Kevin: The Van Build

The new van!

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Gutting the van: The first cut is the hardest!

Our van was in really great condition, as evidenced in the photos above. The previous owners took excellent care of it. This made it all the harder to do the work of gutting it. The reasons behind the remodel are logistical. When we were loading it up last summer to head out for our vacation, we knew immediately that the bed was going to have to be raised. It was too low to put anything significant underneath- our cooler, for example. This meant that when we wanted to sleep on the bed, we had to totally rearrange the stuff to accommodate it: put the cooler in the passenger seat, move the bins (kitchen stuff, mostly) to the driver’s seat… etc.) It was a process and that was definitely something we wanted to solve. Our goal is to have the bed in the “bed” position all the time with plenty of room underneath so that we don’t have to rearrange anything. So… we had to take the back bench seat out and figure out a new sleeping system. This plan opened the door for lots of other plans: insulate the van for sound and heat, update the electrical and the lighting, update the interior, and paint. Here we go!!!!

Everything was stuck down and had to be scraped off… labor intensive work but satisfying.

Once the carpet was up off the floor, it was time to clean off the ceiling… Here’s how that went.

So… what’s next?

Our brother-in-law, James Taylor (jamestaylordesigns.com), is an incredible artist who make furniture out of all sorts of salvage and reclaimed materials, and he helped Ben rip the cedar boards that we are going to use for our ceiling. Check it out-

The ceiling of the van is curved ever so slightly making the furring job a bit more complicated (and the roof rack, too, but more of that later). In order to get the hemlock furring to lay right, we had to curve it… Ben came up with a plan that worked perfectly: pot from Goodwill, PVC, and a cap. Here it is:

After the wood was ready, we elicit the help of our 11 year old son, Sahale, to help get the furring in place. But first, Ben had to teach him how to drill.

Getting the boards in was a bit more difficult, or maybe it was just more time consuming, than we thought. We had to buy a rivnut tool and place rivnuts into the roof. I have a video but there is a Bob Dylan song playing in the background and YouTube won’t let me load it because of copyright laws. 😦 We’ll have to settle for a screen shot for now.

Once the furring was in, we were ready to get to work on the insulation. The first step was to put down dynamat. It’s very easy to use and I recruited the help of my 7 year old son, Leo, to get the job done.

After the dynmat was in, we shoved lamb’s wool into all of the little spaces…

Then, we were ready to fit the insulation. Our amazing friend Mike… (pictured below with his equally amazing wife, Crissie)…

…helped Ben size and cut the insulation for install. We were able to get it into place and tape it, thus “finishing” the roof for the day. It was a huge accomplishment and it felt really good to be on the other side of dismantling and actually be putting things into the van and building. Here are some photos to document.