The Adventures Of Busabella

Once upon a time, not too long ago nor very far away, a day out turned into a bit of a mad adventure....

Around a month ago my husband Rob and I were feeling pretty flat. Our plans to extend the rear of our home hadn't come together and we had no choice but to go back to the drawing board. Neither of us had much enthusiasm for this as it had taken a year to get to this point and now we were faced with starting the process with builders and architects all over again.

We decided to go for a day out to get away from it all and chose a place that I had heard was rather wonderful called Sculpture by the Lakes, near Blandford in Dorset. On the way we were chatting about our lack of motivation to move forward with the plans and I jokingly said;

"ha ha ha, lets spend the money on a campervan and go have some fun!"

Fifteen minutes later we were pulling into the car park at Sculpture on the Lakes and stopped next to a very cool vintage VW camper. I pointed it out to Rob and then spotted a "for sale" sign in the rear window, and quipped "We could buy that!".

Some hours later we were walking back to the car, having had a wonderful day at this amazing place and there was the owner packing his van up to leave. We got talking..... and 3 days later on the 6th of June we were driving her back from Weymouth - the 1984 VW T25 Autohomes Campervan was ours!

The van was mechanically in good order and had a new MOT. A lot of money had recently been spent on it, but the interior was in pretty bad shape. It still had the original brown upholstery and nasty orange carpet, both of which were really grotty. Many of the cupboard sections were damaged or badly watermarked. It was definitely a "project".

We had 2 choices; live with the grim interior and use the van through the summer, beginning the renovation in the winter OR......run at it and get her ship shape as fast as possible so we didn't miss the summer. We chose the latter. So began three and a half exhausting weeks where we threw ourselves at the project in every spare moment.

Firstly, we had to dismantle the entire interior and work out exactly what needed to be done. Rob has rebuilt cars before and is a pretty good self taught mechanic. My skills are sewing, crafts and I have done a bit of simple upholstery in the past. Having stripped out the interior it had to go somewhere and it gradually began to fill up the house, expanding from one bedroom, to the entire dining table, then part of the breakfast bar and into the lounge at various points. This was a pretty good incentive to crack on with the job so that we could have our house back! Luckily the weather was kind and allowed us to work in the garden doing some of the really messy jobs, but the house was still a state for a month.

The van had new sills and wheel arches before we bought it (rust being the big issue with 1980's vehicles!). Having stripped out the van, Rob found that they hasn't been treated to protect them against rusting again, so he sprayed them with a good coat of Waxoil to seal them. He replaced all of the insulation wadding with modern materials, simplified the cab wiring and did lots of bits and pieces like making all of the dashboard lights work properly. He also got the fridge working on both 12 volt and gas. The wooden floor was also damaged so he replaced this. There were lots of bits of the interior cabinets that were broken, so he cut new pieces out in the garden. It was boiling hot and thankfully dry, but the garden looked like it had been snowing with all the sawdust!

While all this was going on, I was ploughing ahead with my jobs. Firstly I stripped all of the usable cabinet panels.

 I found a great Fablon type vinyl called DC Fix in a cool, beachy distressed wood effect. Having sanded the panels, I then covered most of them and painted the inside of the cupboards white so that they were fresh. Also this made it much lighter inside the cupboards so that it was easier to see items in there. The remaining panels were painted a toning grey shade.

We had ordered some new light grey knock in edging strip, but it was too thick for the 1984 grooves. The old edging strip was a grimy brown colour, but I tried spraying it with grey plastic primer and this worked well so that we could use the original knock in.

Next I stripped down all of the rock and roll bed sections. The fabric was really grubby and old, but the foam was pretty good. I vacuumed it thoroughly, sprayed it with Dettol Apple Spray disinfectant and wrapped it in a layer of 8oz flameproof wadding. Then I cut new pattern pieces from a 9 metre roll end of beautiful, pale grey chenille fabric that was a £34 eBay bargain.

Years ago in my former house, we had unearthed a long forgotten, ancient industrial Singer sewing machine left behind by a previous occupant. This turned out to be an absolute godsend. I set it up on a table outside as it was ragingly hot indoors and it worked - hoorah! The most difficult part of the

re upholstery was attaching the cushion to the wooden back of the rear seat, as the pad slipped out of place easily when being stapled in with the nail gun. I had to pull the staples and start again once as I wasn't happy with the fit, but it was worth the extra work. We were really pleased with the results.

We had decided to cover the floor with lino and we found a smashing grey wood effect offcut in our local flooring shop. The store owner turned out to also have an old T25 and charged us a bargain £20! Rob fitted it and it looked great. First bit back in the van! Rob was also cracking on with replacing the decaying interior lining with a lovely grey stretch felted carpet made for lining vans. Things were starting to look seriously good!

Rob started rebuilding the finished cupboards and bed. This seems

so easy when you say it, but was a seriously difficult! Various catches and hinges were rusty and had to be replaced, then all the cupboard doors needed to be hung straight. The rock and roll bed / rear seat back didn't seem very safe to us as it was held in place by 2 small bolts and Rob found a stronger replacement by cutting down 2 brass doorstops. He is a very resourceful chap!

 Meanwhile I was slogging it out under the beating sun making curtains, tie backs with covered buttons, bunting and new cushions. I had found the most beautiful (pricey!) fabrics, but managed to get a discount from my local store (thank you BR Textiles).

So just 3 weeks and 4 days after we bought Busabella, we were ready to take her out on a first trip! So here she is in her full glory.

Bit different huh? We still have work to do, but for now we shall just enjoy the summer in our beautiful Busabella. Please follow the blog to read about our adventures in our T25.