Phase 5

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Phase 5.3: Bed and Bike Garage

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Since we just recently upgraded our mountain bikes, we weren’t leaving them behind and we really didn’t want them to be outside of the van 24/7, susceptible to rain, theft, and more back up hazard than a van with no windows already is. So, we kind of build the van around the bikes being inside, but taking up as little room as possible. Our layout changed many times before we started building (It changed as we were building sometimes). 

We finally were able to start building, with excitement, when we finally tried the bikes going in sideways, where the fork is on the passenger side and the back tire is on the driver side. They fit and they took up so little space too, compared to putting them in length wise! We had to have an area to sit, work, edit, nap and eat. Those are some functional requirements we had for the non-garage area. The bike storage usually competed space-wise with the living/hangout area. 

But, with this new configuration that we figured out, with the bikes sideways, it allowed both to happen—bike storage and room for the seating area we needed. 

So, we got to working on the bike tray for the bikes. We wanted them to pull out for easy access and stow-away. We used some heavy duty 30” drawer slides that we found on Amazon.  We reused the grey rubber floor mat that came with the van in the garage. We cut it out, rolled it out, framed right over it. We started our framing for the garage area where the drawer would slide in and out and built around that. Once we got the frame for the drawer all laid out, we were able to mount the drawer sliders, on each side, to that newly installed frame and get a true measurement of how big the drawer needed to be.

Then, we started building the drawer. We framed it out from our measurements of the drawer frame. We used some thick ply OSB for the base of the bike tray. (We used OSB because we got at Lowe’s for 50% off. It had one crushed corner. 50% off meant it was $8 for a 4x8 board! So we found many ways to make it useful.) 

Once we had the drawer built and stained, we reused some more of that white waterproof textured fiberglass panelling (the previous owner used this instead of the stock cardboard paneling) as our base. That way we could have a little bit of a waterproof base in there for our bikes. We sealed it around the edges with some leak proof sealant my dad had in the garage. He uses it for quick pool piping patches.   

Once the bike tray was in and working, we needed to find a way to mount our bikes to the tray to make sure it would still function, as planned. We couldn’t move forward with the rest of the build, until we made sure it slid in and out smoothly with the bikes mounted. Once that happened, we could get the measurements of the bikes in the tray to know the height of the bedframe being build around it. 

The tray we built was a little short. The fork hung over the drawer bit so we built little platforms to mount our bike mounts on. 

We have one thru-axel bike fork and one regular.  For the thru-axel bike we ended up buying  this one. For the other bike, we got a 6” 5/8 carriage bolt, some eye hooks (2 different sizes), washers, lock washers handmade our own mount. Kevin called it the “bride of Frankenstein” (because we had made his Thru-Axel mount first, out of plumbing nipple and some other mounting pieces for pluming, and he thought that was Frankenstein-esque.) We ended up just buying the real deal for Kevins bike (even tho our worked fine we just thought it would eliminate the side to side swaying while driving—it doesn’t do any better).

Phase 5.2: Walls

This one was hard to get started. Although wood paneling seemed pretty easy, we didn’t want our van looking like the inside of a boat with tons and tons of wood paneling every where. We wanted it to look like a little micro-loft or something that might make you forget you were in a van the more time you spend in it. It’s a lot to expect in such a small space and that desired look and functionality is giving us all the headaches everyday :) But, we will see if we can pull it off.

Meaning to go to Home Depot to broaden our selection, we drove across town to what we both pictured as a Home Depot, but it was another Lowe’s. Whoops. We went in anyways to grab the things on our list and just see if they had any more variety in the 4 x 8 MDF textured panels than the Lowe’s near our house. A friend told us he had done all his bedroom accent walls in them and they might work perfect. I had seen the brick ones, but I was still coming around to them. I thought if I paint it white it would be awesome. Kevin wasn’t keen on the idea right then. 

But, he was in luck! We found the stuff, in person, that we saw online and not at the other Lowe’s—the Barn looking textured hardwood panels our friend was telling us about, aka Gray Homesteader Panels! So we bought 3, 4x8 Panels thinking that would be enough. 

We used the previous stock door panelling as stencils for our Gray Homesteader panels. Those were easy. We traced, cut, and installed them with some self tapping screws. A stencil needed to be made for the back door window area. 

