Domestic Duties

Well it's been another busy week & still we have a long list of things to complete before we leave Napier hopefully next Monday, but possibly a day or two later.

We spent the first few days after arriving & in between catching up with Mum & Dad doing a total spring clean inside & out of both vehicles after the wild weather we'd had at the Mount had coated everything in salt & sand. It also made me realise that the hand-held Electrolux vacuum wasn't going to cut the mustard in keeping all the sand & dust out of the interior. I'd already been keeping an eye out for a cheap lightweight cleaner that didn't take up too much space. If I could have found a brush to fit the end of the handheld vacuum that would have done fine as there isn't too much carpet to vacuum, but I hadn't had any luck. It didn't have to be 12v as I could to do the vacuuming whenever we're plugged into the grid. I was in the Warehouse yesterday getting some plastic boxes & found this;

Butter pack for size comparison

Cheap as chips @ $40.00, works a treat, very noisy but boy it's got some suction for 600w & hey if it only lasts a year it's cheap enough that I can throw it out & buy another. Best of all it folds down to very small!

David also found his bargain early on in the week at Super Cheap Autos. The right size & perfectly coloured light-weight steel storage box for the rear of the fifth-wheeler. We 've been looking for a storage box for quite some time but to get one made to measure was going to be far too expensive. We'd found a "tool box" at Super Cheap earlier on in the year but the measurements weren't quite right; it wasn't deep enough to take all we wanted to store in it. It was also a little too wide, the number plate & tail lights would have had to be moved to accommodate it so we gave that away & have been on the look out for something more suitable ever since.

And we finally found it & just in time too! We wanted to be able to fit most of the "leisure" gear in the box, gear that we didn't need to access too often; golf clubs & trundlers, tramping boots, fishing boots & packs, diving fins, snorkels & masks, beach tent, gumboots & wet weather gear etc. 

We had to pull the van forward to release the citrus tree!

The support frame was built, powder coated & fitted in just over a day thanks to a contact that Dad had, Alan & Vanessa at A&V Engineering (06-844-1309) in Tamatea, Napier. Fantastic service & very reasonably priced too.

So of course with all the free space I now had inside the van, I spent the next couple of days rearranging & shuffling just about the complete interior storage about. A major job but one I was looking forward to as everything has been a little too tightly packed in & hard to get at too. We are now sorted & have space to spare!

Yesterday another major player in the ever growing Evans roadshow arrived in the driveway. One we've been eager to see since we ordered it back in September at the Covi show; our 3.4 Takacat inflatable dinghy. We hadn't actually seen this length in the flesh but we're thrilled with it & once the wheels are fitted to the transom it'll be very easy to handle. Next (& hopefully the last) major purchase will be the outboard.

We have two hard seats that can be fitted too.

 It hasn't been all work & no play, the next post will be the "fun" things.....