We are heading out tomorrow for our first snow trip of the season to Schweitzer in Northern Idaho. Our friends Aaron and Wendy, their two kids, Aaron’s sister and brother in-law, and their kids will all be there for New Year’s. It’s going to be a full house! We are excited to see them all because it is has been quite a while and our friendship with Aaron and Wendy goes way back and the last time we really partied with Aaron’s sister and brother in-law was New Year’s 1999 when they were all childless! Boy, a lot of things have changed since then!
In preparation for our trip we wanted to get the walls in. In order to get the driver’s side wall in, I wanted to finish up running a couple electrical items. First, the set of four bedroom lights needed one tweak and then to be secured with some type of wire clamps. I also wanted to run an empty conduit from the front where the electrical system will be housed to the rear pillar. You never know what you might want to run later! Sara has been working on the walls with stain and poly so there were almost ready to go.
Boring picture, but this is where the lights will drop through the wall. The refrigerator/microwave cabinet will be right in front of the bed so the switch for the bed lights will be set in it, right in front of Sara’s head.
The conduit set in the rear pillar. There is an access panel on the door side of the pillar and I was able to squeeze my hand in there and grab the conduit. (I remembered to run a string through the conduit first so I can later pull a wire through!)
In some places I used a simple adhesive-backed wire clip to secure the conduit.
In other places I used a sticky pad through which you can insert a zip tie.
Generally I found the zip tie solution to work better because sometimes the wire clip broke. The adhesive on both is quite strong. In a few places I still added a little gaffers tape just to make sure the empty tube doesn’t bounce around.
Once that was all done it was time to put in the first wall. As I mentioned earlier, the driver’s wall was done in one piece because we had already removed the bed.
One and a half walls installed, the bed platform reinstalled, and the van all clean for our trip. The other half of the passenger wall needs another coat of poly so we didn’t put it in yet.
On our way through Spokane we also plan to pick up some more 1/4″ and 3/4″ baltic birch plywood (we can get 1/2″ in La Grande). We also plan to hit West Marine for some more wiring and electrical supplies. Nice to have an excuse to be going through a big city.
We are snowboarding for three days and I think we packed just about all the snowboarding clothes we own. Our stuff was piled next to the back door and my mom asked, “Are you sure you have room for everything?”
??????
Seriously, mom? We have an empty cargo van! I’m pretty sure we can fit our snowboards and snowboarding clothes!