Tag Archives: On The Road

Bathroom wall’s to go up

20/09/2017 Bernie Cross

Getting closer to having a bathroom

With the bathroom floor in place and water proofed it’s now time to start on the walls. But first we have to work out were the toilet window will go and lets hope it’s in the right place.

Passenger side marking out for toilet window.

We have a hole in the side of the motorhome.

Now to start on the wall’s

First off is to cut the insulation followed by gluing it in place, a job I love to hate. Second stage is to cut the first sheet of ply to size and making sure the window is cut out in the place. Now it’s time to start fitting it to the side of the coach.

There will be one more sheet put up on this side for the moment which will finish off the bathroom wall and part of the kitchen.

The vanity and laundry side

This side will be straight forward as there is no window to go on this wall at all. So it’s just gluing the insulation in place then cutting the ply to size. Screw some packing in place so I can glue and screw the ply to the wall.

Vanity and laundry side, with packing screwed into place.

Looking from the front of the coach at the bathroom.

Top of the toilet and shower wall finished.

240v for a power point in the vacuum cupboard and 12v for a toilet light.

Start of the wall between the bathroom and kitchen.

After running some more power cables around the top of the walls and finishing off the transition from the walls to the ceiling. Just some more painting for Charmaine to do to finish off the bathroom walls for now. Look’s like the next project will be to build some wardrobes to close off the bedroom from the bathroom.

Motorhome fit out

We are going to have under floor heating

12/09/2017 Bernie Cross 2 Comments

The old walkway needs filling in

As this will be our home we had the a thought of under floor heating, not a bad thing when living in the colder area’s of Australia. We will be putting in a KIMBERLY™ Wood Stove with a heat exchange unit in to heat a 50-80lt hot water tank, then the hot water will be pumped through pipe work under the floor, so keeping warm shouldn’t be a problem. The thermal mass heating idea looks the best for us, as once it’s warmed up you can leave it off over night. I’ll all so run a thermostat to turn the water pump on or off while it’s running so we don’t cook our feet.

Plastic pipe supports in place and water proofing painted on.

Inlet and outlet holes drilled into the floor.

Concrete time fun fun fun……. not !!!

It’s not that bad as it’s only 4400mm x 300mm x 110mm so only 0.13m3. This is going to be a strong mix one bag each sand, gravel and cement with a water proofing agent mixed in. I’m going to make the mix as dry as possible, this will make it as strong as I can. I’ll also be using a concrete vibrator as this will get all the air bubbles out of the mix. Now it’s time to start mixing in the wheelbarrow then bring it in one bucket at a time into the coach.

Just need to go over it one or two more times with trowel.

We will be leaving the formwork in place to insulate the concrete and have a 100mm gap down one side, that will be used for air flow later on to circulate air up the back of the motorhome. As you can see we are making things up as we go along, but it’s the first time we have made anything like this and it will be a one of a kind coach design.

Motorhome fit out

Bedroom back walls and the fiddly bits

04/09/2017 Bernie Cross 1 Comment

The fun of filling in the gaps

As nothing is square in the bus, there is always going to be gaps somewhere and they can be put to good use. It’s more ass than class but to my surprise things are fitting into place, if only….. just. On either side of the top cabinets we are putting in some speakers for the surround sound.

This is the odd shapes you have to work with.

Looks like a good place to fit some speakers, don’t you think?

Now we have somewhere for the back speakers.

Now for the bottom half

This is a bit more tricky as there is not much room to work with and the shape has to be exact. I will be trying to put a USB charger, AUX and a USB to the stereo on either side of the bed next to the middle cabinets and the wall.

Lets hope we soldered the wires in the right place.

Phone charging points that can be switched off, AUX and USB back to the sound system.

There was no room to spare at all, but that was a painful job and one that I’m glad is now over. I sometimes have some great ideas that I end up wishing I hadn’t had, but the job is done now.

Motorhome fit out

More ceiling panels to go up

23/08/2017 Bernie Cross 2 Comments

The ceilings almost done

One of the things most people don’t like doing is working over head, but the ceiling has to be done. As we had already cut all the sheets it was just a matter of pop riveting them up in place. This time the ceiling is not flat so it was just a matter of hold it up as best we could and start gluing and riveting as we go.

There is so much crap still in the coach to work around.

The pneumatic riveter makes the job so much more enjoyable.

