Progress is Slow... But Not?

We are 2.5 weeks in and we've hit the part of our build where precision is extremely important!  Some of the early projects definitely needed some level of accuracy (i.e. cutting giant holes in the side of our van), but they were more manual labor than anything. 

This next part of the build consists of all of the foundational things that will make life in the van simply "work".  Like light switches doing what you want them to, the height of the mattress, where the wires should be run, what kind of drawer pulls will keep the drawers in place, etc. These are all things we knew we'd have to figure out when the time came.  What we didn't anticipate was how drained we would feel after making all of these decisions during our 10 hour days.

Most of the week involved hours of research in a territory that neither of us have ever stepped foot.  For example, we knew we wanted light switches by the "front" (side) door and also in the back of the van so we can reach them from the bed or if needed from the back door.  We also knew we wanted our lights to be split so that you can either turn on all 8 of them or just 4 of them at a time.  This is both to create a dimmer space but also to conserve battery power if needed.  So how does one go about making this work with no background in wiring lights? HOURS of research and HOPE that the research was enough to steer us in the right direction. 

At the end of the week we were feeling pretty defeated because we felt like we were losing the momentum we demonstrated at the beginning of the build, and just simply didn't know what we were doing. But as we sit and reflect on all the progress we've made over the last week and a half, we realize this simply isn't the case.  We know the difference between 12-2 and 12-3 wire, we can recite our cabinetry dimensions in our sleep, and we've completed our flooring, flares, and bed frame! Below are some in depth details on our progress this week.  Enjoy!

Flooring

Our flooring turned out so well! We love the wood look of this flooring but the durability and ease of install of the luxury vinyl tile was ultimately what sold us.  Luxury Vinyl tile is of the most durable interior flooring you can buy. It is water proof, flexible enough to contract and expand depending on temperature (since our weather conditions will be changing all the time), and extremely stable.  Additionally, it is a floating floor, so no glue was required to install these tongue and groove planks. So easy!

Completed LVT.

Flares

Flares are done! In our last post, the holes were cut out of the sides of the van to prepare for flare installation.  We have now completed that installation and are loving how they look! But even better, They'll give us an additional 7 inches of width so that we can #sleepsideways on a regular full sized mattress and save the 2 feet of livable space we'd be losing if our bed was placed front to back.

Flares are installed with heavy duty glue. But we taped them up with gaffers tape to be
extra certain they wouldn't fall off over night :)

Glue is dry!

On the interior of the flare, we insulated them with Reflectix.

And then covered the insulation with an upholstery grade fabric.

Final step: Installed C.R. Lawrence slider windows that came with the flares.
The windows also have screens in them so we can leave them open while we sleep for extra air flow.

Bed Frame/Garage

We had some loose ideas for how we wanted the bed frame to function.  We knew the mattress would run perpendicular to the van (thanks to the flares!).  We knew we needed ample storage underneath for all of our camping equipment with easy access from the back doors- we call that area the "garage".  We knew it had to house 26 gallons of water storage as well as our outdoor shower/water heater, battery, inverter, and all of the other electrical parts. We also knew we wanted a place underneath the bed for Miles to sleep.  At home, he likes to either sleep in his crate or underneath the bed.  With 68 square ft. to work with, we don't exactly have room for both. So we wanted to create a crate-like space under the bed for him to sleep. We also wanted to put the top bed supports on joist hangers so that we could remove them easily to continue working in the van (versus crouching down underneath the bed frame). Plus all of this needed to be as strong as a regular bed.  

Before we could start building, we really needed to take a step back and think through how we were going to accomplish all of this - what materials, what layout, what brackets, etc.

Zach's drawings for the different views of the bed supports.

Screwing in the final pieces of the main frame.

Installing the final joist hanger.  The three middle supports you see here are all removable and
will be screwed in as soon as the build is finished and the bed is ready to go in.

Top view of the finished bed frame.

When standing at the back of the van, the left side will house our battery and electrical equipment.

The right side will house our 26 gallons of water storage.

Back view of the finished bed frame. The open space in the center will serve as storage space. The opening at the floor in the front will serve as the entry to Miles' space under the bed.

Electrical System

Our approach to the electrical system is to put it all together and hope it doesn't blow up :) Kidding, but we really had no idea what we were doing when we started this project. Zach was in charge of researching and diagraming this whole thing out and he did a darn good job!  

Our main source of power are our three 100 watt solar panels that we mounted on our roof as mentioned in last week's post. The power collected from the panels will feed into a 200AH AGM battery and serve as our battery bank.  This battery will control everything that runs on DC power: our fridge, fan, lights, water pump, and a DC outlet (cigarette lighter) we are installing in the garage just in case we need to power something else on DC power.  For the lights and water pump, we are installing light switches to turn the power to those items on and off. We are using a 2000 watt pure sine inverter to convert our DC battery power to AC for things like our InstantPot, cooktop, blender, phones, laptop, etc. For all of these items, standard AC power outlets will be installed throughout the van. In the situation where we aren't getting enough solar power to keep our battery bank charged, we  are also installing a B2B charger to pull power from the vehicle's battery and push it to our "home" battery while the car is running.  This is taking a very cautious approach since the solar should be enough, but we never wanted to be stuck without power. Finally- monitoring systems.  Our solar charge controller will help to indicate what type of input we are receiving from our solar panels, while the entire performance of our electrical system battery will be captured in our battery monitor.

If you stopped reading.... we get it- the electrical system is super confusing! And that is all just for a tiny little home on wheels, can you imagine a standard house or a skyscraper!? 

We aren't totally finished installing the electrical system, but think we feel more confident after all of our research and should be finished with install in the next few days.

Zach's diagram. Trying to make sense of this whole thing.

*most* of our electrical components, all ready for install!

Cabinets

Due to the limited space we have in the van for storage, we have extremely specific dimensions for our cabinetry needs. This makes buying pre-fab cabinets out of the question.  We have seen a number of van-lifers build cabinets themselves and figured if we had the right tools and some guidance along the way we could do the same.

Zach's grandfather, Clay, spent his whole career in the furniture business in one aspect or another and even spent years building furniture himself.  Naturally, he was our best resource to get some guidance from and we invited him out to come take a look at the van with us and talk through some of the things we wanted to achieve with our cabinets. About 8 minutes had gone by and he'd offered to build all (!!!!!) of our cabinets for us and only requested the materials and some drawings to scale for what we wanted built. We realize that most aren't this lucky and we have probably annoyed him by now with how many times we've expressed gratitude, but we are soooo thankful to Clay and his willingness to help us with this project!

He is making short work of the task at hand and we can't wait to share the final results once he's got them completed :)

Drawings for Clay: lower cabinets.

Drawing for Clay: front of the bed, pull out table, and drawer.