Second Post

At the risk of exaggerating - the strip out was a "monumental" task that quickly became a chore, removing (what felt like hundreds) of book shelves, then the uprights and a surprisingly well built counter, as below.

We were hoping to be able to reuse some  of the bits from the counter, but it wasn't to be and the shelving was donated to the local rural museum for their book shop. This will give you some idea of the work involved in stripping the shelving, then the carpet from the walls and floor, taking out the WC (yes, there was a toilet in a Library Van! I guess that's what you get for £104k - which what it cost when first kitted out), stripping the ply from the roof and everything else that wasn't going to get reused - Not to mention the Hydraulic Lift!

We were able to keep and reuse much of the 12v, 24v and 240 volt wiring system, which included a massive leisure battery array, a Victron Pure Sine Inverter ( about £1,000 new) a ceiling mounted extractor and a microwave, but this is probably better covered in a post of it's own at a later date.

First Post

I can't see blogging as something that will come naturally to me, but I have been asked by a few people to document the process of changing Our Ford Iveco Cargo Tector from it's previous incarnation as a Kent County Council Mobile Library in to a  Custom deigned Motorhome.

I guess the first thing to do is tell you about who 'We' are; I'm Peter - an FM Operations Manager for a large multinational company, My wife is Claire - a part time carer, we have two children - Nathan is a professional dressage rider and Bethany is yet to find her calling, but is an avid glider pilot, boxer, fitness fanatic and works for a local council.

We lived in Brittany Northern France for many years, but didn't travel much while we were there. That said, this is where the name "Treganin" comes from - it was the name of the Hamlet that we lived in and has become a standard username for me across t'internet. The lack of travel is something that we vowed to put right recently, when Nathan moved to live and work near Chichester and compete more often. We have been doing so by using hotels, but have both been pretty disappointed by the quality, facilities or just the whole hotel thing!

Having looked at what was available in respect of campervans and motorhome we realised that what was in our price range was unappealing and what was appealing was unaffordable, that was after we had negotiated our way around the plethora of scammers and numpties that populate the internet.

Which brings us to this:

Or one very like it - this was the one we were going to get, but it got sold before we got there - fortunately the guy had another almost identical one and on a Saturday late in October in darkest Shropshire - money changed hands and off we went.

After a fairly faultless drive, only interrupted by the hydraulic lift dropping slightly and setting off an alarm about 5 miles from home, we parked up this behemoth on the drive, grabbed a coffee and started investigating what we had let ourselves in for.