savannals

May 2025

• Flooring by Trowel…

  The Cavalry's vinyl floor has been installed! Very exciting times. Here's where it started: Well, really it started with me sweeping out the garage so this wouldn't be unmanageably full of little maple helicopter seed things. Then I rolled out the vinyl remnant that we bought a little while ago and put the floppy floor mat that the van came with on top to use as a template. I marked a little larger than the floppy floor mat, for a rough cut of the flooring. Fun fact: we chose this one because it was the closest to the size we needed, not because of the design (well, except I didn't want something super light which would show dirt very easily), but it's pretty nice! read full post

  Permanent link to “Flooring by Trowel and Error”

• Subfloor Success

  This weekend we got the interior subfloor accomplished! (We also put insulation into the ceiling to kick the weekend off. Very busy!) read full post

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• A Wheely Nice (If…

  Before I bought her, Agent May sat for a while at the dealership I bought her from. Which means that her tires, while new in terms of miles driven, also had experienced some unusual stresses related to lack of use. A few weeks ago, one of the tire pressure sensors was telling me that the pressure was low in that tire. It hadn't been that long since the last time air was added to the tires. That, combined with the fact that another one of the tires assumed a somewhat odd shape when parked in certain positions, was enough for me to just decide to replace the tires. The old ones were... probably fine, but I knew I wanted to replace them eventually anyway with ones that were a bit more capable on less-than-paved roads. (I have no plans to take her off-road, but definitely want to be able to drive on not-well-maintained roads.) And it was worth it to me to do that sooner and avoid worrying about the integrity of the tires. I also (for purely aesthetic reasons) got her some new wheels to go…

  Permanent link to “A Wheely Nice (If Unexpected) Upgrade”

April 2025

• Side Project: Rear…

  Sometimes, I make fun things that have nothing to do with the van. I'm thinking I'll add them here as "side projects" in case you find them fun as well. If you don't, then scroll on by. Your regularly scheduled van updates will resume shortly. Last fall, I rode my ebike to lunch and then had to figure out how to transport my leftovers back afterward. On the way home, as my hummus was swaying around in a plastic bag dangling from my handlebars, I decided that I really need a simple place to easily store small-to-medium things on the bike. I did some poking around for ready-made solutions, but didn't really find anything that quite fit what I was picturing. So I ordered a wire basket, and spray-painted it with plastidip (kind of a rubbery coating), first in purple and then with a glittery-metallicky topcoat. And then it sat over the winter as I thought about how I wanted to do the bottom of the basket. On the same IKEA trip where we bought stools for working inside the van, I…

  Permanent link to “Side Project: Rear Bike Basket”

• Replacing Broken…

  Spring has sprung. Which is awesome! And it also means that we've had to do a lot of yard-work-type-stuff of late. I did manage a small projectlet in the van this weekend, though! Back when we installed the seat swivels, we learned (by way of breaking both of them) that the covers over the seat belt buckle assemblies on each seat did not clear the base frame as the seat was rotated. Here's what they were covering. I assume that it's probably a good thing to keep this stuff covered, and probably for reasons beyond the aesthetic. It turned out to be fairly easy and affordable to get replacement pieces for these, so I ordered new ones. But they still needed to be modified to cleanly move through the rotation path. read full post

  Permanent link to “Replacing Broken Seat Trim Bits”

March 2025

• Insulation Portion…

  After a bit of a break from van things during which we worked on Planet Comicon things, we're back on it! This weekend: prepping for and beginning insulation. I started out by removing the wood rails along the sides of the cargo area. Don't need those when you've got (plans for) actual walls! I also wiped the walls down with alcohol (not the drinking kind) to remove stuff on the wall that might interfere with sticking things to it. Got a lot of grime off! I also decided that I wanted to try to take the wiring that was clipped to the top of the wall and re-route it inside the channel behind where it was clipped. So I started loosening that, which you can see above. read full post

  Permanent link to “Insulation Portion the First”

• Solar Panels Placed

  In a major development in the get-things-out-of-our-house-and-into-the-van front, we put the solar panels on the roof this weekend! I am very glad that's done and I really, truly hope we don't have to mess with the solar panels for a long time. Getting those up there was not easy. read full post

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February 2025

• She Cleans Up Real…

  The weather finally got warm and dry enough to clean Agent May up and take her out for some quick photos. Time to show off the wrap! Oooooo. Isn't she beautiful? read full post

  Permanent link to “She Cleans Up Real Good”

• A fan, a van, a…

  This weekend we got the vent fan (mostly) installed! This is the result: Pretend the blurring is just, like, artful hinting instead of questionable photography. And buckle up! This is a long one. read full post

  Permanent link to “A fan, a van, a plan: N'alpanav anafa!”

• Starting Solar

  Last Thursday, the fellow at the vinyl wraps shop let me know that he could get the van wrapped early if we could drop it off on Friday. We could! Which means the wrapping started a week and a half earlier than we expected! It also meant that we didn't have the van last weekend. We did have nice weather, some solar panels, and some bits to make a mounting frame for them. So that's what we did! First step was to get the solar panels laid out so we could measure the distance between the mounting holes on the bottom. I grabbed some red wire thingydoodles from the shed because they were about the right size and we had a lot of them. We used those as spacers between the panels to give them a little bit of wiggle room. On either end, you can see the cross bars of the roof rack where this array will eventually be installed. read full post

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January 2025

• Living Room…

  And achievement unlocked: first installation of neat stuff! Today we added seat swivels to both seats in the van, so they can turn around when it's parked. Melinda May might be pretty fortitudinous compared to your average passenger vehicle, but she's on the small side for a van. Seat swivels will add more interior space when parked, while also adding seats for us to hang out in if the weather is unpleasant outside. The seats in the van are bolted to a base, which itself is bolted to the floor of the van. We removed the seat from the base: read full post

  Permanent link to “Living Room Furniture: Added!”

• Hello, Wheels!

  In December of 2024, I bought a 2021 GMC Savana cargo van. She's going to be a camper! Her name is Melinda May, aka The Cavalry. Because she's gonna be kind of a badass. read full post

  Permanent link to “Hello, Wheels!”