I removed the cushioned bed head, moved the bedside light over as far as i could and painted this wall. I also repaired the damage on the side wall caused by storing things under the bed and painted this too, because we also had big plans for the bed.

Our intention has been to do something with the bed from the very first time we used the van back in 2007, but the dilemma has always been what to do. Caravan beds are an odd size, slightly smaller than a double bed and due to the small market they are also very expensive.

We have always wanted to put a sofa bed into the caravan as it seems silly to fill 1/3 of the van with a bed that isn’t being used during the day. But this in itself was a problem, most sofa beds are uncomfortable, dimensions needed to be exact to fit and finally we needed to be able to get it inside via the narrow 600mm door.
This is where IKEA came to the rescue they have a Sofa bed that just fitted and came in flat pack so could be assembled one inside. The tolerances were so close with things like the internal wheel arch that we were still not sure if would fit without modification until it was in place, assembled and folded out.

One issue that has been on going for a while now has been the small triangular piece of carpet up near the front seats of the caravan; it gets/is putrid and impossible to clean.
The only option was to pull this piece of carpet up and replace the flooring but I couldn’t figure out what to use on the floor. I thought about lino but it is very expensive, there is huge amount of waste and would involve a massive amount of cutting. (the original lino was put down before any cupboards etc are built into the van).
Another option was the laminate timber look flooring, this was cheaper than lino and had far less wastage but it lifted the floor level up 5mm plus and would require timber quad to be cut right around the edge to hold it in place.
Whilst over a Peter and Anna’s the other weekend Peter mentioned self adhesive lino tiles and straight away I new we had a solution to our flooring needs. After a few samples we finally settled on an imitation cork tile, it is the right color and fits into the “era” of the van.
It took less than 3 hours to do the floors in the van once the old lino was cut out and removed; it had almost zero wastage and cost only $60 to do.

Next on the agenda is to make a bunk bed and to make a hinged swing out coffee table for our new sofa bed lounge room.