There’s a new spring in his step.  He disappears for hours and when he comes back there’s a twinkle in his eye.  I can tell that he can’t wait to get away again – and he does.  What’s going on?

Well, it turns out that there’s no pretty young woman waiting for him, unless you consider Home Depot to be one.  No.  He’s in the workshop: cutting, drilling, and assembling crazy creations and modifications for the van.

What?  When we stared looking into the idea of a campervan, I was really keen on doing our own van conversion.  I thought we could do it, but he was against it, “we don’t have time”, he said.   Well, now it seems like he found the time…I am not complaining, just trying to understand a man’s psyche.  It seems very mysterious in there, and they say that women are hard to understand!

So this is just one of this weeks creations:

What is this, you may be asking?  Well, our folding table is too big and really gets in the way so we decided to try and utilize the table tops and legs that we already have in the van and just create a base for them.

You can buy one of the original bases on Amazon.com, or Amazon.ca and just screw it on any type of base that you like, but that’s too easy.  The real reason we didn’t go with the factory base is that we didn’t have the time to wait for it to be shipped as we are leaving on a trip, so Tony decided to manufacture a base with whatever he had around.

The tricky part was to create something that will allow the bottom of the table’s leg to lock into place.  You can see below that the 2 aluminium pieces lock together and the table leg locks into the slot that was cut on the top aluminium piece.

They can be quickly assembled and disassembled and fit together for compact storage.

And here it is.  All ready for our next trip.

Okay.  I admit it.  We’re having fun solving issues and coming up with ideas for new mods, but will there ever be a day when we go to the van and think that it’s perfect and anything else needs to be done?  Maybe.  But this will probably be the day we decide to get a new van.

BY THE NUMBERS:

• cost: bolts and and nuts C$7.50 (we used leftover aluminum)
• time to manufacture: approximately 2 hours 
• time to assemble the table: 45 seconds

If you enjoyed this post, please follow us.  You can like our Facebook page, share on your favourite social media page, or drop us a line to tell us about your experiences.  When you shop via our affiliate links, shop on Amazon.com in the United States, or Amazon.ca in Canada, we will get a portion of the sales.