Fitting Doors and Windows

This stage really transforms the look of the van and starts making it look a bit more homely. I used the doors and windows that I stripped out of an old caravan. They were perfect for the job and easy to fit.

Here you can see the van before and after fitting the door. I wasn’t sure what the shell was going to be made of, it said in the cab it is made from GRP (fiberglass) so I used a angle grinder to make the first cut. This was pretty messy and made some horrible smoke, it turned out that the shell is plywood sandwiched between 2 layers of fiberglass and the plywood was causing the smoke. Once I figured what material I was working with I switched to the jigsaw. The only problem was the fiberglass was dulling the jigsaw blades pretty quickly and it wasn’t until I had almost finished cutting the doors and windows that I found that the aluminium jigsaw blades stayed sharp much longer against the fiberglass than the wood blades I had been using.

Above you can see that after cutting a hole out for the window I then made a wooden frame on the inside of the van. The window seal fitted around a 3omm thick wall in the caravan so I bulked out the wall to that thickness before fitting the seal