Hello and welcome back to another blog post! We have put more temporary stuff in the van, and I wanted to tell you about it! If you’d rather consume this content in longform video format, please visit my YouTube channel VitalVan!
Alex and I wanted to start doing smaller trips before the ambulance was completely finished, so we figured we should have a couple temporary things inside, like a mattress and bed frame. This would be a great option so we wouldn’t have to get a hotel room or sleep in a tent if we did not want to.
I knew that we were eventually going to put a queen sized bed permanently in the ambulance, and we would buy a bed frame for that, so I decided to just get one now and install it temporarily.
So, I bought a relatively cheap and lightweight wood-based one off of Amazon, and it took a little while to arrive. We actually did not have the time to put it all together in Palm Desert, so we lugged it back to Las Vegas with us.
We ended up parking in the Lowe’s parking lot and working on it, along with some other things. It was super hot, the middle of the summer, and I had just gotten heat stroke (more on that in a future post) maybe 5 or 6 weeks earlier, so we were taking lots of breaks to stay out of the heat.
Alex mostly worked on the frame while I worked on a mosquito net for the back doors, and some curtains for all of the windows.
I bought some mosquito netting that was roughly the size of the back doors, a bunch of magnets, and some super glue. I super glued magnets to the door frame where they would not interfere with the door, and to the mosquito netting in the same spots.
We needed a lot more magnets to get a good seal than I thought we would, so I only had a few left over for the curtains. The mosquito net ended up looking really good though, and only had a couple small bows where bugs could get in, but that is way better than having a huge open space instead.
Unfortunately, the super glue did not like to stick to the mosquito net. I will be putting a small square of fabric on each side of the net with the magnet in the middle and sewing it shut, but that day will come when I have a little more time. Thankfully, the magnets did like to stick to the door frame haha.
This mosquito net is probably the most permanent thing from today for the ambulance, as it only needs one more modification before it is good to go permanently. Everything that gets closer to being completed and permanent makes me happy.
I cut up a few old t-shirts from my dad to make some temporary curtains for all 4 windows in the back. I figured, since we were going on our first trip in it soon, that preventing people from looking in and light from getting in, they would be pretty useful.
The shirt that I cut up to cover the man door wasn’t exactly big enough to cover the whole thing, but it is doing a good enough job for now. All of the other curtains completely cover their respective windows.
However, as mentioned above, I did have enough magnets to hang all of the curtains up. I also had enough to hang up the man door curtain as proof of concept, but the amount of magnets was not strong enough to hold up the shirt for any reliable period of time.
Unfortunately, more magnets would not have been here before our first trip, so that part had to wait as well. This is the worst part about not being able to work on the ambulance constantly, as you have to put pauses on things and come up with temporary solutions in the meantime. It really makes me feel like we are making way less progress than we actually are.
As for the bed frame, there were a lot of modifications to be done. The legs had to be replaced with longer pieces of wood, and shimmed in some places. A couple corners were over the cavities where the exterior cabinets used to be, so Alex had to make some leg extensions to hold the frame up there.
The bed frame turned out really well, and also has held up really well since then. I was always afraid that it would collapse somehow or not hold our weight for one reason or another, but it has proved me wrong every time.
We have not fully attached the slats on top of the bed frame yet, since we do still have to renovate under and around it. We might just ratchet it up to the ceiling while we are working on it though, and that would save a lot of time.
I know the slats are going to be annoying when they inevitably fall during our trips before the floor and walls get put in, but that is a low price for having a whole bed set up in the ambulance.
The day after we finished all of these things, we went to go pick up the new mattress that I bought and the slats were very annoying then, but have not been as annoying since, thank goodness.
Thank you so much for reading my new blog post! I really appreciate each and every one of you taking the time to read my updates. If you want to check this out in video format, please visit my YouTube channel VitalVan. I’ll see you guys in the next one!
VitalVan 