Campulance Life

  Test Run at Site 3 Wisconsin's cold weather is looming and we know we may only get one or two chances to use the Campulance before winter, so this past weekend we set out for a test run.  Up near Lucas' family camp is a campground with some amazing views.  The pictures don't do it justice, but the fall colors were almost at their peak.  We both agreed that the fact that we can just pull in to the campsite, lay down an outdoor rug and we are good to go is our kind of camping.  No hour of prep to level, unhook vehicles etc. I think I can actually do this. It helped that his parents had arrived at the next site over a couple hours before us, so the campfire was already going. So.....we may have cheated a little and brought the experts along, but baby steps.   These particular sites didn't have electric, which gave us a chance to give the new generator a try. It worked perfectly and we learned from the last time, so had a heater going to prep for the 40 something degree w

  It's finally time for bed.  The flooring is down and the shiplap is up, so it's finally time to install the bed.  Lots of prep work was involved in being able to fit a full size mattress, but after that night on the air mattress, we were highly motivated to get a nice mattress in the campulance.   First was cabinet removal on both sides, then floors and shiplap. Lucas had been building parts of the framing while the other prep was happening. He was convinced he could get the bed installed in 5 minutes. He didn't quite make his goal, but he had everything cut and ready, so it was a pretty fast process.    Next we hauled the mattress from his spare room down. Guessing if the neighbors were watching this looked quite comical as it wouldn't fit through the back doors and we had to wiggle it in through the side door. Who remembers that Friends episode where Ross and Chandler try to "pivot" the couch up the stairs?  We will be building doors underneath to hide the

 "I may not live in a farmhouse, but I dream of shiplap, subway tile and barn doors."  To be honest I don't want to live in a farmhouse, but I do love shiplap, subway tile and those sliding barn doors.  I know, I know cliche HGTV watching female, but I'm totally ok with it. I wouldn't say no to an all white kitchen either.  Here was my chance. Lucas has been very sweet as he hears me say "ya know, I was thinking" about a million times. He just laughs and says, you are in charge of interiors, whatever you want.  That sounded like a green light for me to get all the things, don't you think?  So between Amazon and Pinterest the picture in my head was becoming pretty clear. Flooring was picked and painting was well underway. All my darn design ideas are holding back the bed building project, so as soon as the flooring was down it was time for shiplap. First was a trip to Home Depot for some building materials and my birch plywood. A few minutes on the ta

All that hard work paid off I feel like the floors have been a part of our daily projects in some way since day 1, but I can finally see the light. The old floors were finally up and we were ready to start installation.  There was some prep to do beforehand which included two coats of a floor primer, that needed dry time in between. Thursday and Friday were the primer coats, which meant Saturday was the big flooring install day.  Neither of us have ever installed the stick vinyl plank tile, so we were winging it a bit.  We got to work and hoped for the best.  Lucas did the cutting and I installed them.  Total time was about 4 hours and went pretty smoothly. With..... the exception of one tile about 3/4 of the way done that lined up a bit weird because of the subfloor.  Pretty sure Lucas was afraid I was going to pull he whole floor up and start over.  We did a little work and fixed it the best we could and to be honest, I don't even notice it now. But if you come visit and do notic

It's really about who you know! Remember the metal cabinet I mentioned earlier? Well, Saturday we set out to get that taken care of. Beautiful thing about the Campulance is that we don’t have to get someone to come help, we can bring the Reno right to them. Sam said we could “borrow” Tim as long as we returned him in the same condition we received him. I think we were successful in that regard, plus Sam was making cookies so it was a win win.  The metal cabinet is actually part of one of the outside storage compartments and needed to be removed in order to make room for the bed. I'm pretty sure I see Lucas' vision for this part of the build, but it does look a bit intimidating. I'm going to stick to interiors and construction assistant on this one, he will be in charge of building plans and figuring out how to build the walls.  We measured and explained what we were thinking, then Tim got to work. It took a while and there were sparks flying, but it’s exactly what we ne

  Time for flooring! We are continually reminded of how well built ambulances are.  The excessive use of brad nails should have been an indicator, but we decided it would be best to pull up the vinyl flooring and put down some cute new vinyl plank.  Ok, ok truth be told Lucas thinks all the samples look "exactly the same", but ladies.... you know there are at least 50 shades of grey luxury vinyl plank flooring, am I right? I only made one trip to Home Depot and one to Menards and then picked one, so I was pretty proud of myself.  We approached the task with an optimistic attitude and within the first inch, there was glue. So much glue.  Maybe it's just the edges and it will ease up. Our dreams were slowly crumbling as we realized every single inch of flooring was attached with what could only be described as industrial strength Gorilla Glue.  But we kept a positive attitude and plugged away slowly, about 1 foot per hour.  I figured this process was going to take a few wee

  Chip makes it look so easy! Labor day was Demo Day and I was pretty excited to hit a few cabinets and have them magically fall apart like I have seen happen on Fixer Upper so many times. Well, it appears ambulances are built to withstand hurricanes or the guy that built this one just got a new brad nailer and was eager to use it. Either way it was a bit more challenging than expected.   The plan for phase one was to remove two cabinets on one side and one on the other in order to build the bed. It took a few hours but we made some good progress for day one.   The project on the other side is going to be a bit more of a challenge as it contains a metal cabinet that is one of the outside storage containers. This one is going to involve cutting metal and building new walls, but with a little muscle and possibly a new tool we will get it done.   Sydney even came by for a visit on her way home from a weekend in Sturgeon Bay. So we technically had our first Campulance guests over for dinne

  We had been ambulance owners less than 24 hours and were headed out on our first camping adventure.  Lucas' family was going to be at their family camp for the weekend, so we decided to attempt our first overnight in the new rig.  I realize this hasn't been an actual ambulance for a few years, but I couldn't help but have flash backs to the blood borne pathogen videos I was forced to watch at the beginning of each school year and ponder how long universal precautions are necessary. Needless to say we spent the morning scrubbing the inside as best we could.  We threw in an air mattress, blankets, some bottled water and a few snacks and called it good.    Off we headed north.  The Trombley crew knew nothing of our little idea, so as we approached camp, we decided that it would be best to pull in with lights and sirens on to ensure the best first impression. Sam and the kids were surprised, but got a kick out of the idea.  The rest of the gang was off on a four wheeler ride.

Here is how this crazy idea became a reality Welcome to our blog.  We are Leslie and Lucas. While we have always been up for a good project to work on together, this is by far our most ambitious. We have decided to renovate an ambulance into a camper and have dubbed it the "Campulance". We would love to take you along for the ride on this new adventure.  When someone has a great idea, why not just jump in and go for it. How did this idea come about? Well it was a random afternoon and we were watching tv. I can't seem to remember which show, but most likely HGTV or something along those lines.  We had been thinking about the idea of a camper for a little while.  Lucas liked the idea of a class B, Sprinter type van conversion, but neither of us were interested in the $90,000 price that came along with them. During our camper conversation, Lucas said "We should renovate an ambulance, it's got all the electrical already in place". I thought this was a brilliant