I know! Let’s makeover the caravan!

A quick makeover that quickly turned into a complete renovation and overhaul of a Millard Caravan circa 1970.

Part One

This year, on January 4 – I started the #100daysof10 project. It was put together by my talented friend and photographer Willy Wilson of Life Unstill Photography.

The aim was to spend ten minutes each day, doing something worthwhile for 100 days. Simple right?

For my project, I decided to rope in the family and restore an old Millard Caravan from around the 1970s (if anyone knows the actual year model, feel free to let me know in the comments). We lovingly named her MAVIS.

This project is largely based on Instagram (jgimagesbathurst) and you can find myself and the other people involved under the hashtag #100daysoften and mine specifically with #100daysofMavis.  I’ve really enjoyed this project so far, mostly because of the time it’s meant we have spent as a family working on the project together. From the little jobs to the bigger ones.

You can see what we started out with:

This was the original interior:

We had to remove the entire interior. As with projects like this, once we discovered one fault in the van, we discovered several more. We had a major leak, we had major parts of the flooring to replace and we also had parts of the cupboard that needed removing. What we thought was a quick “paint job” has turned into so much more. It’s working towards a common goal together, which is family holidays away in this beat up van of ours.

I’ve used my iPhone to capture this project because it’s a quick way to shoot and share what’s going on. Although I’ve got behind in posting lately, we’ve still be spending out ten minutes with the van each day either discussing, cleaning, thinking, looking, researching and just enjoying the process, which means we are making progress.

Often, it’s just a bit of pinterest research to check out styles, often I am fitting my ten minutes in when I’m running other errands.

It has been important for us to do this as frugally as possible, so that’s also limited our time on it, because we haven’t wanted to inject huge amounts of money into this van, rather do things as they come about and as time and money allows. I’m always on the search for a bargain or sale for the things we need whether it is paint of flooring.

At the stage of these photos, we were just about to complete the flooring, so that we could lay vinyl and paint. We also had to fix the windows. There is much more to share, but for now, if you would like to see more, jump onto Instagram and find me – jgimagesbathurst – and follow the journey, we are in the final 25 days of the project.

What have I learned so far?

Working with my family is more fun than I thought, even the three year olds love the caravan and are right into helping us choose what to do next. They’ve helped by passing tools, sweeping floors and collecting rubbish to be thrown out. It’s amazing how much work you can get done with all hands on deck. I’ve also learned that renovating an old caravan involves a lot of cleaning and scrubbing, and I do a lot of procrastinating on those jobs. Ha!!

You can find Part Two of this renovation project here!

Let me know your thoughts below!