Patience

People say that nothing good comes easy. I now believe this statement entirely. Getting our van together has been a test of patience to say the least. After waiting almost 3 weeks to have it delivered, we cracked it and Rich caught the train up to Derby and drove it back himself to make sure we had it a day early and could begin working on it immediately. He got it back to Porthcawl and picked me up so we could go a for drive before it got dark. As we pulled away, we were engulfed by a massive cloud of white smoke... You have got to be kidding! Next day we took it to a reputable Mercedes service centre and found out it needed a new exhaust! But the piece was being couriered and it would only be an hour job so we shouldn’t be held up too much. That was Thursday. By Friday afternoon, we’d still not heard a thing. We phoned and were told to call the people we bought it from as they were handling it as it was under insurance. We phoned, no answer. Saturday we phone again and to be told it was booked in for 12pm on Monday as they still did not have the part. “I’m sorry, what?” 

Fuming, we decided to just get away as we were going stir crazy being in the house and took the train to Cardiff. We walked around the city and lay in the park for a while as the weather was really nice. It was so great to be able to lay on grass and not be attacked by green ants!!! We went to dinner at one of Rich’s parents’ favourite restaurants, “Giovanni’s”. A truly sensational meal and the portions were huge so we were very happy. A bottle of wine to top it off, happy days.

Monday finally arrived and we received a call from our sales guy only to be told that the part was sitting next to him in the office and he would send it off today. Again, “I’m sorry, what?” He told us that they had had to take one off another vehicle in order to send down to us. So we were essentially looking at yet another day waiting until the part had been shipped, then the service time to fit it. Rich was ready to explode. We spoke to Chris, Rich’s Dad on Skype as he had helped us find the vehicle in the first place and, who having dealt with many a commercial dealer knew that something was not right. Within 5 minutes he had spoken not only to the head of the dealership but to Mercedes UK and about 5 minutes after that we had a phone call from the head sales rep explaining that we would have a brand new part installed that day and if we had any further problems to contact him directly. Thanks Chris :) At 4pm on Monday, we finally had our van! 

Fitting out the van was an experience. Rich had done countless hours of research and reading but we were still going into the whole thing quite blindly and were just hoping for the best. Rich had bought a drill but we managed to borrowed as many tools as we could which we were so grateful for as it saved us a lot in rental costs. So in two days, with limited tools and very limited space we insulated, ply lined and carpeted the van. We were pretty stoked. Then with an afternoon to spare, we ‘nipped’ to IKEA to get the furniture to fit it out. Why I thought we could ‘nip’ to IKEA is beyond me. To be honest, I thought I had everything perfectly planned out so that we could literally walk through and go “We want that, that and that,” and be done. Yeah..... I thought.....

Three and half hours later we finally got through the gauntlet of furniture and made it to the check out. There we were told that some of the stuff we had purchased needed to be picked up from the customer service section down the corridor. People who know me well know how pleasant I can be when I’ve not eaten for a few hours and don’t get my way. Imagine that that amount of irritability in the form of Rich and add to it 3 jaw gritting hours of maze tracing and you can picture how much enthusiasm we had when giving our order sheet to the chick in the customer service section. Lets just say she’s had better afternoons. 

Next morning we were up early and excited to just get everything built and in the van. Rich said he’d be happy with just the bed so we could at least sleep in it that night. I was confident we’d have it all done by dinner. So we started with the bed. For starters, it had an uneven amount of non-matching screws. That’s ok, we can still make it work. Then when trying to fix the main screws into the fittings which were pre-sunk, we realised that those fittings had been fit in such a dodgy manor that they were spinning in place and therefore not catching at all. Another trip the hardware store and Rich solved it by filling everything with wood-glue and fitting these massive screws that were in no way going to budge. Bed done! It was 2:30pm. Seriously, IKEA furniture is the bane of my life! Thankfully we whipped through the cupboard and kitchen worktop and by 7pm we had all our bags in the van. It had been yet another long and stressful day but it was finally done. 

In the years we have been together, Rich and I have moved way too many times, I started 2 businesses, he started 1 which moved premises 3 times. In all of these ‘new beginnings’ we have said that to celebrate we would sit on the floor of our new place, eat chinese and cheers with a drink. We never actually did it. So it seemed all too fitting that this would be the one that we did properly. So we got chinese takeaway and a few bevies, drove to the waterfront and cheered our new home while eating chinese sitting on the van steps. It was a pretty rad feeling and one I wont forget anytime soon. From there we headed to Ogmore, an amazing expanse of South Wales coastline, parked up and watched the sun go down before passing out and having an extremely well deserved first sleep in the home we built with our hands.