Yay! What a relief. We bought a 1989 Mitsubishi Delica last week on Saturday (grey and silver for all you girls who don't really care what it is) . We paid $1800 NZD for it and we think it's a pretty good deal. We had a friend here check things out with the engine and it all seems okay so we just have to trust that it will get us from one end of this country to the other. I'll send photo's by email soon as we're finding it hard to upload anything to our blog when we have to pay for Internet. Now the real work begins. This van isn't converted into a camper so we now have to make it something we can live in for then next little while. Yikes!! Our plan is to take out the back seats, build a raised bed in the back with storage underneath and a bit of a kitchen in the back that you can access from the back door. One friend we've made here used to do upholstery and he's offered to help us make a little awning that would go over the back door so that would be our little eating area most likely. We'll let you know how it really ends up happening because there's bound to be some changes to the plan as we go along. The plan is to set it up real sweet and then sell it again before we leave. God definitely answered our prayers for this little van. It took 3 vans that we thought we were going to buy before we stumbled across this one. It ended up being a Christian family who had been praying that the right people would come along to buy their van. Pretty cool hey? The first one we were going to get the guy was a little shifty. We weren't sure we could trust him and then when John took a mechanic friend up to look at it, when they got their he told them he'd already sold it. The second van was already converted into a camper and was pretty sweet but needed a little tune up because it wouldn't start. Well when they got it to the shop we called them to ask for an honest opinion and found out that the fan belt had gone and fried the engine, woops guess we won't buy that one... Then we looked at a couple others before finding this last one.
I'm excited because now we have something to work on and a goal to get going. On Sunday John and I washed the outside and began the long job of totally cleaning out the inside. It's pretty dirty inside and has a fairly large ding in the sliding door that needs fixing. The first few days we were just cleaning, mostly ripping out the insides of this van and starting new. We found more and more food and dirt and money and all kinds of things the further down we went in the van. Yuck. The family we bought it from had 9 kids so we definitely noticed the dirtiness. Anyways, after we got it all cleaned out we began the long job of putting it all back together. We've had many "Where did this piece come from?" moments already so we know this should be really interesting. Some of the plastic trim on the inside was really banged up and quite dirty/sun-bleached. I decided that we should paint it so we bought some paint on Monday so I could paint them up. It looks pretty sweet now that I'm done. We also bought the lumber on Monday so John started cutting up the pieces to make the bed and interior. Next we need to pick out new material for curtains and new upholstery type material to redo some of the paneling in the back. We're having fun and I can tell already that it will be hard to part with this van when it's all said and done. Oh well.
It's now been just over one week of work on this little van and we have the frame for the bed made and in and we drew up the detailed plans for the rest. Today and next week we should be able to finish and get going mid week. I'm excited to see how this has all come together. It will be fun to see how long it actually takes us. We've had some pretty good ideas (we think) and I'm excited to give them a try and see how good they really are. For example, the bed in the back of the van converts into a couch that about 3 people could sit on and there will be a table in the floor that comes apart when it's not needed. The dilemma was that our bed was then made up of 6 cushions which we thought wouldn't be very comfortable for sleeping on. We decided we would buy a foam topper to go over all the bottom cushions but then how do you work out putting sheets on the bottom??? We decided to make like a pillowcase out of sheets that goes over the topper that will be our bottom sheet. The foam topper and sheets will then roll out of the way quite easily when it's time to make the bed into a couch. :) We shall see how it actually works.
On a more somber side of things, the friend that I spoke of that used to do upholstery, on Monday afternoon had an accident here at the camp. He was spraying for weeds on the quad and was driving slowly along a steep bank looking backwards to see where he was spraying and the grass kind of covered up an area that had sluffed a little. The quad tipped over the bank and threw him down the hill. He looked up to see the quad rolling down towards him but couldn't move out of the way and it landed on him and then continued down the hill, leaving him with a lot of pain. In the end it worked out that he broke 5 little bones in his back that some muscles attach to right above the pelvis. John helped carry him from the bank up the hill on a stretcher while they waited for the ambulance. It really shook everyone up and we were so glad to see him up and about today. Praise God, it could have been so much worse.
I'm excited because now we have something to work on and a goal to get going. On Sunday John and I washed the outside and began the long job of totally cleaning out the inside. It's pretty dirty inside and has a fairly large ding in the sliding door that needs fixing. The first few days we were just cleaning, mostly ripping out the insides of this van and starting new. We found more and more food and dirt and money and all kinds of things the further down we went in the van. Yuck. The family we bought it from had 9 kids so we definitely noticed the dirtiness. Anyways, after we got it all cleaned out we began the long job of putting it all back together. We've had many "Where did this piece come from?" moments already so we know this should be really interesting. Some of the plastic trim on the inside was really banged up and quite dirty/sun-bleached. I decided that we should paint it so we bought some paint on Monday so I could paint them up. It looks pretty sweet now that I'm done. We also bought the lumber on Monday so John started cutting up the pieces to make the bed and interior. Next we need to pick out new material for curtains and new upholstery type material to redo some of the paneling in the back. We're having fun and I can tell already that it will be hard to part with this van when it's all said and done. Oh well.
It's now been just over one week of work on this little van and we have the frame for the bed made and in and we drew up the detailed plans for the rest. Today and next week we should be able to finish and get going mid week. I'm excited to see how this has all come together. It will be fun to see how long it actually takes us. We've had some pretty good ideas (we think) and I'm excited to give them a try and see how good they really are. For example, the bed in the back of the van converts into a couch that about 3 people could sit on and there will be a table in the floor that comes apart when it's not needed. The dilemma was that our bed was then made up of 6 cushions which we thought wouldn't be very comfortable for sleeping on. We decided we would buy a foam topper to go over all the bottom cushions but then how do you work out putting sheets on the bottom??? We decided to make like a pillowcase out of sheets that goes over the topper that will be our bottom sheet. The foam topper and sheets will then roll out of the way quite easily when it's time to make the bed into a couch. :) We shall see how it actually works.
On a more somber side of things, the friend that I spoke of that used to do upholstery, on Monday afternoon had an accident here at the camp. He was spraying for weeds on the quad and was driving slowly along a steep bank looking backwards to see where he was spraying and the grass kind of covered up an area that had sluffed a little. The quad tipped over the bank and threw him down the hill. He looked up to see the quad rolling down towards him but couldn't move out of the way and it landed on him and then continued down the hill, leaving him with a lot of pain. In the end it worked out that he broke 5 little bones in his back that some muscles attach to right above the pelvis. John helped carry him from the bank up the hill on a stretcher while they waited for the ambulance. It really shook everyone up and we were so glad to see him up and about today. Praise God, it could have been so much worse.
Well that's a brief summary of the last week and a bit, sorry it took so long to get this up. I know you've all been dying to know what has happened with us lately.
- Andrea
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