Ambulance Update 2-Kitchen and Dining Refinements

hello welcome back to overland outfitting i'm fred i'm dave folks we're sitting here in dave's ambulance and uh we're here for a long overdue update and dave has been fully engulfed here with the work he's been taking on in next steps and improving the ambulance and as you can see here we are sitting at a dinette and we talked about this last time that we weren't sure what we were going to do with space and dave has come up with some real good changes here and i want to make sure we highlight that and show you some of the other changes dave's made here i'm going to switch around dave and uh pull back frame here and let folks see what you've done and let you describe what happened here okay but we used to have a uh couch sitting here it was a nice brand new rollover couch from uh wreck pro and it was a five foot long couch we always knew we were going to not really need it for a bed but it will actually the couch would make a five foot long bed so i really have always liked dinettes and i wanted a table that was fixed i wanted still the rollover capability of the couch so i took the couch and i cut it in half that meant cutting the framework cutting the foam cutting the material resoling it using some of the hardware and then making a completely uh new table and getting some hardware to mount the table what's really nice about this is a two-person dinette it's just not something that's on the market right now and uh rec pro makes a dinette but it's a little wider and we we kind of looked at that and thought about that idea but it comes out here about 36 inches wide or more this one is 24. what's interesting about our build is we started out with a 5 foot rollover couch into a bed now we have a six foot single bed it grew a foot here so uh what's really uh nice about this is it's got some features that kind of popped up we didn't even know was to happen and it caught us by surprise but it's a really really neat build here so how does this convert into a bed can we make the conversion real quick here i'm glad you asked all right well what's nice about this i'm gonna put some stuff out and get some stuff over here um this little table just comes off like that so it just hangs on there i made this little stand or a little base for the table so there's no post down here and that just swings out of the way so that swings like that i'm going to set this aside and then the couch it just rolls right over here like that and that just pushes down into this space here so we're hitting on a bolt right here but it will fill up this space and make a nice six foot bed here this side actually is hinged so we have a little access for some storage underneath there and then this piece comes up right here if we made a bed out of that we would just put a post right here or a little thing to hold this piece up that gives us a full six foot length here i didn't design it it's designed for myself probably won't use it as a bed but it could be a spare bed if we needed it for us uh one person one of the things that's really quite unique about all of this is this so this is the dinette so if we put that table back up here and instead of putting it in the middle there's there's the metal super simple if we move this table down right in here someplace then when we roll this chair over it makes the chair facing forward now the reason that's really nice is for me in the morning i can sit here i can put my shoes on i can just relax we have more ideas for the entertainment part of this so we can go into it a little bit later but this makes a nice couch a single couch or a single seat for somebody so that's kind of a unique thing and someone can still sit back behind that yeah somebody could sit here now you could make this a little steeper and then move the table down a little bit and then somebody could sit here and they could sit at the table here so you have to still have access to the table even when the chair is in this position what else is nice about this is we hinge this along here and i'll have to show you with her door open a little bit there so this tips out then we have access to the storage underneath wow so you were able to take the um the rollover mechanism of of the couch and essentially convert it attach it back and convert it use it in a different uh manner right yep makes it super nice and then this was a bench here and um i just cut this end of the bench out and then trimmed it out it already had the rubber uh top in it for for your feet so you're you know you have a place to put your feet under the table and it just makes a super sweet little uh dinette yeah all right well done i just i'm curious just because you know folks are curious i'm i'm curious uh what what do you have going on with the with the bolt that kept that from um popping down real quick just so we clarified did you have something you didn't trim yes i see right it was on this uh little swing away leg i made that out of lexan plastic i had some in uh i hadn't planned it that way but i was using scraps and pieces and stuff like that that i had around the shop one nice thing about it it's not a solid piece you don't even see it it disappears so from any angle it looks like the table is just suspended out here but it's really solid and it's well supported out here yeah well done okay and uh the one of the other things that we were going to talk about we promised folks we talked about was the uh change to the kitchen here last time um we were showing off we had the stove top in here and you had been debating whether or not you were going to put a an oven in here and indeed you did do that we kind of debated whether or not wanted to go with a convection oven or why don't we tell folks what uh what you did find here so we started off with a dometic two burner really nice it was a drop in and so the counter went clear across here and so it was a two burner right there i like to bake a lot of people like to bake we can always have a pizza at night or cookies or whatever so this is a great stone uh oven and so it was an easy swap we took the cooktop off and out of here then access the countertop a little bit it's got a really nice little oven and uh see we have some tinfoil in there but uh it's got a nice light it changes it lights really easy and uh and so this goes on here when you have the oven light on and then the uh the top just kind of folds away like