Refurbishing the Snail: Plywood floor Part 2

Installing a plywood floor is not an “easy peasy” job; you have to deal with the different curves that a van like this one has.

Even though we striated the planks, it’s not always easy to get the curve right or to properly screw in the plywood. The pieces that were framing the Savpropeana don’t always stay in one piece, and sometimes you can make a mistake when cutting it, and the plank blocks your view of what’s behind it. When this happens, you end up putting your screw into thin air. However, as the work moved forward, it was gratifying to see at the end of the day that we did make progress in spite of the swear words that escaped our lips.

A picture’s worth a thousand words, so we are giving you a plethora of words. We put around 3-4 days of work into it, at our modest speed. It is surprising to see how easy it is to fill up big spaces quickly with plywood, but the smaller nooks and crannies are the most difficult, and take the most time. There are lots of indigestible curves for the Sunday workers that we are.

The most important parts of the sheet metal installation are finished, we just have small parts of the job to do which we can fill in as we go along. It is still a mystery to us how we are going to fill in the areas close to the windows because those spaces are difficult to get at, and we don’t know what to use: wood or fabric? We have maximized what we are able to do, and it’s enough for us to continue. As we do so, the present questions will be answered. We will eventually get to a point where it will be imperative to answer them!

Also published on Medium.