savannals

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 also grabbed a pack of two plastic cutting boards, thinking the larger of the two would be about the right size for a platform in the bottom of the basket. And I was right! I just needed to cut off the handle end for a good fit.

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.

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.

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.

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?