that very nice it's a nice cast stove top and now you've got three burners instead of two right three burners a full oven a nice size oven and then we took the space that was underneath the stove that's this little place here we put a door on here with a couple of magnets and so we got pots and pans to go under the stove there there you go gives us more storage excellent another enhancement to the kitchen that i think is quite interesting and worked out quite nicely was the addition of a cutting board it's really cool we had uh thought about places to put a cunning board this is really nice under this cabinet is our water tank from out access from outside so we don't have any more drawers in here i'll show you the drawer first it's got full extension slides and we have our one drawer here we got about four or six inches deep there yeah about four inches deep and then we used some hardware from the ambulance uh one of the pools that's like these up here okay so that all matches and here's a penny board so we made our own slide for it and so it extends the kitchen and you can take this clear out if you want to but it stays in place when you're going down the road and it'll just hold itself up right there so it added to the kitchen gives us a nice cutting area you can cut and build your meal right here put that out of the way like that excellent we don't have to have any handles on it if it's just tight enough that you give a little tug and it comes right out so now we have not only this cooked cooking area and covered so if you're if you're not cooking you can always put this over here use this as additional counter space additional space here where the stainless steel sink is and then we also have this area right here which is nice when you're bringing in your groceries you can set them here you can put them in the refrigerator uh you can move things from your kitchen counter over to this area if you're cooking and serving outdoors so it's it just makes it all a really nice living area kitchen area with the bathroom now and our sleeping area above well that's fantastic dave i'd like to switch places here in just a second over to my left you uh we have the bathroom and we have a recent comment from desert dweller that i'd like to uh address and just look at some of the final steps that you've taken to uh finish up the bathroom here all right so let me switch around here real quick okay so as i said desert dweller made a comment which uh we thank you for and essentially dave he or she was mentioning that composting toilets don't compost unless you carry it around for six months which may or may not be accurate and i thought uh considering you have a fair amount of um experience with composting toilets i thought maybe you could address that real quick absolutely uh we'll show the composting toilet this is the bathroom right here and i like a door that's nice and clean and neat we don't have a lot of space in here so we try to make the most of what we have okay this is a nature's head compass composting toilet yes the the questioner is uh is absolutely correct it's not going to make compost here what it does is we separate the liquids or from the solids so there's a little tank here that collects the liquids and the solids go into it a little can here that has some ground uh coconut core i think in this one you can use peat moss there are a variety of things but you never add anything to it you just use it turn the crank a couple of times and that's it we've gotten months out of this without a without having to dump it so it isn't like a cassette toilet or a holding tank style toilet this one keeps everything separate so when you're keeping things separate you're not creating sewage it's not a biohazard that's the big thing here once you have the solids in that compartment it's not a biohazard so you can wait uh after about a month or if you're if two people are using it for a month or two you can take this out everything is dry you just dump it into a garbage bag and you can throw it in the trash again it is not a biohazard so and eventually all that matter will uh biodegrade and become a compost but it won't do it in this little box here uh one of the things that was really surprising for me is that it doesn't smell there's no odor to it all the the methane all the gases everything goes into the dirt and so it just smells like dirt it doesn't smell like anything else and i've been in small spaces like this with a conventional toilet and those odors fill the room they don't do it with a nature's head with this type of toilet so i'm really really sold on it and i just wish i had had this 20 years ago when i was first starting out in the rv uh using rvs and so i'm uh i'm a real proponent of this particular toilet well dave i really appreciate your input on that i think hopefully that helps uh some others with their decision-making process in terms of what type of toilet they may want to consider for their builds going forward that's true and again uh thanks to desert dweller for the comment and uh let us know if uh you have any other questions and we encourage others to make comments as well all right well folks thanks again for stopping by as you can see dave's done a lot of great work here and dave i commend you for what you've gotten done here in the last couple of months thank you very much it's been a lot of a lot of fun yeah sure has and um folks we are going to be at overland expo this next week dave and i both volunteered to help out with parking for the first day and then we're going to be roaming the event and getting out meeting people we are staying there throughout the weekend up until sunday morning and we hope to run into you we will also have my van there and be happy to show you some of the work that i've done to it to make it a little bit more livable for a short-term excursion it's not necessarily an overland vehicle but i think it'll work out well for this event if you uh care too please like subscribe and hit the bell for notifications we'd love to see your comments and uh hope that we see you again soon and we hope that you can make the expo and we get to see you in person that would be a lot of fun sure would folks have a great day thanks again bye

Channel: Overland Outfitting

Views: 733

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Id: Qq_WksJr1G4

Length: 17min 56sec (1076 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022