We will be finishing off the ceiling later on as I’ll be covering up the front hatch and don’t have the time right now. It was tricky getting it just right with the sheeting needed little adjustments just before gluing. The main work is now needed down the back of the coach as getting the bedroom finished to a stage that we can move back in after we leave this house sitting job at the end of October is our priority.

Motorhome fit out

Putting some paint on to hide the ply wood

23/08/2017 Bernie Cross

Something to hide the ply with.

We are in two minds as to what finish we will be putting on the bedroom walls, so for now we will be painting them to hide the ply wood. If nothing else it will make us feel more at home instead of inside a wooden box.

Charmaine putting on the first undercoat of two.

Charmaine was happy to get stuck into the painting as she has been out working making the money to keep the project going. Now she can help out working on the motorhome on some of her days off.

We are putting on two coats of undercoat and sanding between them to smooth it off then another two topcoats should see the job done. It already made the bedroom look a lot brighter just with the first base coat on.

First coat on need to give it a light sand down then for the second coat.

Well that makes a difference to the bedroom, it may only be temporary but that will do till we know what we will be finishing off the walls with. The next job will be finishing off around the cabinets and some sparky stuff.

Conscious Consumerism

Our weekly food bill…

25/07/2017 Charmaine Leopold

Keeping costs down

The cost of the weekly food bills are going up…this is a fact. So how do we make the most of our hard-earned money when it comes to shopping? There are so many things all of us can do to keep the cost down.

Grocery advice on specials

I personally do not have time to troll through the specials that come in the mail or through targeted emails from our favourite grocery stores. Most of the basic advice on doing the shopping I do adhere to……The top of my list is that I do not go to do grocery shopping when I am hungry, this is very useful for me keep in mind.

A basic shopping list

I used to have a basic shopping list of what I had to get and then top it up with things that caught my eye, but even this approach to shopping would have me spending way more than I had expected by the end.

Under $10 meal deals

Some supermarkets are trying to help families out by making $10 meal ideas, these are good if you have family and have trouble thinking outside the box. There are a few problems I have with this marketing angle from certain supermarkets.

Most meals require you to buy a lot more than is needed for that one meal.
A lot of the meals don’t cater for those with diet requirements.
I have noticed that a lot of these meals do not have quiet enough veggies in them for our daily requirements.

I have at times made meals using these recipes and have frozen the rest for more meal later as there are only two of us. I have also reduced the amount of meat in these recipes an added more veggies which significantly brought the cost of the meals down to even $6 instead of $10.

If you adapt you will save…Big time!!

Just recently I have decided to take a whole new approach to shopping and am saving a lot of money….Be on the look out for my next blog where I will explain it in detail.

Motorhome fit out

The last bit to go on the coach old air conditioning

22/07/2017 Bernie Cross

Will this ever end?

Well, it will I guess as we are almost there, it wont be long. All that is left is to clean up before water proofing the roof. I must say it has taken longer than I thought, but that seems to be what happens fitting out a coach into a motorhome. We had intermitted rain for some of this part of the water proofing section. Not only did I have to pump the excess water out of the roof area every time it rained, but then had to wait till it was fully dry before starting on it again.

I had run out of supplies a few times this week so it was handy that the hardware is nice a close. If we were still at Leigh Creek it would have been a 5 hour round trip to go pick up more things.

These are the only times I like being in the city.

Just the last bits of cutting things away before we finish doing the water proofing.

This is after the 3rd coat and I think this will be all.

Now that the water proofing has been done, we have decided a roof top deck would be a nice touch to the roof finish off. This will give us some more room, this one with a great views. We are not sure what type of chairs or table we want up on the deck. It will have to be fixed to the side some how, so we are leaving that for later on to do. I also am going to fix a wind turbine onto this area as well but again not sure how just yet. I guess all this will come to us over time. So this thankfully will the last blog on the old air-conitioning.

Motorhome fit out

It’s bedroom time

21/07/2017 Bernie Cross

Time to start fitting out the bedroom

Starting from the back of the coach to the front is the only way to go. Under the bed area is where the motor is, so the floor has a raised part, this is a great place to put in bedroom cupboards. With nothing being square or plum apart from the floor I was making it up as I went along. It’s nothing like building a house!

Lots of flat pack cupboard boxes to make up from Bunnings.

