of our league. I’ve given myself one more week to try and source it and if not then I’ll concede, maybe (wink wink).
It’s now late Saturday afternoon and we decided that tomorrow is it, we are going to do it. We were hoping to have the first floor down by the end of the weekend so Sunday morning it was prep time, it would take a bit of engineering to get it right. First of all we need to get the 6m x 2.4m panel onto the subfloor of the truck to get the exact measurement to cut off the excess. So with 3 hulky guys and me (I was probably just in the way) we got it up there. Once measured we decided to leave it there and cut to size so save lifting it off again. Once cut we needed to position it where it will go and mark the underside for where we have to glue it. Once this was done, we took it back off to stand the underside out so that we could rough up where the glue was to attach. It was considerably lighter with a metre cut off the end. I sanded the floor while Fred sanded the subframe and the aluminium joiners. It was now mid morning and the temperature was above the 30’s so we decided it was too hot for glueing. We don’t want to stuff it up now. Still keen, we put a tarp over the subframe to try to keep it a bit cooler, strategically placing boxes and things under to allow the air flow. It was now fingers crossed that it would cool off enough late afternoon so that we could give it a shot. Otherwise we would tackle it very early in the morning.
While waiting, Fred began building the steps. We have thrown around a few ideas on how we can make the steps and our last thought was concertina style. We decided that this was going to be a bit tricky and maybe not sturdy enough so Fred came up with a different pattern again. He will utilise the existing space which will house 4 steps. 2 steps folding onto the other 2 and then they will fold inside under the floor. Sounds confusing I know, you will have to wait for the finished product photos to really understand the genius idea and how relatively simple it is. Well it seems simple to me but that may be because Fred is doing all the work. These are a work in progress and will develop over the next week or so.
Finally it is late evening and we decided it’s now or never. Out comes the flash electric glue gun/dispenser, load her up and start painting glue over every bit of subframe imaginable. There is no way that the floor is going anywhere other then where it should be. Now, to get the actual floor onto the subframe without smudging the glue everywhere. We did this by keeping one end higher than the other, line it up at the front and then drop the back down. Yep, this worked. Fred jumped up on top and wowser we have a first floor attached.
It was now time for a well deserved beer and for Fred to start planning the next stage, the false floor. Onwards and upwards, stay tuned……..