The interior when I first got the van consisted of the two front seats and a makeshift fold out bed made from plywood stamped with '....laboratory...', so funnily enough that got removed from the bus and I started again.

Having had a 'modern' styled camper and knowing that sort of style just wouldn't look right in VUK, as the rest of the van was staying 'standard', it took a little head scratching to come up with a good theme for the interior. The thought process was something like this...

I like the way some campers have a 1950's American diner theme but, for me, high gloss surfaces and lots of chrome just isn't practical in such a small space...but what about when the kids from the diner go to the beach? My head filled with sand dunes, seagrass, wicker baskets and The Beach Boys - well, they went surfing didn't they?!

So I had the theme easily sorted, the layout of it wasn't quite so easy. Previous experience with 'Val' proved useful in that I knew what I liked and what would work again in this van. I also decided that no cupboard/storage could block the windows. This was to ensure it didn't look too much like a camper when it was parked up somewhere - full interior campers always look a little 'lost' to me, when they're just being used as transport rather than away on a trip. Anyway, layout!..

Luckily for me around this time, a book on camper van interiors had just come out so I cherry picked all the ideas I liked, then whittled the list down to a set of ideas that would fit into the van and hang together nicely...lots of sketches followed.

Storage was the first item to be resolved to ensure there would be enough and that it could be easily accessed. So I have the usual suspect of under-seat storage areas supplemented this time with storage behind the rear seat. The storage in the back consists of a large, owner configurable storage 'bin' for food stuffs; 3 seagrass baskets for clothes and shoes and then above the baskets there is a covered shelving area for small, lighter clothing items. To cover over all the smaller clothing items and the food bin area, vinyl was used along with with simple poppers to create lids and stop prying eyes seeing what you have in the bus. I used the fabric/poppers route as they accommodate bulky items a little better than a solid lid which would simply gape open or flap around if it can't lock into just the right place.

Then I found the 'grass' vinyl!!! and the 'ecology goes wrong' tag was earned, read on...

Finding the vinyl was a definite turning point as this gave rise to the final idea of the stained floor and cupboards (the earth); the next layer would be the grass coloured seating and trim panels (foam glued to plywood and then simply wrapped int the vinyl); windows would need to be covered in something floral so there would be the flowers growing out of the 'grass' - I eventually used more vinyl for this and held the window panels in place with magnets concealed within. Trickiest was the headlining since what do you have above flowers?...sky! I know the fabric exists (light blue with white clouds), I've just got to find the source of it so I can get it in a large, single piece rather than use lots of little pieces, well they do say a vehicle is never finished.

To make trips away more comfortable the bus has the following:

A secondary battery to store power from the solar panel and consequently power the fridge. The battery also feeds a 1kW power inverter so other electrical items such as mobile phones, lap-tops, ipods and so on can be used/recharged whilst away.

An essential part of any camper conversion is the cooker/storage unit. I decided to give myself a little extra complexity, though worth it, by making the cooker swing out of the sliding door. This allows it to be used 'outdoors' with the added nicety that the cooker is at a very nice height for cooking on when you're stood up outside. The cooker unit also contains the gas bottle and all the kitchen ironmongery.

The final piece to the camper conversion jigsaw also happens to be one of the surprisingly complex ones - the table.

In my conversion the table forms part of the bed. To do so it must sit in the area defined by the cupboards/seat bases. It must be capable of being in the 'up' position and stay in place with the vehicle travelling, whilst also leaving a passage-way from the front seats to the rear seat. As mentioned already, it had to allow the cooker unit to swing from it's 'inside' cooking position to the outside one and last but by no means least, it must provide enough table surface to be of a useful size for 2 or more adults. Yes, it may only be a table and how hard can it be to make a table? But it is the part of the conversion that has to accommodate the most considerations...it takes a few cups of tea and many biscuits to make sure it satisfies the above. Get it right and it's like a little bit of magic how it pulls everything together. Get it wrong and you'll annoy yourself with how it gets in the way/is too difficult to put up/down/doesn't give you enough room etc etc. A big help in achieving everything is to have a drop-leaf end otherwise you simply run out of room or you have a much smaller table which then compromises your bed - never compromise the bed, ever!