Just a quick update because we are actually going to get out to make some turns tomorrow.
Today was a lot more busy work, most of which I don’t even remember. I was sorting out some more wiring most of the time. I finished installing the 12V socket in the passenger wall. I drilled another hole in the van because I was annoyed at how the wires were running.
A new hole. This is the top of the van wall. Previously the wires had to run out over the wall between those two visible sections. For some reason (I’m sure it was not important) there were no holes in the large window frame. Obviously the construction van does not have windows, but it still has the same layout. Eventually we need to put a wall on there and having those wires running over the metal was really annoying me.Told ‘ya. It’s a hole. Now it also has the 12/3 AC wire and the 18/2 LED light wire running through it. The AC wire will go to an outlet. The light wire will go to the switch and then to the fuse box.
While I was being minimally productive, Sara made great progress on the cabinets. She got more polyurethane on everything and installed the drawer slides on all of the drawers.
Measuring twice.Drilling once. Look at that concentration!
Our snowboard trip tomorrow will finally run the fuel tank down to near empty so I can finish the heater. That will be exciting. Hopefully the successful kind of exciting. I also have the final (?) pieces of the electrical system coming tomorrow so this weekend should see the start of the real electrical build out. Stay tuned!
Today felt like a bit of a mess. I didn’t have any specific project in mind so I bounced between a bunch of little things. I primarily worked on the electrical system on the passenger side. The passenger side has a 6-circuit fuse box to control the water pump, the forward lights, the toilet fan, and a 12V outlet back by the bed. Everything needed a little work.
On the lights I changed up some of the wiring and added a couple sections of split loom as conduit. Then I ran that to the fuse box.* The water pump line needed a wire to run from the fuse box to the pump so I added that in and set it up to run back down the wall and over to the galley cabinet with the water lines. The toilet fan wires had to be moved slightly and wired up to the fuse box. And, the 12V socket had to be wired.
The main power comes up from the bottom and goes to the top and bottom screws. The three screws on each side on the bottom are for the positive wires. The three on each side on top are a negative bus for connecting the negative wires. The fuses sit between the main power on the bottom and the positive wire going to each device.
The fuse box sits right above the toilet cabinet and, of course, I ended up taking out and putting the cabinet back in a couple times. Finally I just left it out until I’m sure I’m done (e.g., see * below).
During this process I also realized I had done something quite dumb. Early in the build I knew we would want to get a DC and an AC wire to the passenger side so I put a couple wires in the floor. The AC wire was 14/3 (three 14 ga. wires together in insulation). As I have been working on the electrical design I realized that 14/3 was not really heavy enough – I should use 12/3. Fortunately I left an empty conduit over the ceiling so I went and bought some new wire and strung it up there.
Today as I was messing with the old wire I put through the floor I though to myself, “this seems kind of heavy.” I look at the wire and sure enough, it was 12/3. I had done the right thing originally by running 12/3, but for some reason I was convinced I had used 14/3. The time and effort to run the new wire was wasted. It was only about $20 so not a big deal, but thinking I had the wrong wire in there has caused some angst and unnecessary frustration when I’ve been working on the rest of the design. Now I obviously have an extra 12/3 wire sitting there. I guess I will add another outlet somewhere on that side – probably in the back of the galley cabinet so there is a outlet handy in the summer when the door is open. Of course, that means getting another circuit breaker and eventually dealing with a little more wiring on the other side in the electrical cabinet. Sigh.
Sara spent the day working on the cabinet pieces we built over the last few days. The microwave cabinet was getting its first coat of poly because she stained it yesterday. The galley cabinet is also getting poly – its second coat. Some of the drawers have already had at least two coats of poly so Sara was buffing those. For us today was decidedly parallel play as we didn’t overlap or interact with our projects at all.
Tonight I was also working on the cord for shore power. It goes out through a hole I drilled in the floor near the driver’s door. It will just essentially hang there under the van unless we have an opportunity to plug in somewhere. It was dark so no good pictures.
All this electrical futzing really makes a mess.
*As I wrote this, I realized I screwed it up. The lights should go to the switch and then the switch goes to the fuse box. ARGHHHHHH! Shouldn’t really be a big deal to fix tomorrow, but it is definitely going to annoy me tonight.
With most of the pieces cut it was time to put it all together. Sara was working on her other job (the one that pays her) so it was just me. Wrangling four large boards to glue, clamp, and nail accurately was a bit of a challenge but I did fine. Except for the part where I forgot to line up one of the boards. Fortunately I was able to rip off the board, cut the brad nails, and redo it. Whew. That was close! As I needed all my hands, no pictures during the assembly.
