9th Feb - Creating the seats and cladding the other wall

I began Sunday by starting to clad the left hand wall this weekend.  But about 15 panels in I snapped my last HSS drill bit (I'm having to drill into the steel framework for fixings along the top of the cladding).  So that quickly brought that to a finish for the day and made me start on measuring the seats.

I decided to go for 9mm MDF for the front of the seats (where children's feet will kick) and for the seat itself (for the family's back sides).  The rest I have done in 3mm Hardwood.

I measured up, allowing for the widths of the wood and wrote down every measurement as I went.  This was a bit of a test but once I had 25 measurements I knew I'd done the lot and could go inside and try to figure out how to get that out of as few sheets of wood as possible.

I managed to draw it all out and get the shapes I needed (including some spares) from 3 sheets of 8x4 hardboard, 1 sheet of 8x4 MDF and another 6x2 sheet of MDF.  I'm so glad B&Q bognor do the cutting service.  Although the fella wasnt too pleased as I handed him the sheets.  But we waited and watched for a good 45 minutes and left with plenty of wood panels.

After returning home ready with half a kilo of panel pins I set about trying to figure out which panel fitted which seat.  A couple of hours later we has the insides of a van starting to take shape.  Its nice to see some real progress internally.

I've also brought a night-latch for the rear door and more post has seen the arrival of the flooring, a replacement RCD, and the Artic grade electrical flex cable. Another trip to Toolstation & B&Q has provided me with more HSS drill bits and some more cladding so I can finish that job.

More cladding to do this week in the evenings and then some cable runs to put in.  All getting quite real now.

The only negative this weekend is that I've found out that I need a new battery :(