Rumour has it that I may have something to talk about this week that's not Erica-related ... but until that comes to pass, here's a link to this week's video:
Ordinarily we are detailed planners. We've done renovation projects for which we've put together Microsoft Project Gantt charts, and pretty well stuck to them, and although we didn't go quite that far on Erica, we did have a plan of attack. That plan went awry, and swiftly out of the window, when I didn't order things in a timely fashion (not to mention the issue of sequentially ordering three solar panels before we got one we were happy to fit) and to save us from sitting around for weeks on end we started doing things in an illogical order. That's meant that things have been built then have had to sit in the house so as to keep them out of the way when we were able to go back to doing the jobs that should have been done first.
As shown in a video some weeks ago, we built the bed/sofa even though we weren't ready to fit it. We then got on with other preliminary stuff, until we found ourselves with a spell of good weather but without the materials we needed to do the next job. We weren't going to sit around twiddling our thumbs, so we started building the kitchen. It then languished in our dining room whilst we sorted out the solar panel and finished the ceiling, before we returned to it with our full attention.
This video only covers the first half of the build. It's incredible that something that looks so simple has consumed quite so many hours (I almost wish we'd logged the hours, because I'm sure it's a ridiculous number at least six times higher than we would have anticipated). The gas locker was one of the greatest consumers of time. I can report that it is possible to squeeze a gas locker into the space between the wheel arch and the tailgate, but it would have been a whole lot easier if Erica had happened to be the longer wheelbased version of the Expert Tepee!
Very impressive. I reckon a few coats of high grade polyurethane would make that top fairly hard wearing, especially if used with mats and reasonable care.
ReplyDeleteWe reached that conclusion too, but then decided it would have to make do with three coats of yatch varnish, which we also used for the rest of the woodwork (but I'm jumping ahead to next week's video...).
DeleteWe will, however, use it with as much care as possible, in the knowledge that it will be delicate and when it does get damaged we'll try to embrace it as being characterful. (A little aside: in our house before last, we fitted a kitchen with a solid wood worksurface. We'd not even finished the fitting when I dropped a screwdriver from height and it landed point downwards on that worktop, gouging a small chip out of it. In a fit of melodrama I declared the whole kitchen was ruined and we may as well rip it out, but Mick reassured me that no-one but me would ever notice it. A few days later my parents came around and the first thing my father did as he walked into the new kitchen was to point at the dent and say 'What happened there?'. At least Erica doesn't have any high level cupboards for things to fall out of!)