I taped some newspaper together over the entire area and poked a hole with my scissors so that I could cut along the cut-out for where the window would go, if there were any on our back doors. Once I got a pretty good newspaper stencil, I traced that on to cardboard. Then, I cut it out and made sure it fit. When it fit, I cut it out of the Gray Homesteader panels. 

To attach our back door panel, we put some 1x3’s in with self tappers on the inside edge of the window indent to use as anchor points for the wall panels. We saw a lot of people covering up the whole door, but we just made individual panels. We didn’t see much out there on how to cover up Sprinter back doors in a camper van conversion; so, this is how we did it and it worked out great!

We ended up needing one more panel for the walls with all the cuts we had already made for the back door and slider door. After spending quite a bit of time talking Kevin into the faux brick, we went to pick it up and finish the wall project. 

We measured the wall at several points. I think it was at every foot going down, we took down a measurement. We measured from the center of the van, (where our center stud runs down to attach the wall and cabinets), to the furthest stud near the back door. Again, we got that measurement across, at every 1’ mark going up. The van curves so it is a different measurement at a couple of them. We had our measurements at each foot then just drew a line connecting the dots and cut. Then, we traced and cut out where our switches would go and jigsaw’d them out. 

Once we had all the wall panels measured and cut, we used a combination of liquid nail and pin nailer to attach the walls to our studs. 

We used thiner grade plywood on the front area because most of it was going to be covered by upper cabinets and the other exposed part was going to be covered in tile. 

Phase 5.1: Ceiling (Mix and Match Panelling) & Van Lighting

At this point, we were ready to start building. All the prep we were doing prior to this felt like work, tedious work and it still looked like an empty van at the end of the day. We knew we had to start with the ceiling to at least get the lights working. That way we could work into the afternoon since it was getting dark so early. 

So we went with a shopping list to Lowe’s. We intended on getting the White Wall Paneling with the lines. But they were out of all but one and it was pretty beat up. We were on a mission to finish this ceiling. So we stood around in the Lumber section of Lowe’s  trying to figure out a quick Plan B that we could both agree on again. 

We were in the wall panel section and I smelt the Cedar walking by and didn’t care about the price. I wanted that smell in my van always. Kevin, although he liked the smell too, he was adding up the price and didn’t like the price tag on the Cedar Walk Planking Kit but he knew I wasn’t giving up on that awesome smell. So while I went out to measure to assure him it really wouldn’t be that much, he had come up with an idea to use one pack of all the planks. Get two of the $10 Planks and one pack, we would stain them. We also grabbed one of these to add to the mix. 

I loved the idea because it replaced my original idea for reclaimed pallets for the roof, but I wouldn’t have to go searching for them and pull them apart once I found them.

In retrospect, I am glad they were out of that paneling because I love the end result so much better and my van smells like cedar every time I open the door! 

Because I had never used a nail gun before, I thought I better start on the side with cabinets so that I could learn where it would be hidden by cabinets anyways. 

It was pretty straight forward. I started by measuring the distance between the ceiling beams we framed out to prep for the ceiling. That way, the panels would always end on a ceiling beam to have a nail anchor point. Once I had that measurement, I cut the planks, and shot the nails into those ceiling beam to hold them up. I didn’t think about it at the time but, a tiny bit of liquid nails might have helped, but I didn’t use it.

We used the Dream Under Cabinet 12V 2W Recessed LED Lighting. When it came time to cut out a place in the panel to recess those lights, I traced around them, drilled a pilot hole, and jig-saw’d them. You can use a hole-saw here, but I really didn’t feel like running to the store again because the one I already had was a wee-bit too small.  Even when I used it, I had to jig-saw anyways. 

**On these lights, they will have black and white cables. The Black is Positive and the White is Negative** 

Jig-saw worked great. The lights are super bright and draw very little power when on. We ordered 12 total lights for the whole van. We have a switch for the back lights to turn on, in the bed area, and a switch for the front lights to turn on, in the kitchen area. (We will also have a set of 3 of these lights under the upper cabinets). 

The planks, since they were all different “actual” sizes from each other, it made the tongue and groove not so groovy in places. It made every fit a challenge, but we got creative in places that gave us headaches and we would still do it all over again even tho it took almost two whole days. (I was working by myself for most of it, while Kevin was working-working on a photo/video gig…So, it could go faster with two people).

The only other part that was difficult was the part by the door. There were some major stenciling on panels that were going down in that area.