Our New Zealand Adventure: HOW OUR CAMPERVAN TOFIK WAS BORN...

So when we bought our van it looked like this:

There was a bed in it, some horrible curtains on horrible yellow strings and some plastic baskets attached to the front.

There was also a carpet on the ceiling and we couldn't understand why until we took it down and saw that a big part of the ceiling was missing the foam and fabric and it was just rusty metal… Oh well…

We took that bed out (managed to sell it on trademe.co.nz), measured the van, came up with some projects on paper, made a looong shopping list and zoomed to Bunnings Warehouse.

Time to spend some money :-)

Rob on a serious shopping mission

Our mission to build our super-van Tofik had begun…

First Rob insisted that we had to sand everything as much as we could so we got to it.

Big thanks to Hoon for helping us with this unpleasant task :-)

After that we painted the floor :)

Then we painted the metal elements in our bedroom/kitchen-to-be :-)

It was quite a messy job using up quite a few spray paint cans…

When we finished with the painting, it was about time to start building the bed - the main piece of furniture in our little home, which is also a sofa and a wardrobe at the same time :)

There was a lot of screws to be put in and without many tools it was a slow and painful process. We were lucky to get a chance to borrow some tools from Mike (cheers Mike!) and later on we even found a drill that we could borrow off Bryce (thank you!) :-)

After a few days (weeks?...) of cutting plywood, sanding edges, screwing pieces together, putting brackets and hinges on, glueing bits together, laughing and swearing we finally had our bed sorted. Rob is here presenting how it works :-)

The last screw goes in and the bed/sofa/wardrobe is finished :-)

This is how it opens - the wardrobe still empty at that point :)

Should we close it into the sofa version or fold it out into the bed? :-)

This is how the sofa becomes the bed :-)

Bedroom complete :-D

OK, time for the kitchen! :-)

Our idea was to have some kitchen storage space on the bottom level

then the next level would be designated for some everyday food/drinks/small dishes etc

and also it would be our "working" space where we could cook when

the doors to this level become a bench :-)

And it works just as planned :-)

What's for dinner tonight? ;-)

My turn (again?!) to cook something...

Rob helping "in the kitchen"

After all that was done, we were happy as we knew that the hardest part was over :-D

Next there was time for some details / improvements :-)

So we painted the kitchen cupboards blue and filled them with all kinds of boxes, baskets and kitchen stuff :-)

Thanks to Lyn we can even keep some food in proper air-tight containers :-D

We made some extra shelves for the front of our bedroom

(just in front of the bed on one side)

The entry to our bedroom/living room

Our little bedroom shelves are very handy - we cook on them when it rains ;-)

We got ourselves some stuff sacks to go on the rail behind the seats (very handy and useful)

Stuff sacks in different colours and sizes

We bought lots of storage boxes matching our storage spaces ;-)

We also bought a lock box and screwed it inside the big storage box (under-bed space) so we can store our valuables securely (meaning: our passports really…)

Our wardrobe and the lock box

Huge lock box to keep our passports safe :-) We stuff it with other things to save space :-)

We bought a big foam mattress, cut it into two bits of needed size, then we got some material to use as a mattress cover and some more material for the new curtains.

We made our own mattress covers! And our own curtains! That was thanks to lovely Claire who we borrowed a sawing machine from for weeks. Thank you, Claire :-)

We also got some cargo netting and fitted it on the side on the ceiling

so it gives us extra storage space.

We also got a special fabric to cover the missing bit on the ceiling and covered the board on the back door with our curtain material, so it looks a little bit nicer :-)

We fitted some lights on the ceiling, so that we can see / read in the evening when it gets dark.

Also in the wooden storage box covering the left wheel arch we keep our camping chairs (so we can enjoy our dinner outside in the evening) and a little fridge (so we can enjoy cold beer with our dinner) - the fridge cable reaches all the way to the cigarette lighter :-)

Later on, when we met with the sandflies on the South Island, we realised that we really needed some extra protection from those beasts, so we also got some mosquito netting and fitted that in our windows and at the back of the van :-)

Mosquito netting at the back - we do truly hate sandflies! :-P

Rob also created an additional protection device (using some leftover foam, mattress material and the sawing machine) for the tow bar at the back of the van.

We put it on when using the back shelves and it keeps us from getting any further bruises when walking into the tow bar ;-)