AS water began cascading from the roof into the caravan, Nicki O’Brien started to get a feeling that she’d just bought a lemon.
What followed was proof that with determination and the help of a kind neighbour, anything is possible.
“My two teenage daughters and I had camped four years ago, in tents. The weather was miserable, it was raining and everything,” she said.
“I thought if we had a van it wouldn’t be that bad. I knew I had to go cheap though. It didn’t worry me if I had to do some work because I knew how to use a drill.”
Nicki said she saw the ad’ in the paper for the van and asked her neighbour Graham who she knew was a builder if he thought it was do-able.
“We’d hardly ever spoken before but he said yes it was fixable. Neither of us realised how bad it was until I had bought it and everything we touched was rotten,” she said.
“We ended up gutting the whole thing.”
Neighbours watched on with interest as the dilapidated van underwent its drastic makeover, in the process acquiring the name Betty.
“It was on the street and people would go passed and say ‘what’s happening with it’. Everyone sort of bagged it and said I couldn’t do it and it wouldn’t be ready,” she said.
“My dad came and helped a little, my brother did some electrical work and one of my daughter’s friends came and helped me paint it. Some people thought it was a food van originally.”
After a month of extensive works Nicki completed the job and said she is now no longer afraid to ask for help and encourages others to take time to get to know your neighbours.
“It’s been fun because the neighbours all talk about it, it brought the street closer. I’ve got a really great friendship with Graham. It sends out a message to anyone that you can do it,” she said. “I couldn’t do it myself, there’s no way it could’ve turned out how it did without his (Graham’s) help.”
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