I think it is square. I sure hope it is square!Lots of cuts already, but plenty more needed before it is ready to go.
With the cabinet basically assembled I had to start thinking about the other parts that needed to fit together. I have some wires running behind the cabinet so that meant putting it in, seeing where the wires run, taking it out, and drilling some more holes so the wires pass cleanly. The microwave cabinet also needs to match up with the refrigerator cabinet below for ventilation so that was some more measuring and cutting of the bottom shelf.
Finally, I needed to think about the wiring that will be in that cabinet. As it is the wall facing the bed, we planned to put a light switch there that will control the four recess lights over the bed. We also need an AC outlet for the microwave. I had to dig out those parts and measure what holes had to be cut. I also needed to build a small electrical box on the inside of the microwave cabinet to protect the back of the switch and to hold the socket for the microwave.
Testing the fit with the switch and the microwave.There is plenty of room, but the wiring needs to be protected so I will build a box to cover the back of the outlet.
After all that, another test fit just to see how things look. Wait, what’s this extra wire? Oh, right, I also need to wire in the heater control rheostat. Dig that out of the box and start looking at how it fits together. Wait, the control is how deep? That won’t fit in the electrical box I already built to cover the light switch!
When you don’t have the right tool for the job, get creative! The 1/2″ plywood is a little too deep for the heater control. A forstner bit makes a nice clean, flat-bottom hole, but I don’t have a 1 3/4″ bit. I’ll just have to make do with a nice pretty pattern of smaller holes.The control set down into the pretty countersink.Control knob on the other side.
Build a new box.
The original box is on the right. The new, deeper box is on the left. Other than the depth I made it the same so I could reuse the cover, which I had already drilled for the microwave electrical socket.
This is how things go even when I’m making good progress! At least today was two steps forward and only one step back.
With the galley cabinet largely finished and currently getting the poly treatment, I needed a new project. I still have some electrical items on order so that build needs to wait. I have the fuel part for the heater system, but I need to drive around some more until the gas tank is nearly empty before dropping it (dropping it is easy – lifting it back in to place will be hard unless it is empty). I settled on the microwave cabinet.
The microwave cabinet sits on top of the refrigerator on the driver’s side just in front of the bed. It is going to be tough because the van walls start to seriously curve there. We had previously used cardboard templates to try to get the curve right and that was a PITA. It also didn’t work very well.
Today I decided to just start cutting. I have a sheet of chip board that I got for this very purpose – to use as a template for more important parts. I knew the height and the starting width and then I just started cutting with the jigsaw. Rather surprisingly, it went much better than I expected. I still got in/out of the van to trim the board about 10 times, but I’m happy with the result.
Chip board template.My first wall from the template.
Fortunately, it was a beautiful day here so we could work outside. It made it much easier to have the saw horses right there so I could make small adjustments and climb right back in to try it.
Close work space.Sara finishing galley drawers.
I probably should have just duplicated my first wall, but I somehow convinced myself that the slope of the second wall was a bit different. Both walls are fine, but it would have saved time to just copy the first one. instead of repeating the trial and error process. By the time I had everything fit I think the differences I perceived in the van wall were just in my imagination.
Both walls test fitting.Test fitting with the microwave. Above the refrigerator is a drawer I previously built, then the microwave, then some type of cabinet on top.
Unfortunately the drawer I built ages ago to go in this spot is the wrong size. I don’t know if I forgot to account for the width of the walls (1″) or forgot to account for the drawer slides (1″), but I forgot to consider one or the other as it is 1″ too wide. I think this will work to fix it, but it won’t be the most beautiful drawer ever!
Literally just chopping off the end of the drawer on the table saw. I’ll just put another end on and it should be passable.
In a surprising stroke of good luck, I had to pieces of spare plywood that were almost the perfect the size for the shelves that will fit in the cabinet so I was able to quickly cut those. Tomorrow I should be able to largely put it together and get it ready for finishing.
I also made a shopping run to the electrical supply shop for one more length of wire. I decided the outlet for our induction stove needs a heavier gauge wire than I had previously run – 14/3 – so I picked up some 12/3. This will allow me to comfortably run a 20 amp circuit to the passenger side of the van.
More galley progress today, but it was another slow day with a little football watching listening* and movie night.
