Mignon - The Restoration of a 1979 Bedford Camper

Yep, that's right. The old van is starting to look as if someone could live in it! Most of the wallpaper is up (although Magnox has got to spend some time with the roof boards). It's a light blue - there is very little choice for bathroom/kitchen papers that don't have fish or carrots on them.

This is definitely a Summer project, not ideal doing it in a Scottish near-winter where the hours of darkenss are ever encroaching! But a good light and heater and the job was done. I could go on about the had work that Orangeblossom has done on the van so far - so I will! All hail the Orangeblossom!  I have to finish the wallpaper off in the shower room and ceiling and I have never done that before. Should be a laugh.

So here is Pippin singing the praises of the new wallpaper (insert your own caption if you want). Him and Polo were curiously absent whilst there was work to be done:

So you want to see a before picture? OK then:

An improvement, wouldn't you say?

And how long do you think Magnox is going to have his tools as neat as this? Answers on a postcard...

Ha! That'll teach you perverted Google searchers.

Old knobs

New knobs

Hello, Mrs Magnox here again. Yes, the lining paper is going up and is making a big difference to the interior. However, it is tricky to put up the round windows and shelves. Well done Orangeblossom! Here is a before and after photo. The wallpaper (which is going on tomorrow) will make a huge difference.

I'll leave the honour of posting the 'after' pictures to my wife who is doing all the hard work at the moment. I've just watched an elephant walk past me with a tree trunk in its errr trunk, which is not something you usually see in the early evening hours...

Just an idea of what we (didn't realise !) were taking on. Click on any to enlarge.

I have a suspicion I will not be allowed to do a project like this again... either that, or I'll have to learn how to sew and wallpaper !

Yup, it was worse than we thought. At some point the seals between the camper body walls and roof had given up the will to live and had let in water. It's been properly fixed with a very nice fibreglass repair, but the extent of the damage was not evident until we had pulled the roof and wall boards away from the joists.

Old campers and caravans were built in a very similar fashion to timber-framed houses, and the water had spread to many of the joists, and then worked its way down the walls. End of wood.

5 days of stripping wood you could put your finger through, bench-sawing, cutting, grinding, shaping, filling, glueing... it's not difficult, but takes days of work. We also discovered that one of the shower walls was so rotten, the slightest slip would have sent you through a splintering, rotten, horribly-papered wall of gangrene nastiness. Solution - hit with hammer until wall is no more. Replace.

We don't have the time to do this properly and there are still areas which are not great. The real solution is to strip the interior completely and start again with everything from scratch - new cupboards, units, everything, but this will last another 10 years. I hope !

Front brakes still don't work properly either...

More photos to come when I'm back from a tough week on an Indian beach. We work hard you know....

This is Mrs Magnox here, with my first Mignon post. Orangeblossom has come up to help with the 'cosmetics' of the van interior this week and things have moved along...

On close inspection some areas of the roof were quite damp (well, the timbers were more like sponge) so they had to be taken down and new mdf put up (that was a bugger of a job to hold that in place over the top of the cab). I'm sure Magnox will fill you in on that (however, a 10 day holiday work trip to India beckoned for Magnox, so we are getting stuck in).

But I often wonder - who are the people who go into Homebase or B&Q or whatever, and think 'No, I won't get that lovely pattern or colour, I'll buy the most disgusting and hideous wallpaper/paint/material that I find. That will be just perfect!'. We have found some very worrying choices whilst stripping off the outer layer of wallpaper.

So we are being a bit more tasteful with our decor, a nice blue with a lovely navy blue tartan for the cushions. Pa will like it, and here is Orangeblossom up to some stitchery* in the dining room:

* a craft I do not have and never will possess. All hail the Orangeblossom.