Pink Floors are for Winners!: Day 4

Flooring day! oh Flooring day, how I have waiting for you to come.

Despite the cold and the wind, we journeyed a very beaten path to Home Depot for supplies.

Here I am being a girl in home depot with a plan... callin the shots!

You there! Cut this foamular to my specifications!

Thanks Tyler.

I look so awesome in my sweat pants. I'm surprised chad lets me go out in public with them.

Back at the factory (the dream factory)... back in the back yard where grumbledor sits I began puzzle piecing the floor together. Remember the Tangigram game where you fit the triangles into the large rectangle? same thing. just bigger.

CONSTRUCTION NOTE: pink foamular is great stuff! use an exact-o knife to cut it, nothing else will do. But the exact-o knife will cut cut smoothly and accurately , you'll think you're working with pink butter!

Once I cut the basic shapes I trimmed, a little awkwardly at first, to fit the ribs of the van and along the wheel well.

CONSTRUCTION NOTE: Use newspaper to make your patterns! Its easier than you think to make custom cuts to fit curves and holes.

Awkward shapes can be further sanded or trimmed with the knife to fit perfectly. I managed to fit all the pieces flushed to each other except this one on the side, I figure I'll just fill the holes with some goopy goo later. I'm pretty proud overall.

Think of all the skills I learned today! I'll need them for next time when I do the same shape game with plywood. Break out the jigsaw!

Rustoleum Fumes are GROOD! - Day Three

I've been waiting and waiting and waiting for a day that is just 50 degrees to work on Grumbledor, he came to me with lots of rust and all the chemicals to treat him require non winter weather.

So you can imagine my glee when I woke on Sunday to nearly 65 sunshine and a whole day off work! Grumble door was happy too.

After I finished bleaching the mold off every surface inside the beast, I put down some truck bed liner on the floor of the cab and the door jams. It looks real nice now. This will seal all leaks in the floor, give a small amount of insulation to temp and road noise and it looks swell. I took precaution to tape over the things I didn't want sealed... like the wiring and the bolts to the engine which shares the cab with me.

I also Armoralled the vinyl on the dash, so its as shiny as a sport's car dash. "Putting lipstick on a pig" comes to mind.

With the truck bed liner down in the cab, I'll probably put the original mats back in, hell, I might spray them with the stuff as well, I really like the finish on them. It looks so... rugged.

Then I moved to the back with another can of chemicals. I had previously treated the rust with a clear coat that is supposed to "stop" rust, but I ran out of spray before I could treat the entire back. Once I got back there, I realized just how much exposed metal needed to be covered.

So I got this white stuff and finished about 90%, it looks 90% better too. I'll need to get one more can to finish the back and bumper, although I quite like how shitty it looks from the back.

The fumes were lovely, today I have a great sinus infection from a cold that's been coming at me like a storm from the west, I'm sure the fumes from yesterday didn't help, but it was a grand day.

Here's a before:

I very much like making trips to the various hardware stores down the road, getting ideas, getting input.... everyone has another idea and something to say about how the restoration should be done. Some are really good, and some are ideas I have already ruled out. But all are good input to process. I take them all, look at them while I lay in bed scheming, and by morning I've come up with a plan for the next step:

The next step: Flooring / Registration legal stuff / Insulation... Insulation Adventore!

Day two: operation deep dirt

today was incredibly warm. when i got home from work i put on the blue jeans that are in need of a good layer of grit and headed out to Grumbledor.

Today was scrubbing mold with bleach water day.

All the ceiling and walls.

Why does it feel so good to clean something that is so dirty?

tomorrow, (weather pending) the cleaning continues. next i shall start to sand down rust and apply Anti-Rust Spray. ARS!

Operation Deep Dirt - Day one

Meet Grumbledor...

The White Wizard Van of Infinite Mileage and Compassion:

here he is being coy behind a tree in my backyard... his new home.

I bought him from the local food co-op. He was their produce van. I wont bore you with the details of his purchase, but i feel pretty awesome about it.

He hauled organic produce around for the last decade. And the money went a co-op that I am a member of, i feel really good about that. But i feel best about finally having a van to start work on... so without further adooooooooooooooooo ... adeu?

As you can see, he is a blank slate for my new traveling home.

here is where i shall sit for 10000 miles at a time:

And here... is the first step:

opportunity
artistic shot
side door
oh boy... there's a lot of work in here...

Day one!! Operation deep dirt!

First of all, he does have some rusties... and dirties... lots of dirties. So the first step is to clean him inside and out. Bleach his wall that have spots (beginnings of mold?), get all the dirt out of the corners and... then i found this.

Gross yucky moldy scummy soaking wet insulating under the floor mats!

It had to go

mom lending a hand...

eeeeeewwwww!!

more rust... nothing a little.. a lot of purple duct tape and rustoleum and more insulation can't handle.
getting to work
i am working and working and working so hard
chad takes over documentation
rags and bleach and tooth brushes and brooms and gloves.. i had so much fun on an unusually warm day after christmas.

thanks chad.