My work today was on cutting the final three pieces of the galley cabinet: two doors and the back of the drawer side of the cabinet. We knew the back would be troublesome because of the protrusions in the side of the van. Unfortunately I did not take any pictures of the back today to show you. Installing the back required plenty of measuring and repeated test fitting. The two door pieces was a little easier, but I went slow to make sure we’d have a perfect fit. Just before I started cutting we also decided to change how the cabinet opens. I will have some pictures when it is all done, but the gist is that the backside of the cabinet under the sink will now fold down instead of hinging sideways. If we put it all together right this design should allow us an outside counter in nice weather. I also had to make my obligatory Ace Hardware run because I wanted to make sure our plumbing parts would fit in the holes we cut.
Trying to line up the cabinet with the toilet cabinet and push it back tight against the wall.
In between helping me test fit things, Sara spent a bunch more time staining pieces and starting to put polyurethane on them. Although we are really enjoying being able to work outside in the ~45 deg. weather, that is still pretty cold for polyurethane to dry so Sara cleared out some space in the gear room off the garage and cranked up the heater. This will likely be the last day we spend primarily on the cabinet because it is going to take a few days for the multiple coats of poly to dry.
Our biggest realization of the day is how much the space is going to fill up as we keep adding pieces. The galley cabinet blocks a significant chunk of the door and it really made us realize how little open space we (and the dogs) will have inside. We knew this abstractly from our measurements, but seeing and feeling a large cabinet fill a big space really drives it home.
The door just got a lot smaller. The open space on the right of the cabinet is where the door will fold down so as it opens it will make a useful outdoor counter space.
*First time I’ve ever actually called a local TV station to complain. Fox 12 KPTV Portland can have a sharp stick in the eye for not playing nice with DirectTV Now. In NH we had no problem getting all our local TV stations streaming through Direct TV Now, but Fox out here apparently won’t stream. They work with Direct TV, but do not allow streaming through the app. This is 2018 Fox, pull your head out of…
Slow start today followed by some work, some play, and some football.
Yesterday’s drawer pieces became today’s drawers. That meant cutting a lot of dadoes, sanding, clamping, pounding, gluing, nailing, more sanding, and finally staining.
Cutting dadoes on my table saw with the cross-cut sled I built early on. I don’t know what I would do without it!Clamping the large drawer before nailing it together.The nail gun is awesome and essential. I’ve only shot myself once and only a little bit!Four finished drawers after Sara stained them.
The hunds wanted to clean up some of our wood scraps. They are so helpful!
Parallel play.Just because you eat wood doesn’t mean you can’t look classy.
After getting a little work done we took off for another snowshoe adventure with the dogs and my folks. It was nice to get out while it was still sunny and warm.
Tromping through the snow.My beautiful, happy girls!
Today was again a day full of galley cabinet. After my lone shopping stop to get another couple sheets of plywood we kept working away at the cabinet. Plenty more measuring, cutting, re-measuring, re-cutting, sanding, gluing, nailing, etc. Can you get the black lung from sawdust, because Sara and I are going to get it!
January 12, but nice enough in the middle of the day to work with the garage door open!Shop dog. Somebody’s going to need a bath after she rolls around in sawdust.
My one major misstep of the day was on the north (front) end of our cabinet. We already had the end cut perfectly to size. Then I realized that we had to cut a drawer face out of that end with the table saw. NBD, right? Wrong. The single blade cut will now make the height of the end wrong because the blade removes ~1/8″ in each pass. Arghhh! This would not be a problem if I weren’t so … particular, but who are we kidding of course I am, so I cut a new one.
After working for a little while with the new one I decided it needed a tiny little trim with the circular saw. Tiny. Just to make me feel better about how it fit to another piece. Tiny. I fashioned a guide with another piece of wood so I could not go off line as I trimmed just a tiny bit, ~1/16″, off one end. NBD, right? Wrong. The guide slipped and I ended up taking off too much wood. Arghhh!
Fortunately, during this time I had a realization. The blade width of the circular saw is much narrower than the table saw. If I make the cut with the circular saw the gap will be only about 1/16″ or less. I can account for that little bit in how I fit the drawer face. So, I went back to the original end piece we had already cut. NBD, I just wasted a bunch of time. For those of you who know me, you might be surprised to learn that I am becoming rather good at accepting these little mistakes and just moving on. Of course, when you are living in your parents’ house and your half-built van is sitting in their driveway and there isn’t much good snow out there, time is all you have.
By then end of our day (10:00 p.m. for those of you keeping track, which nicely offsets the fact that I sleep until 9:00 a.m.) we had made excellent progress on the cabinet. The frame is entirely done and stained.
