'DON'T LOOK. DON'T LOOK. DON'T LOOK' I mutter to myself, wanting to put my hands ovre my eyes whilst Jamie lifts the black mat that covers the floor at the back of the van. I'm scared what we will find. But it was really, really stupid to start building a bed in the back of the van without checking under the floor first. I should have known.

The First Rule of #VanLife: Make Sure She's Water Tight

You see, Jamie had fixed the windscreen to stop leaks. He'd cleaned it, rust proofed it, and siliconed it. Job done. But we'd been ignoring the fact that that leaky windscreen had to leak water somewhere. We were just about to start building a cupboard when Jamie thought he'd just have a quick check of the ply floor we were building it on, which was covered in rubber matting. It wasn't good news - it was very, very mouldy and wet.

With a sigh, we unbolted the bed we'd just made (more on this in a future post) and got to work assessing the damage, which of course involved ripping up the seats and the flooring in the front. It's actually not as bad as it could be - the bulkhead is solid. The bolts you see in the bottom photo held fast.

What wasn't so good was the walk up on each side - the steps are pretty rusted through. In England, the salt they put on the roads to prevent ice is not good for cars. Jamie's sister knows a guy who can weld it for us, and we just hope he's working during lockdown. I don't really mind the extra money really - it'll mean saving a job later on down the road.

What we are going to have to source is some plywood, though, which is a bit of a pain. We also need to have THE TALK about insulating the floor as well. Do we skimp and save, or do we do a good job to start, knowing that it'll make the next person very happy or, if we keep the van for a couple of years for when we come back, it'll be all done well enough for us to tour Europe in it? Knowing us, we'll insulated it.

Lesson to all vanlifers - don't start your build until you've check the floor! You want a stable, rust free base to work on, or it's just going to cause you troubles later on down the road.

We took it to a guy up the road that was going to charge us 400 pounds for the lot. That's a lot of money for us. Luckily he put us onto another guy who gave us a sheet of metal, and we've managed to hunt down a welder and some other equipment needed to fix it. It'll be a long and ardulous job, but what else can we do?

Sigh. I guess our van will be taking a little longer to fix. At least we're in lockdown, with plenty of time to get it down. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say.

With Love,

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