VAN BUILD: Furniture
The furniture build out for this van was quite the undertaking. We started with the constraint that we wanted all connections to the van body to be bolted for strength and so we could remove the furniture in the future for repairs or renovations. The furniture broke down into three main modules — the wet module (sink + kitchen equipment), the power module (battery system), and the bench (with pull out Dometic fridge + large storage drawer).
Once the furniture frames were assembled, we installed cross-nuts in the aluminum frame which would allow a bracket to attach the frame to the floor. I machined these brackets out of 1X1X1/16 aluminum angle by drilling holes and cutting to length.
After installing the cross-nuts and making the brackets, I fit and cut the stationary 1/2" finish-grade plywood panels. These were later painted and installed, leaving the inside surface with its durable factory poly finish. A few panels had to be furred out to receive drawer slides, which was tricky to predict but worked out in the end with a bit of pre-planning.
Next up was Drawer Mania. Our van has 6 regular drawers, 2 heavy duty drawers for the Dometic and cooler, and 2 hinged doors. Deciding to make the drawer faces inset and expose the aluminum frame added some tricky business to the drawer fabrication, as did the fact that we incorporated no horizontals between the individual drawers which would have made latching much easier. Lessons learned!
After making sure our drawers were sized for the things we needed to store in them, I laid out all the drawer dimensions, Dave wielded his skill saw with some mad Super Dave skillz, and we assembled the drawers using Kreg Jig pocket screws. The cooler drawers were more robust, using 3/4" plywood with funny-shaped sides to allow access to the handles and to make removing them easier. I then painted all the drawers with two coats of paint and laid out the drawer slides. Once the drawer slides were installed, I test fit all the drawer boxes in the furniture.
The next step was to work on the bench construction. We decided on a slightly sloping back for comfort and wrestled our slightly out of square aluminum frames into submission. This part was pretty tricky and in the end we decided to attach a back panel to link the power and bench modules together for additional support. We remembered to cut a hole for the Dometic plug just in time! And of course had to immediately test out the cushions to celebrate the milestone.
We then turned to the countertops. We had decided on laminated wood, after thinking through several other options which all seemed heavier and more expensive. Our first version was laminated plywood, which ended up being totally ugly and awful. Good thing the lumber yard in Powhatan had an incredible selection of tight-grained pine, because that version was so much better! We ripped the boards on the tablesaw to width and then glued them together with one million clamps. The countertops were then cut to length and planed with a hand plane to get the major bumps and glue oozes off, followed by many hours of incremental sanding (THANK YOU DAVE!!). We cut a template for the sink, then cut the hole and test fit the sink and faucet. I then sealed the counters with several coats of polycrylic and sanded in between with fine steel wool. We were super stoked with how they turned out!
After assembling 90% of the furniture and removing the drawers, we installed the frames in the van by bolting them to pre-installed T-nuts in the floor. We were nervous about alignment, but to our surprise and relief, our templates and remeasuring paid off and the holes in the brackets had just enough wiggle room to align all bolts perfectly. We also installed the countertops with corner brackets from underneath which was a fun challenge.
The next day, we installed the sink (see plumbing post) and I installed the drawer faces using a deck of cards for shim space and a nail gun. Then, the drawers were removed again, the faces painted and hardware installed. We also installed the inset hinges for the two doors and found some magnetic latches to hold them closed. At this point we were really coming down to our deadline for getting on the road, so I didn’t take many pictures!