Sometimes it is a challenge to stain when you build it all up first!This is the inside of the cabinet Sara is staining. You can get an idea why it takes so long – lots of pocket screws that have to be drilled in a jig, brackets on this particular shelf, measuring, cutting, gluing, screwing…it all adds up just to make this one part of the cabinet!Frame and three drawers stained.
Three drawers are fully built. The pieces for the other four are almost all cut. Tomorrow we will likely be able to finish up the major aspects of the construction, though we will still have plenty of trim work to do. We also have to fit this thing into the van, which is going to present a couple challenges because there is a rib that sticks into back of one end of the cabinet, which is why the cabinet currently has no back.
More drawer pieces. Plenty of cutting left to do because I have to dado every one of those boards!
Van building aside, the most important event of the day, and the reason I need to sign off and go to bed, is that my copy of Paul Durham’s new book, The Last Gargoyle, arrived today.
Paul was an attorney at Sheehan, Phinney, Bass + Green who came shortly after I left for the Hillsborough County Attorney’s Office. Paul did and has continued to do what every lawyer actually wants to do. He wrote a book…and quit being a lawyer! In fact, he wrote a series of three awesome books, The Luck Uglies, Fork-Tongue Charmers, and Rise of the Ragged Clover. If you like fun, fast-paced, young-adult/fantasy, you should definitely pick them up! The Last Gargoyle is his fourth and I can only hope it is as fun as his first three.
While I continue to ponder the electrical design and order some various parts, we turned our attention to the galley cabinet. Sara is doing some education consulting work (hey, someone has to make some money) but she wanted to work a full day on the van and the cabinet seemed like the best two-person project.
Our galley will go in front of the toilet on the passenger side. It will actually block about half of the slider door, which is fairly common for these kinds of conversions. One does not really need a 4′ wide door to get in and out and so it uses some valuable space.
On one side the cabinet will have a sweet dometic sink that closes flush with the counter and on the other side will be counter space induction stove. The sink will just drain into a 4 gallon water tank that we will have to empty regularly. Because we need to access it often that side of the cabinet will open from both sides. Under the sink we will also have the water pump and the pressurized accumulator tank. The stove will live in a narrow drawer under the counter so we will only take it out when needed. The space below the stove will be drawers. The specifics of the design have still been a bit in flux as we weren’t sure how many drawers we wanted and where.
Who needs CAD when you have graph paper?!
I had already cut a few of the larger pieces for the cabinet, but now it was time to start building. As we are not cabinet makers, everything seems to take longer than one would expect! There is a lot of measuring, cutting, drilling, gluing, and sometimes fixing, though this day went pretty well. If you think this post is going to end with “here is our cool cabinet” you are sadly mistaken. We finished most of the frame of the cabinet but found we need one more sheet of 1/2″ baltic birch to finish putting the frame together.
Drawers will fill the right side; sink and one drawer will be on the left.
At lunch we also spent a ton of time debating about how many drawers we wanted and what sizes. We roughed out about 5 options while measuring various food items and thinking about what we actually need to store.
Do you know the height of a standard can? Sara does!One large drawer; five medium drawers; one small drawer? Two large drawers; three medium drawers; one small drawer? Two medium large drawers; two medium drawers; one small drawer? There was a lot of thinking going on!
We ultimately decided on two small drawers, one for the stove and one for silverware and small items; three medium drawers that will fit can-sized things; and one large drawer for pans and larger bottles. On the other side we will have one large drawer under the drain bucket. It will actually open toward the front of the van and we expect we will use it for dog food and other dog items.
With the frame partially made and the other frame pieces cut, I also started cutting some of the many drawers we have to build. I don’t have a dado* blade so I just concocted a method I can easily repeat to cut dadoes with my regular table saw blade. Right now the $100 the dado blade kit would cost doesn’t seem that expensive! It would sure save me a lot of time.
Drawers pieces with dadoes.
*What’s a dado you ask? A dado is just a groove in the wood into which one can insert another board. In this case the floor of the drawers are 1/4″ baltic birch plywood so the dadoes are 1/4″ wide by approx. 1/4″ deep. A little glue in the slot and some brad nails to hold the boards together and it makes a very solid drawer, like this one.
Before A Wrinkle in Time comes out I wanted to reread the book, so I did…last night. I was about halfway through when I fell asleep and then I woke up about 5:00 a.m. and could not go back to sleep so I finished it. Then I went back to sleep! Admittedly it is super nice to have no job and be able to sleep until 10:00 a.m.!
