a visit with the rents.

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The rafting season has officially taken off, so our time with the Campbulance has been limited to brainstorming ideas for future improvements that will have to happen when our days get a bit less crazy.

My parents and grandparents visited a few weeks ago, so they finally got to meet Campbulance in person. Christian and I were both excited to pick my grandpa's brain about the electrical system (he's a seasoned RVer).

I think everyone was excited to see it in person, especially given the fact that the last house on wheels they saw me purchase was a 1979 Ford Econoline conversion van that had seen much better days.

Tell us again why this is a good idea?

Tell us again why this is a good idea?

Describing our plans for the kitchen area.

Describing our plans for the kitchen area.

Grandpa dropping some serious electrical panel knowledge on Christian.

Grandpa dropping some serious electrical panel knowledge on Christian.

I'm going on working eight days in a row that doesn't look like it will end anytime soon (which is a welcome issue after having gone a month without work between the seasons). Christian has been busy qualifying as a Class IV river guide, so between the two of us, we're not too hopeful much work will be happening on Campbulance until the season starts winding down in August.

Until then, hopefully we'll be able to order some much needed parts so they're ready when we finally do find the time to work on it.

subflooring in.

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As our summer jobs finally start to pick up (Christian guides rafts and I photograph them), we're finding ourselves with less and less time to dedicate to Campbulance. We knew this would happen, but it's made progress slow.

We were finally able to finish cutting and installing the new subflooring during our last afternoon off together.

Laying glue down.

Pounding the new flooring into place.

Custom glue-job. We spared no expense.

We decided we'd lay down glue AND screws into the new flooring as to give ourselves ample reason to never again remove the flooring. If some poor schmucks decide that 22 years from now, it needs removal, well, good luck, because we didn't make it easy on them.

Given the less than regular cuts we had to make to remove the old flooring, we had some gaps and cracks to fill before calling it good. We'll probably do a once-over with a hand sander before laying down the laminate flooring, but for now, we're calling it good.

new plates and no lettering!

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With one of Christian's recent and few morning's off, we finally got around to registering the Campbulance in Colorado. We'd been driving around with quickly deteriorating 30-day temporary Ohio plates since the first of May, so our time was running out. After a few stops and fees paid, Campbulance is officially a Colorado gal.

With only a little bit of the vinyl lettering remaining, we got to work in the hot sunshine (when it comes off most easily) to get the rest off. Turns out, the worst part of the vinyl removal was the fact that we'd left the painter's tape on for the better part of a month. As you can see in the following photos, the painter's tape has dried onto the Campbulance and left it's dried and crumbling mark. We're hoping a hot soapy bath and some elbow grease will take the rest of it off. In the meantime, at least all the lettering is off.

With the vinyl removed, we were able to see the ghost of the lettering from when Campbulance was an actual rescue vehicle. I could make out only a few words, but paired with some Googling, I was able to find out that its original home was Lambertville - New Hope in PA/NJ. We'd actually come within 40 miles of it on our big road trip out east, which I thought was pretty cool. Christian thinks we should have them sell another decommissioned ambulance to T-Dubs to hold onto for 7 years and we'll go get that one for a future conversion to add to our fleet.

- Chelsea

me special.

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We bought a fairly large portion of astroturf to cut to fit as a temporary flooring while we strip the old flooring up. Knowing we'd probably eventually haul some kayaks and other outdoor gear in the future, we figured it could also be used as a protective covering in those instances.

We'd had so many people say we should turn it into a putting green that we went to the nearby thrift store during a break to grab a few putters and golf balls.

The old laminate has proven to be a monster to remove. We've spent hours upon hours scraping and sanding the old floor to try and get it down to just wood to treat it and cover it back up with a secondary sub flooring before we put laminate over it.

While Christian worked away at the flooring, I painted the back wall of linoleum to see how it'd look in a warmer tone other than the grey that covers most of the surfaces. It's amazing what a difference a coat of paint can do for a space.

Cutting the astroturf.

After hours of scraping, we'd hit a wall with the floor and decided to put the astroturf in and get to work on removing the vinyl lettering on the outside (something that's been bugging me for quite a while).

This proved to be another tedious job since we want to keep the orange vinyl stripe and much of the lettering was on top of that. For that reason, we chose to forgo the use of a heat gun and work to pull it off using the heat of the sun.

We made fairly good progress and worked until the sun went down. We didn't finish the task completely, but instead left a few remaining characters and called it a night.

- Chelsea

bedtime.

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The biggest initial project we wanted to tackle within the Campbulance was building the bed. The current bench seat and pad was too narrow and we eventually want to add a hinged component to make the bed sleepable for two. The first step in this process was to remove the old bench seat and prep the area for the new bed.

If you look at the bottom of the bench seat that Christian is pulling out, you can see the gurney hardware below the bench. We plan to use a similar slide-out metal arm to add support to the foldout double bed option.

Checking out some of the hardware in the bench seat.

Removing more of the linoleum from the wall.

As with every project we've undertaken so far, there's always a further complication. Since the linoleum on the walls and floor are so old, they don't like to come off cleanly. Because of that, we've tried to leave the linoleum everywhere that it's fairly intact and not bubbling up or peeling away from the walls.

The next step was to cut a new bench seat. We did some measuring and decided on 22" wide to provide a deeper seat and sufficient sleeping space without protruding too much more into the living space or being too deep to comfortably sit on.

Our biggest goal has been to use whatever existing hardware we get from the Campbulance to save time and money. We put the heavy duty piano hinge from the old bench right back onto the new one and secured the new bed in place. 

It was a perfect fit and after spending all day working on it, was incredibly satisfying to see a project (at least halfway) finished. Since we haven't quite figured out how we want to integrate the foldout layer of the bed, we'll leave the second half of the project for later while we tackle the rest of the Campbulance projects.

A bed!