The Caravan

My first purchase for the project was buying a caravan. I had decided some of the key appliances and things I wanted to get out of one and these were.

• Doors
• Windows
• 3 Way Fridge
• Water Heater
• Potentially cupboards, oven, hobs etc.

It took a couple of weeks of looking on gumtree and ebay before I found a good caravan for the money. It came up at £400 and after driving over for  look it seemed to have everything I wanted. I paid the owner and towed it home that day, having never towed before it made for a fun journey home but it was all very uneventful thankfully!

A few photos inside and out of the caravan. I decided to keep the fridge, water heater, some windows, the door, gas cylinders, battery charger, leisure battery and a few other small bits. On testing I discovered that the water heater was only working on 230 mains and not gas and the same with the fridge. Also the 12v for the fridge wasn’t working so my first project was fixing these. I’ll do separate posts on fixing these but needless to say I got them both fully functioning again without too much trouble

Stripping it Down

Taking the caravan to bits was actually quite good fun. With the exception of a few jobs it was all fairly quick and easy. The windows slide off along the hanger rail once you remove all the screws. Then you can peel the window seal out of the caravan and cut out a template to match the size hole left in the caravan. This is what you will later need to use when you mark where to cut the hole for the windows on your van.

As a test I marked the size of my template on the caravan as a test run for fitting a window. It was a great way to have a practice without damaging anything important!

When I had everything I wanted from the caravan I sold off the bits I didn’t need including the shell of the caravan. A breakdown of what I got back is below:
£60 Oven & Hobs
£50 Cushions
£45 Thetford Cassette
£60 Caravan Shell
£40 Leftover Windows & Blinds
£20 Cupboard fronts
£50 other bits
As you can see I got around £325 back from my spend of £400 on the caravan so not bad at all considering how much stuff I kept out of it!