When I finally got up and had breakfast I made my obligatory Ace run. I needed another length of water hose and some fittings. We decided that before we button up our cabinets we should add another water line that will come from the pressurized pump in our front galley cabinet back to the rear of the van. This way we can have a bike/dog/people washing hose out the back.
When I got back from shopping I removed the toilet cabinet and started adding some holes. With another tube running back under there I had to double up all my holes. I also spent a bunch of time reading and responding to input from the van forum on which I posted my electrical design. It was certainly helpful, though it also made clear how much I still don’t understand about the process!
Somewhere in there we decided to go snowshoeing with the dogs because they are not getting to have a lot of fun with us focusing on the van. My dad came along while my mom relaxed in the car.
On our way back we stopped at a remote store/cafe for some pie a la mode. An old guy was sitting at a big table and we started chatting him up, or he started chatting us up, one way or the other. Anyway, he told us about how he ran off from high-school in the mid-40’s and started working on a freighters and oil tankers. He picked up raw sugar in Hawaii and brought to refineries in California. He went to Murmansk on an oil freighter, during which he talked about German bombers attacking ships in the North Atlantic. He’s already traveled all over the world and in what must be his early 90’s he says continues to travel at least a couple times a year. In just a short time he told us all kinds of stories, such as how shocking it had been as a young man to watch carts collecting bodies in the streets of Bombay. I’m pretty sure he was telling us real stories, though the timelines may have been a bit off. Sara is not so sure. In any event, you never know who you might meet at a remote cafe in the mountains of Oregon!
After dinner I finally got a little more work done. I finished up running the extra water line and installing the final fittings on the water tank. I know I’ve said it before, but now I think we really are done with the tank!
Air vent on upper left; fill hole with plug on the upper right; drain valve on the lower right. The tube in the bottom frame will be the pressurized tube for the bike/dog/people wash. Some day we will need to figure out the shower/spray nozzle and hose, but I don’t think we are going to want that for a few months!
My final project was to take the plunge and install the drawer slides for our first drawer in the refrigerator cabinet. It was actually pretty darn easy, but of course the cabinet is not mounted yet so we will see if it remains sufficiently square when we put everything together.
The drawer will have a front, but until this base is actually mounted to the refrigerator cabinet we haven’t measured it out yet.
Most of my day was spent looking up electrical information online and planning our electrical cabinet. There is quite a bit to fit in there and I want to optimize space. It is going to sit right behind the driver’s seat and with the seat swiveled I don’t want to completely hit a wall. For a good hour I just measured the batteries and other devices; sat and looked at them; sat in the van and thought about how to arrange them. Not terribly productive in some ways, but very necessary if I am going to figure out and understand how it all needs to go together.
Here are some sketches of the electrical plan. I drew this up so I could share it with an online forum so they could tell me everything I’m doing wrong! I know I need a few more fuses and breakers in there.
This is the layout of the path by which the solar panels charge the batteries.This is the basic layout of how the house batteries can get charged by the vehicle battery/alternator.Here is the primary drawing of what I currently need to work on. I’m trying to figure out and arrange how all the little pieces will fit together.
And this is the layout of the all the DC connections.
While I was pondering all of this my part arrived from Ford to finish off the heater system so I went and picked that up. Kenai came along.
I think he likes the slightly swiveled seat.
As long as I was out, I picked up a few pieces to solve one more issue I had been contemplating. Our water tank has a front bottom hole that will run to the sink. In the back there is hole at the top with no threads that will be used to fill the tank. That hole is just plugged with an expanding test plug. There is also a hole at the bottom that I will plumb to allow the tank to be drained. Finally, there is a hole at the top that many people use for venting. After all, as the water draws down the tank needs to pull in air or a vacuum would form and we could no longer draw water out the front.
The only “vent” I have seen is a small tube that is pulled up high so air can come in but water won’t go out. My concern is that with a partially full tank sloshing around it could pretty easily blast out a vent tube even if it is long enough. After a little Google Fu I found my answer – an Air Admittance Valve. They are typically used in a plumbing system to allow air to get pulled in when water goes through a pipe because, as with my tank, if no air is let in a vacuum forms and the liquid doesn’t go down the pipe. They are supposed to seal in the other direction to keep pipe gases from leaking out. I am pretty confident it will also work to keep water from leaking out. We shall see!
The guy at the plumbing store helped me get the rest of the parts: 1/2″ extension from the tank; 1/2″ elbow; 1 1/2″ to 1/2″ reducer; 1 1/2″ slip thingamajig; and the 1 1/2″ air admittance valve.
