12. The epic journey that was installing the floor.

 Looking back on everything I've done so far, it's crazy how many hours have been spent working on Lorca, and (at least to me) it doesn't seem like I have a lot to show for it. All that changes today.

But before we get there, I'm going to make some bad mistakes that will waste a great deal of time, money, and effort. Let's begin!

As previously mentioned, the floor was FILTHY. 9 years of accumulated crud that was never cleaned. This pic is after I had been working in there for a few weeks, so a lot of the dirt had been kicked outside, but if you look near the walls, you get a good idea of what it looked like all over when I got it.

So step one is- deep clean.

I was actually amazed at how good it came up! But, there are a lot of areas where the paint has been scuffed away, and even though the metal is galvanised, I'm not sure if there are any places where that has been scuffed off too. So I applied rust converter to all of those areas.

This is where I made my first mistake. I mistakenly believed that rust converter just evaporates off, so I thought I could paint over it. I was wrong. Also, I should have scuffed the existing paint with a Scotch Brite pad, but I didn't do that either. So I went from this:

To this:

...using epoxy metal paint. The pic is after the first coat, but I did two coats in total within 24 hours. It didn't adhere, and it never properly dried even after a week of sunny weather. So...

I had to scrape...

it all off by hand. Once I did that, and scuffed the layer underneath, I applied two new coats. This is the stuff I used:

And I have to say, I think it came up surprisingly nicely.

Because I'm an absolute masochist though, I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I also added this:

Which meant hand scuffing the entire floor all over again!

But after all that, and two thick coats of bed liner, I ended up with a pretty tough floor (in this pic there's a lot of dust on the floor, but under that it looked very good).

Now I could finally build on top of it. To start with, I took the floor panels that came with the van, and cut them into smaller sections.

I cut the bunk area dimension off the bottom with a track saw.

Then put that section in place.

Then I cut the top off to account for the area the wooden forward bulkhead now occupies.

Then I laid out my floorboards on the ground and centred the floor panels (forward of the bunk area) on top of them.

You will notice there are some sticky-outy bits, and some other bits where there are holes under the floor panels. The plan is to cut off the sticky outy bits, and put them in the holes. But first I need to...

...trace around the floor panels, using them as a template. Then I numbered all of the floorboards in order.

Then I cut off the sticky outy bits and fit them in the holes, and cut around the outside.

Then I was able to put the old floor panels back in the van as a sub-floor, and I added the floorboards on top. I apologise for how dark it was in there when I took the next pic.

I also spent a bit of time cutting and fitting the step in, I used liquid nails to adhere it to the steel. I don't have the proper black aluminium angle pieces to cap it all off right now, and I also need to buy a new blade for my mitre saw to cut them with. So again, I will update this page when those jobs get done. I used some scrap I had laying around in the meantime, and held them in place with gaffer tape. I also cleaned out under that step area and primed and painted it, then lubricated the sliding door tracks. It still needs a door rubber replacement, as most of it is missing.

So now Lorca has a ceiling and a floor, and the difference is huge. It's nice to sit on the bunk and soak in all that faux-walnut. Both the ceiling and the floor are feeling really solid, and I just love looking at them. She's finally starting to feel like something.

See you next time!