We Can All Get It Wrong Sometimes.

I got a few little van things done this week.   First off I cut out the back shelf.   For the past couple of months as I have been using the van, the back side of my bed has butted up against some plywood crossing in front of the back doors.  The back (door) side of that plywood is the control panel where I am mounting all the electronics.  But at the top of that plywood there was just space, about ten inches of it, before the back door. To keep the cold out I put some pillows across the gap.   That helped for sure but still a lot of cold air was coming in.

From the Amish sawmill I had a six foot long, ten inch wide 5/4 walnut board.  Heck of a chunk of wood.  You could almost make a mantel for your fireplace with it.  It was rough sawn and ended up about an inch thick when I got it all smoothed down in the planer.  After planning I cut the board to length, then traced out the corners a bit.  Sort of rough sawing it to get it to kind of fit.  Eventually I got it so it was in place and from the very furthest point back on the door to my board was about two inches.   I took a two inch scrap of oak and used that between the door and my pencil to trace the pattern of the back doors onto the top of my board.  I think it took about three touch ups to get it perfect.  The hardest part was figuring out exactly where the latch has to swing.  Then, cutting that arc on the board.

Gluing on the strip of padauk.  I did all this
work to cut the back profile but now realize
I didn't take a single photo of the process.

Once cut to fit, I ran it through the jointer at the Maker Space shop.  Smoothing down and flattening the van side of the walnut board.  To that I glued a strip of  3/4” padauk.  The red/orange of padauk is an amazing contrast to the dark brown of walnut.  Great having a shop where I have all these clamps!

On to bigger projects. The first bit of the finished ceiling I put in with the help of number one son. We made a measurement error of about an inch because we didn't account for the curve of the ceiling where it meets the door.  Certainly coverable with some wide trim next to the floor to ceiling shelf. But that was also a small, less than 4ft sheet. The balance of the ceiling could then be done in one eight foot sheet but not by just one guy. I again called upon my friend Craigie to help me out.

Craigie works full time in the construction business, working for a small job carpentry company.  Doing… whatever the politically correct word for a handyman is.  Every morning he looks at the calendar on his iPhone(3!?) and the day's tasks are all lined up on there.  A very slick system! But he doesn't really know what he is getting into until he arrives. So it is a real think on your feet kinda job. 

I have a ceiling!  Woo hoo!

That kind of background has been invaluable for my van project which is small job after small job with a few unpleasant surprises in between.

But once in a while the best of us can get it wrong.  In this case I had planned to stop the ceiling plywood at the bulkhead.  I  didn't really plan on doing anything forward of that point. But Craigie pushed to extend the wood beyond the bulkhead wall up into the cab where in about ten inches we could tuck it under the material of the cab ceiling.

He had such a great idea a couple weeks before to extend the van floor out over the step.  This one I was less sure about but after some hemming and hawing on my part I went with it.

It was a complicated cutting job. We had to notch it on the side and end to go around the floor to ceiling shelf.  Also there were six holes for LED puck lights. I called out the measurements and he cut it all out.  But then it was time to install it.

We discovered a problem almost right away.   To get the sheet to fit into the space over the bulkhead we had to have the sheet nearly flattened horizontally.  Here is how our decision effected us.  If we would have just been stopping at the bulkhead, we would only have to bend the sheet a few inches to clear the sides of the floor to ceiling shelf.  But, because of the extra length of going in front of the bulkhead. But, we were more than a foot from having cleared the floor to ceiling shelf at the corner.  We had the bend the plywood A LOT.  And then, we were so close, just one extra little push we knew we could make it fit.

The problem with trying to apply too much bend.

The plywood tore, just at the corner where it meets the shelf.  First only a little bit, and then a jagged eight or ten inches.  We swore but all the pressure suddenly released it finally slid into place with ease.  Then we evaluated.   In hindsight I should have just stopped at the bulkhead.  This isn’t a make’r look perfect in the cab kind of project.  There wasn’t any real good reason to have any wood come forward of the bulkhead and actually given some thought I think it will cause a few problems.  But, I never said this is anything other than a learning experience type project.  Craigie was giving the best advice for the family van type project where you want everything to look the best everywhere.

At that point it was dark. We were sweaty from the struggle.  The mosquitoes had found us.  Craigie asked me what I wanted to do.  Because we hadn't attached it yet, we could have ripped it out. I didn't have another sheet, but one could have been bought for another night.  At the time I was only thinking “god, do I want to go through that again?  Hell no!”

We dropped it down enough to slap some construction adhesive in there and nailed it up.  We put some wood glue in the ripped spot and fashioned a brace to hold it in place until the glue dries.  Then it was going to be a wood filler job.

A great older pickup camper which could be the excellent
base for a remodel project.

In other news, the wanderlust has struck Craigie as well.  When I pulled into his driveway sittin’ there on stilts was a used pickup camper.  I guess he and his wife went through three and half degrees of hell in the lead-up, show-up, and post arrival of the camper she opposed.  These things happen. If I have given the impression moving my own wife from my initial words “I'd like to buy a van” to the point of actual purchase as being some sort of panacea I want to correct that right now. That's my own problem though.  Being an accomplice to Craigie's whole deal put me in an awkward spot.  Lucky for me they had both declared peace the day before.

Cuz I gotta confess, I might have tipped him over the edge.  Talking to him about my own van after the first camping trip with The Wife I said to him, “Craigie, we’ll never sleep in a tent again” and I think at that moment all six foot seven inches of Craigie was on board.