A Mess of Wires. The Building Process.

Here is how I go about building projects.  I spend a lot of time researching and planning.  During the planning phase diagrams must be created.   Floor plans, elevational drawings and sketches.   Sometimes scale models.  Once in a while a particularly complex and integral custom part might need to be created.  —A part with out which, the entire project would fail.  In this components' building is the very proof the project would succeed.  But once researched, planned, drawn and even in the latter case an element built  …sometimes after all of this is done, I just abandon the whole thing.  For really, once the planning is all done, the actual building of the project is rather anti climatic isn’t it?  The Wife can read you a list of these I have had over the years.  She actually considers this a character flaw?! ;-)   Me?  I just have all these cool things I have been part of!

But on this project I am a little more involved.   Plus, I have you my audience, my confessors and friends, who are keeping me driven.   I don’t want you reproaching me at social occasions, emails and Facebook pokes when you ask me “Hey, how is that van project?” if I was still surfing couches.

What I do while actually building though is more of a draft.   Take the wiring for instance.   One of the first things I knew when designing this project was I wanted a light switch at the side door to turn on the main lights.   I knew beside the bed I needed a table.  I knew the table would have electrical needs.   Cell phone/laptop charging, rice cooker when the kitchen countertop is occupied.  Stuff like that.   

I build like the AD/HD man I am. (Squirrel!)  I installed that light switch by the door but the table is so far only a rough draft on a sheet of paper.   I left a loop of wire in the table’s spot where I know something is going to happen, I just don’t know what.   I did the same thing on the other side of the van as I built the floor to ceiling shelf.   I know this is going to be a central hub of wires, switches and information, but I didn’t know what.   So during this phase of building I had several loops of wire hanging down.  As I put more stuff in I left a foot or two of slack in the wires in case the switch I plan on putting at the top of the shelf really needs instead to be put at the bottom.  Some of the wires even had switches wired to them hanging in mid air.

It isn't really as messy as it looks.
...Really.

As a quick aside, I have mentioned, this is really my first non-lethal-voltage wiring job.   So the consequences of these light switches hanging in space were essentially nil.  Sure, if I bump one against the other there might be a small spark and I blow a fuse, but that is the extent of it.  Yet I found myself reaching very slowly toward them anytime I wanted to turn the lights on.  Touching them only by their safe grounded edges just like if they were the 120 volt light switches in your house.  The ones that could kill you if you touch the wrong spot.  It was just funny when I would catch myself, basically every single time.

Maybe because of this reason, this feels like a really big night.   I used my new Dewalt jigsaw with a fresh blade to cut two square holes in the floor to ceiling shelf.   These holes were for three switches and one four port USB charger.  I made the holes just large enough to allow the screws from the cover plate to pass through unimpeded.  Then into these holes I mounted in the charger and two wired switches.  Into the forth spot I installed and unwired switch I will some day use to control two all weather LED strip lights up on the roof rack.   —If some late night somebody knocks on the door, I want to be able to flip a switch and light up the surrounding area pretty good.

Eventually I got the cover plates mounted and some handy little labels taped above the switches to help me remember what they are.   With this they really look great from the front.  From the back they are still pretty rough.   I still have loops of wire because I wanted to keep my options open.   It is those fine details of a plan that I work on later.   For now it is just a rough in.   Coming up I am going to have hours of living in this van.  I will go in and rewire and shorten all of these wires once I am absolutely certain I know where everything is going to go.

I mentioned a while back that my friend Craigie told me he could likely find me a hunk of countertop.   He is a carpenter to the class of people who rip out a hundred thousand dollar kitchen to put in a new hundred thousand dollar kitchen.  So in his day to day life he comes across salvage countertop every once in a while.  With the floor to ceiling shelf installed I had put in a temporary countertop mostly to test fit the cooktop and confirm it’s orientation.   

But the particle board I used was only half inch.   Not really strong enough to hold much of anything even with the brace I stuck under it.   I figured I should either build something more permanent or at least stronger.   Or, should just give up on getting something free?   Buy either countertop or maybe some butcherboard. --Strong but very heavy.  I was wavering in my decision.   I decided to text him and see what he felt the odds really were of finding something.

He wrote back fairly quickly saying he thought the odds were fairly good.   What he didn’t expect was just such a piece would land in his lap about fifteen minutes later.  Fate lending a hand, or a countertop, as it were.   This time in the form of a kitchen showroom where he was picking up some materials for another job.   The owner said, “We are throwing all this stuff out.   You want any of it?”  There on the top of the pile was a hunk of Paperstone countertop just four inches longer than what I needed.