Paint makes vans go faster.

We had hoped to be able to paint Little Foot while in Salmon and followed quite a few leads to find a place to do it indoors (so we could protect it and heat it to get the paint to cure properly). After some back and forth, we finally thought we had a spot lined up via an old friend of my dad. When the morning came, we loaded up the supplies (including tarps to cover anything nearby since we decided to go the "easy" spray paint route this time around) and headed over to the spot.

Salmon, ID, refuses to not be pretty.

Plan A foiled. On to plan B.

Unfortunately for us, the garage bay (that happened to be on the lot of a government agency) was for use by employees only. But because God was watching out for us, one of the other gentlemen at the lot offered us the use of his personal garage, just up the road. He mentioned it was outfitted with a paint booth, and we couldn't say yes fast enough!

The owner of the workshop mentioned we'd have to move a project out of the way. He didn't mention it was a home-built, 5.7L Corvette-powered hotrod!

Think short thoughts! We barely fit. You can see the exhaust fan on the left side of the garage door.

We pulled the wood stove's draft cap off the chimney, slid Little foot into the garage, dropped the paint booth's walls. and got to work on prep. The most important part of any paint project is preparation. Between cleaning, sanding, and taping, the preparation should take at least 1/2 the time allotted for the project. 

Tape tape tape.

After everything was taped, we coated Little Foot with automotive primer. A solid coat of primer should keep the original paint from seeping through, as well as allow for strong adhesion of the new paint.

We turned Little Foot into the Tin Man!

After priming we started in on the top coat. We had wanted something simple, so we chose an aluminum gloss paint, thinking it would be a muted silver. We were WAY off! The paint was darn close to a mirror finish. We had turned our matte green steed into the Tin Man, and we were worried. Little Foot looked comical, and not the good kind of comical. In an effort to tone down the silver, we decided to quickly add original, olive drab racing stripes. For what may be the first time in automotive history, racing stripes were added to a vehicle to make it look less ridiculous. 

I'm just posing. Chelsea did all the geometry work on the stripes. I think they look great!

Clear coat misery.

After finishing the racing stripes we decided to clear coat Little Foot to add some protection to the paint. About half a can in, Chelsea noticed that the clear coat was causing the aluminum paint to run. It looked terrible! After inspecting the warning labels on the clear coat, we read "DO NOT USE ON ALUMINUM FINISHES." Oops. Luckily, we realized that we weren't suppose to use the clear coat on aluminum finishes because it reduces the reflective qualities of the paint, effectively removing the sheen. This was an enormous blessing to us, because it muted the super shiny paint job, and left us with a gentle silver finish. Perfect! All our mistakes turned into one decent, cheap paint job.

So now Little Foot looks a lot faster, and a lot less like an army van, which was exactly why we painted him in the first place. We really didn't want to travel over any borders looking like a lost band of paramilitary soldiers. We may get robbed as tourists, but at least we won't be posing as something we're not.

Two weeks later…we've made HUGE progress!

Sorry for the nearly two weeks in delayed posts, but we've made HUGE progress and it's time to update! I got punched in the chest with a massive cold a week and a half ago, which took me out of circulation for literally anything beyond a quick get-out-of-bed-and-critique-Christian's-carpentry-skills-and-decisions before I circled back into bed and under the influence of cold and cough medicine.

Hiding spot!

That being said, Christian made a ton of great progress while I was under the weather and when I was finally able to muster up enough energy to be upright for more than ten minutes, we started screaming through the build together.

Bedside clothing storage.

A very specific fire was lit under us when we got word that the potential buyer we'd been in touch with about Stubbs the Bus was coming out to visit on the 13th, so we knew we wanted to be well on our way to moving into Little Foot by then.

More hiding spots!

Our big projects to complete to get it move-in-ready were the storage on the driver's side of the bed for our clothing and the kitchen shelves/storage area. We built a shelf that would be the perfect depth for those standard fabric boxes you can buy at Walmart, thinking they'd be the perfect solution for clothing storage.

The same bedroom clothing storage, nearly installed.

The kitchen was mostly just a series of shelves with some slide-out counter space. The upper part is the backing of the shelving unit for our clothing storage beside the bed.

Kitchen, sliding spaces hidden.

Kitchen, sliding spaces exposed.

With the bed folded down into the "sleeping" position, the shelf looked great and it was all starting to come together.

A big finishing touch we needed to get done before moving in was painting all the wood. We opted to not go with stain because we would've needed more than one step (stain, sand, stain, sand, polyurethane…) to make it look like we would want it to, and we didn't get great quality of wood, so it wouldn't have turned out amazingly clean looking. Our other option was paint, and I'd had my heart set on a color since we were leaving the box interior the stark white that it came to us in. We considered grey for a heartbeat, but in the end navy blue won out. However, if you've ever been paint shopping, you know that there are hundreds of different shades of each color, so we didn't know how to narrow down our navy choice after staring at paint chips in the stores. Luckily, one of them was named Epic Adventure, so our decision was made for us.

After painting the shelf I was fairly convinced I'd made a huge color choice mistake. 

After the whole structure was painted, I was equal parts disappointed and optimistic that I could save it with filling it with our stuff. Choosing colors is tough.

I'm still of the opinion that it might be a little light for my taste and that stain might have suited it better, but it's done and painted now, so the would've could've should've's get to be buried as we continue the project with it coated in Epic Adventure blue. 

Super cheap tension-rod-and-brace storage solution. Remember kids, always rig to drive.

Beginning to load our stuff into Little Foot really made a difference. As soon as we put some fabric cubes and books into the shelves we noticed it starting to feel less "cartoony" and more homey. I may always regret my paint color choice just a little, but it'll have to do.

One of the coolest things about the box that is on our Pinzgauer is that it was originally a workshop for the Swiss Army. It was originally filled to the brim with shelving and drawers, many of which actually ended up in our hands when we purchased it. We couldn't stand to not reuse some of the original drawers, so we have slowly been finding ways to incorporate them within our structure.

Even more hiding spots!

So we've made progress but nothing is anywhere near done yet. We know we're halfway through the build marathon, and there will be more later. Stay tuned!