Tag: bus building

Mulberries

The Mulberries are in season in Young and we have been gorging ourselves daily. I can never understand those fad diets that exclude fruit. I mean…look at this! A tree bursting with fruit just cries out to be eaten. It is just plain common sense. I have been a fruit eater all my life and fruit is good. I have a healthy appreciation for all things fruit. Mm, Yum.

Eating fruit straight from the tree is a simple pleasure that is one of life’s luxuries. I am so thankful to my in-laws for planting these rows of fruit trees, they had a thought to the future and we are the benefactors.

This was a happy moment in our day, the kind of moment I relish as a family. I love being together but not…if you know what I mean. We are together enjoying some things, say the outdoors, the weather, food but we are also separately, happily interdependently, enjoying our own things. Sophia munching mulberries, Gunther having an outside bath and hubby and I watching and delighting/working on the bus. All happy, all together, but also enjoying the world around us, the kids gaining independence and learning to enjoy their own company, which is so important.

On the bus side of things we have made much tangible progress. Three bathroom walls are in, still wrapped in plastic (we can’t wait for the great unveiling and hope the colours all work together), and not shown here, one of the kid’s bunk walls are in along with the bottom bunk’s framing.

November 2, 2013
Bus Update

It’s been some time since I’ve shown a bus update. Yes, we are still plugging away at it. The thing is that every day I look around and wonder, ‘What’s changed?’ obviously some things have changed, but it doesn’t translate that well into a photo.

We are out here every day doing something. For months it’s been all work and very little sense of progress.

The last few days though, that’s all changed. It feels like, huzzah, it is actually coming together! We have a couple of frames (or partial frames up), we have our ceiling in and Henry has been sanding…actually sculpting…the three walls of our room into a perfectly smooth shell. It’s starting to look quite schmick and Henry’s vision is becoming a reality.

This little space, above, is where our cupboard is going. Building the framing for this is soon to be done.

Here’s the bed, we have actually taken the bed base off for the moment. It needed a slight adjustment and the work which we are currently doing is made way easier without this thing hanging around.

The pic above was taken a few weeks ago. Below are photos I took yesterday, and you can see that a couple of the walls are in and the entire roof here has been replaced.

Some framing below indicating where one of the bathroom walls will go. We are using 25mm aluminium held together by Qubelock and a whole stack of glue. Mostly Sika Flex as Henry likes to use the best of everything.

Oh yes, here’s my handy organiser. I got sick of our bus turning into a junk heap – it slows down the work flow considerably – and so I made an organiser which Henry laughed at, but it has been incredibly useful and worth the scrap of time I spent to literally whip this together. It is not pretty, it is functional.

The dust from all the sanding Henry has been doing over the last few days is insidious.

Okay, so here’s a frame which I actually made, figured it all out and made it fit all by myself (Henry helped polish it up a bit). An example of Henry’s quest for quality is that, instead of allowing the wall to cut the window in half, he came on the idea of making a smaller window. Part of what he loves about this bus are all the lovely curves, and why not capitalise on them?!

Bog. Bog is what is making this bus beautiful. In fact our bus is going to be all Bog, Glue, Aluminium and Alucobond. Not your everyday building materials.

We are intent on not having a window sill here. At first we thought about the ‘framing’ (I am not a big fan of framing), but I love the way the light can just flow in without a window sill here. We found a way to make the sill without a window frame. It involves a multi-layer of ply, built up to the wall and a trimmer router to get that edge just perfect (keeping those wonderful curves) and then of course a bit of bog in any holes. And a few more sands and bogs. It looks so great in the flesh and I can’t wait to paint this room white and see it shine!

This square metre section (900×1600) is our entire bathroom! You didn’t think you could fit an entire bathroom into that space, did you? Well, Henry is a genius and he has done it. When that floor is completed in copper (yes) it will look…interesting.

So, that’s the tour so far. There’s not too much of interest to see so far, but hopefully we will keep the ball rolling and there’ll be a few more updates in the coming weeks.

xo

September 19, 2013
Building Our Bed: Part 1

Finally an end to the destruction is in sight and construction is beginning!

Well, as I write this there has been (and continues to be) an ongoing struggle with our drawers, involving a bunch of unforgiving, push-to-open, drawer runners.

But…we have installed our bed.

This involved a 12mm piece of ply for the bedhead, an insert into the window, glued and screwed into place. We built a frame for the top of this piece to hold it all straight and carpeted the inside to keep things nice and soft. The ply will be veneered with rosewood and a rosewood shelf installed on top.

I am trying to convince Henry to paint the insides of the drawers in bright turquoise, fuschia, blue and yellow – don’t you think that will look amazing!? He is not sold. Yet.

It seems very appropriate that we made this first. It is our bedhead, but it is also Henry’s guitar cabinet. Music is important to Henry and therefore it is important to me and therefore it is important to our family. So, guitar cabinet, item one: check.

Henry built a base for our mattress, which is designed to lift up on gas struts so that we can access the storage behind the drawers and under the bed. He is contemplating a shelf in that space which raises with the bed allowing us to simply slide things out. I can’t believe I haven’t yet got a photo of the bed, but that will come once the drawers are in – that will definitely demand a celebratory picture – ’till then you’ll have to wait.

We did this work late into a night, when Henry was on a roll and not prepared to stop for sleep, even though it was super cold it was nice to wonder around his dads shed with no kids to worry about. For some reason I just love looking around this shed. I’ve taken photos of it for a past blog and it was one of my more enjoyable photography projects. I love taking photos of interesting objects, object that are usually glossed over and not really seen for the beauty they hold. From the way the grease has collected on a well-worn handle, or the pile of shavings around a vice or the bucket of metal shards and the well ordered sequence of tools and bits and bobs. This stuff fills me with content. There is surety about building things, these big European made machines are made to be of use and it is a privilege to know the person who can use them like an artist. His son also can use them and it is one thing that makes me proud to be that sons wife. This kind of usefulness is somewhat a dying art in the West, it’s presence is a rarity, so I consider myself lucky.

July 24, 2013