Step two. Padding.

A little more tricky, I'm better with power tools and the like but I do own a rather good sewing machine and have a passing acquaintance with it's use. We'll chop on and see what happens. You might have noticed I didn't build seat backs into the seats. I thought this over, fooled about with bits of ply, used my Dad as a test subject, sketched, thought some more and came to the conclusion that I would stick bolsters to the wall with Velcro instead. Preliminary testing showed this would be quite comfortable and make the place seem wider as well as keeping the table the original size. It's that whole living vs holiday thing again.

I'm maxing out the width and keeping the spacious table. Also means maxed out floor space, 2 people can comfortably pass each other, something not many campers can say. I call it foot room. The numbers tell me I have almost 400mm more floor width than I had with the old set up. Couple this to the much lower seat profile at the door/galley end and the living space seems huge compared to the way it was. That's more like it!

I've also picked up a kid size bean bag for extra seating on either of the wheel arches. My oldest sister suggested I ditch some of the beans and replace them with foam chips. So some experimenting later, I tossed half the beans, replaced with half as much crouton sized foam chips and the end result works nicely! Good call. It weighs nothing and works well.

The first piece to be made was the single seat cushion. Some head scratching over what to build the cushions and bolsters out ensued. Options were considered and dismissed. Then Mother suggested a cool cushion she had built out of a coffee sack.......perfect! It was a bit big and somewhat lumpy due to the 2 smaller cushions she had used to stuff it, but this was easily fixable. A piece of foam from the old squabs was cut to size and the hessian sack was stitched to sized, no need to cut, just roll the seams inwards and stitch, easy!

I was going to do the rounds of the coffee roasteries to get a bigger sack for the double seat, but about the same time Mother had a conversation with nephew Cosmo in Melbourne. He's heavily into the coffee scene there and said he would post me a cool one. Brilliant!

Time to start on the bolsters.