We have had a very satisfactory day.
We have installed three whole windows in our exciting camper van project.
I attach a picture, which shows three windows, although only the two at the back went in today, the other new one is on the other side of the van.
There are two more windows to go. These will go on the back at either side of the bed headboard. We have not organised these yet, that is to say, although we have purchased the windows and started building their frames, the bed headboard turned out to be bigger than I remembered it and so we have got to measure it all again and cut out some more bits.
This is not the end of the world. We have already got an enormous hole to fill in, where the old window was once, and there is another hole to be hacked out for the door into the tool cupboard under the bed.
I am aware that you are probably not very interested in these details, but it is the sort of thing that I will like to remember when I come back to these pages in ten years’ time. Every now and again I read some of the old entries, which usually makes me very glad that we have finished doing whatever ghastly nightmare project we were engaged in at the time. Some things are better left behind the softening veil of time.
Today’s activities also turned into an unexpected nightmare at one point. We had installed the first window, which is in the space where the kitchen will be one day, and turned our attention to the two bedroom windows.
If you look at the photograph you can see one of these at the back. There is a matching one on the other side of the van, you will have guessed this already since you can see the sheep in the field behind it.
The two windows are different. One is for one side, one is for the other. This is because the sliding bit works in different directions. If you put them in the wrong way round then you get a draught through the gap.
Obviously we put them in the wrong way round.
We had only installed the first one, but we realised our mistake very soon afterwards. This happened at five o’clock, just when we were starting to think that we ought to start packing up so that we wouldn’t be late for work.
It left us with a terrible dilemma.
We could either leave the window as it was and suffer the draft – which would then be howling through both windows – for ever, or we could take it out straight away and install it in its correct place.
We had not only glued it in, we had riveted it in as well.
If we did not immediately install both windows we would have to spend ages cleaning all of the glue off both the frame and the window, so that it didn’t dry in a horrible splodgy mess before we could glue it back into the van again.
Obviously we had got to fix it.
We sprang into action. Mark drilled the rivets out and I sawed out the hole for the opposite window.
We took the Wrong Window out in a shockingly sticky mess of black glue. Then we squirted a huge trail of more glue all around the edges of the other window.
We did not have enough of the right size of rivets.
The rivets that we had left were bigger. This meant that we had to re-drill all of the holes, so we did that.
Mark does not rush. I dive instantly into the method which made my grandmother say More Haste Less Speed. It does not usually take very long before I wish that I had listened to her.
This time I wished I had listened when Mark pointed out that my hole drilling was slow because the drill was turning the wrong way.
I flapped about and begged him to hurry up, which he didn’t.
In the end we finished.
We had installed all of the windows, the right way up and the right way round and not a draught in sight.
We were late for work and I was covered in glue. My hands are black with it even now, because obviously it is not intended to wash off. I look rather like I did the time when we had to empty the ink overflow tray on the printer.
It is a very good job that we are not going to go anywhere middle class for a while.
Fortunately it is dark in the taxi.
