Unfortunately for my cousin Max, his name makes a good pun – bad luck. However, it has felt like a good week for DIY, with his arrival not only giving us always welcome extra pairs of hands, but giving us a boost too. Max arrived on the Friday night and stayed till the following Friday. So he wasn’t on his own too much, myself and Chris both took off two days to work on the house, so it really felt like we got a good amount done.

We did give Max the option to rest after his long journey, but he decided to dive right in, starting by clearing the corner of the garden where the shed will go.

Later in the week he returned to the job, leveling the ground, securing gravelboards and wheelbarrowing in load after load of gravel.

On the weekend myself and Chris focused on the van, with Chris working his way through the electrics, while I cut the awkward pieces for the roof. It was exciting to have the lights and the fan finally working.

I then focused on building the kitchen units and attaching boards to the sides of the kitchen and the bed.

Chris added the worktop and began connecting up the electrics across the van.

Chris and Max removed the old lintle over the back door, propping up the wall with acro props, and inserting the concrete lintle. Once in, Max was left to rebuild the wall above and mortar everything in place. The end result is seemless with the old wall.

With the new lintle in and set, Max and Chris set about removing the old door. The frame of the back door was too rotten to save, so the whole thing had to be cut out. We’d bought a plain PVC door for this space, as it won’t be on display, as this will be our muddy boot room. Together, Max and Chris got the new door in and secured without too many issues.

Another door we’d been putting off was the doorway between the kitchen and the utility. The wonky walls, with one just plasterboard and the other solid stone, meant we’d known it was going to be a pain to do.

With a pipe running down one side of the opening, we realised the doorway would be too small if we put it on the inside of the pipe. The solution was the attach the frame above the pipe, which was fiddly. Max lent a hand with the tricky process, and eventually everything was secured in place. Chris then added the doorframe and cut the door to size.

One particularly exciting job, was the shaping of the last bit of worktop. Chris had been putting it off because it was going to be so awkward and time consuming, but in the meantime we’d had to shuffle passed the worktop taking up half the doorway to the utility. Now it’s cut to follow the cupboards it opens up the space completely.

Another annoying job that we’d been avoiding was building the boxing round the boiler in the downstairs toilet. Awkward because of all the piping on the ceiling, and the fact that the beams were at different heights, and the floor has a slight slope towards the boiler. To provide stability to the boxing I started with the cupboard next to the boiler, setting shelves at approximately the right heights for our cleaning products. Still work to do but getting there.

Between his other jobs we asked Max to replace the insulated plasterboard on the windowsills in the spare room. It had collapsed when we’d had to climb all over it when installing the windows.

I finally got a curtain pole and set of curtains up too.

My final job of the week was to start making the covers for the campervan bed. I haven’t sewn in years since I had to relearn the process. They might not be the fanciest cushions, but fine for our first few trips.

Chris and Max raised up the scaffolding up once again to install the external parts of our ventilation system.

Phew – it’s been an intense week, with everything that’s been going on, but fantastic to get round to some of those more awkward and tricky jobs. Hopefully Max has enjoyed getting stuck in to the DIY, we’ve certainly appreciated the help. Hopefully the little boost will keep us going till our trip to Norway in a few weeks. Still plenty to do in the meantime – four more cushion covers to sew for a start.