The bed should fit between the two bedside draws.

One bit at a time, this cover goes on so more draws can go on top.

Time to put some support in place and insulation before I go too far.

One more box and this level will be done.

With the black timber in place it only just fitted after shaving the back edges off the side boxes.

They only just made it in after Shaving off some timber.

No turning back now time to screw it in place.

Time for some sparky stuff

At this stage it was time to run some 12 volt cables for the LED lights as well as some USB chargers on either side of the bed. We need some speaker cables put in as well for the stereo that was going to go in later on. We are not running 240 volt in the bedroom as there is nothing we can think of that we need it for down this section of the bus so 240 volt is it .

All the power cables for the lights, USB charges and the stereo speakers are in. Lets hope that is all of it.

Time to fit in the down light before I go to far.

12v cables are in place as well as the insulation.

You can turn the LED lights any colour you like.

Now the led light strip in place and all powered up.

I have some fiddle bits of trim around the cupboards, which will be done later on when we get some other work out of the way first. All we have to do now is fit the draw runners on before putting the draws.

We have not decided what we actually want the walls to look like, there has been some ideas floating around but nothing that really makes us confident to want to finish them now. So I will be tidying up the bedroom walls with more ply where all the power cables run and then painting them till we find what kind for finish we are looking for.

Motorhome fit out

Still Removing The Old Coach Air Conditioning

09/07/2017 Bernie Cross

Back To The Air-Conditioning

We had already done the first part of the work on the bedroom ceiling, but to finish that job. We had to rip the rest of the old air-con off the roof. I started with getting the sola panels off first, then remove the cover plates.

Now time to remove the solar panels again.

This will be the last time the roof looks like a coach roof

This will be the last time it will look like this.

The finished look of this project we will have a roof top deck up here, but not now that is a job for an other day. Now it’s time to remove the evaporator, heat exchange radiators and blowers. Stripping out the copper pipe, heat exchange radiator pipes as well all the electrical pits.

Stripping all the sparky stuff and back grill to accessing the pipe work.

Old air condition control unit in the ceiling.

One side of the evaporator, heat radiators and blowers to be removed.

More Stuff For The Scrap Yard

I did a trip to the scrap metal yard with all the copper, brass, evaporator and the heat exchange radiators. It’s always good to get some money back, that lot gave me $145 to put back into the project. Next will be cutting out all the aluminium that we don’t need off the roof air-condition area. I all ready have some that we have removed so that we will have an other trip to the scrap yard soon.

Did I see rain?

Well it did start raining on and off for a week, lucky we could put the covers over the holes and with some buckets inside it didn’t get too wet inside. This means I went back inside to do some more work on the bedroom/bathroom ceiling, while it rained but thats an other blog.

1st blog on THE OLD COACH AIR CONDITIONING

Motorhome fit out

Removing The Old Coach Air Conditioning

05/07/2017 Bernie Cross 2 Comments

It doesn’t work so it has to go

From the start the old coach air conditioning never worked at all, the gas was gone and Des had already fitted a reverse cycle air conditioner into the coach before it ever became our project. I started to remove the old air-con in Leigh Creek S.A. in my free time.

The old compressor pump was the first thing to go.

One less thing we have to drag around. No more compressor pump.

The coach is getting lighter.

After taking out the compressor pump, which almost made me blow a pooper valve. After the compressor out it was onto the roof to remove the condensers and fan system. Now the coach is about 120kg lighter, every bit counts the lighter the better.

Condensers and the fan unit are no more.

This is where the condensers and fan came from.

Now Time To Pack Up.

It was starting to get to hot to be working on the roof at that time of the year in Leigh Creek S.A. So before I put the panels back on we used this area store the spare set of wheel for the Toyota land cruiser. The next stop was to Yulara N.T. to do some camel farm work which was great fun especially getting to race at the end of May in the camel races. Curtin Springs Cattle Station was a six day a week job so not much could be done on the bus when we were there, until Zac came up for a trip to do the outside just before we left there in November 2016.

One of the main reasons we decided to head back to Brisbane was that we realised we could not both work and get the bus built properly. The other reason was that while in Yulara we bought a gas strut storage bed that costed us $500 and by the time we got it out to us at the farm it costed another $480. This was way too expensive, so on to Brisbane it was as we found out it was the cheapest way to get the parts we would need for the fit out on the bus.