Poor Jamie. He's out in the driveway building the interior of the Land Rover whilst I sit in bed writing this. I've had a bad cold for about a week and feel terrible, and he's just got the same thing I think. With 9 days to go before Christmas, we're under pressure to get the damn thing done.

In the week before we got the canvas, he had:

🔧 Replaced all four springs
🔧 Put the roof racks on
🔧 Driven to Ballarat to get the canvas measured up
🔧 Drank a lot of coffee
🔧 Sealed everywhere imaginable
🔧 Reclad the left hand side of camper
🔧 Started cutting plywood for the shelving plus the benchtop
🔧 Had a surf
🔧 Replaced the brake pads
🔧 Cut and poly coated the bed for plywood
🔧 Cut and poly coated the benchtop
🔧 Gone to Bunnings quite a few times
🔧 Did a days work on a gearbox for a mate
🔧 Fixed the front door seals and tried to get Kylie to release funds for new doors (no luck)
🔧 Replaced the winch rope
🔧 Put handles on the back to open the pop top

And then at last the canvas was done, and we got it up in one afternoon. Firstly we laid it out and put aluminium strips in the seams so we could screw tech screws through and to the alumnium of the roof. We were really impressed with the quality - a lot better than what we had on the Series 3. The details were fantastic and the seams seemed really solid.

He got his mate Murray around to help erect the canvas. He measured every 40 cm or so, drilled a tech screw through to hold it together, and afterwards went around with pop rivets.

Meanwhile, I supervised and enjoyed the space going up around me. It's amazing how close the roof colour is to the canvas, which wasn't quite intentional but it looks good, and quite warm and welcoming on the inside. Some people thought we should have grey as it suits the outside, but we disagreed. It'd be lighter and warmer if it was tan, we thought, and besides, we liked the desert sand look.

It did take about 6 hours all told - I guess if he was to do it again it'd be quicker. The fact it was a prototype also threw up some curve balls, as the gas struts scraped alongside the lower part of the canvas. We figured out it was the aluminium strip in the seam. Ideally we'd take this out and cut away a little section but that'd take hours - so we might just cut a nick in the fabric on the inside and snip the aluminium from there and rivet on either side to secure it. A right pain anyway.

Still, we really love it. The black seams look fantastic and they also aid in stopping water getting on the zips, which was a much better job than last time (a different canvas guy). In the photo above, it's not yet pulled taut - it's too hot outside for me to go and take an updated photo but I'm sure you'll get more in the next update, haha! Right now we are kinda sick of looking at it - you're talking 8 hours a day for weeks working on this camper and we need a holiday from it, that's for sure!