Thanks teeots! Right now I have to strap car seats into those buckets, since the kids are so small... but eventually will be able to use them on their own.
Some more pics of the interior, since I spent most of the spring building it (mostly in the evenings when the kids went to bed, with an increasing percentage of weekends as our road trip departure date approached) and so want to show it to as many people as I can
The layout has a dinette in the back that converts to a bed. Last year I just had some wood boards that spanned the middle, and the seat cushions pulled down over those. But my wife HATED dealing with the boards, and having two equally-sized cushions meant a seam in the middle that our hips would fall into, so that they'd get sore from the lack of padding.
This year completely rebuilt them so that one side pulls right out on heavy-duty slides. The benches have the cushions split into thirds so that there's no seam in the middle.
We can easily get into the sliding box when the bed is up or down.
Like last year, all of the wood is no-added-formaldehyde (uses a soy adhesive) and the dinette/bed cushions are natural latex.
In all of these pics, the interior isn't completed. I didn't get to finish the wall paneling - it's amazingly time-intensive to get the panels to fit well together around all of the curves. But I made some big breakthroughs and will do the finish work over the winter.
I have the cabinets mostly finished, curtains up, dividing curtain for the cab and bug curtains for the side doors done, and some warm-white LED lights wired and installed.
We have to work a bit on getting our fabric colors right
I under-ordered on the main fabric for the bed upholstery, so my wife was up late on the last few days before the trip sewing with leftover materials!
Also finally got the 120 volt and 12 volt systems wired up nice and clean, with proper distribution panels. Next step is to move the stereo and the PH top lights over to the house battery from the starting battery.
The fridge is a Nova Kool 3.5 cubic foot, which is a fantastic fridge. Almost silent, and fits a TON of food/beer/wine/etc
We just finished 10 days in the van on the way down to the SF Bay area, with everything working amazingly well. Now three days in a hotel (so much space!!) and then another week of camping to get home.
We'll be at SMB West later this week for an Aluminess rear bumper with the big storage box, on which I have pinned all of my hopes of an uncluttered interior
The free space under the van will eventually go to water tanks.
It's coming together!!
Cheers,
Mike.
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