I took yesterday off from van building because of Father’s Day. Today, I started by removing all the weight from the subfloor and examining the completed subfloor. I am pretty happy with it. I had hoped that the biscuits would have done a better job of minimizing the seam between the boards, but I am still happy with it. The subfloor is very solid. Here is what it looked like.
The next major section of work is on the walls. Over the next several days, I’ll frame up the walls to prepare them for running wires through the van and installing some of the electrical outlets and switches.
The start of the work on the walls was to attach the four pieces of unistrut (two on each side) to the walls of the van. In the picture above, you can see the unistrut, but it is only held on by two or three bolts. I want to take advantage of all the rivnuts that Ford put in the van, which means that there will be up to six bolts holding up each piece of unistrut. The Ford rivnuts are all in a line which means that the unistrut will be level with the floor of the van. That means that I can use the unistrut to measure up and down the wall in the van.
The unistrut that I purchased has slots in it, but not all of the rivnuts in the wall of the van line up with one of the slots (Murphey’s Law). So, with Artie’s help, we marked up the places where we had to cut into the unistrut to open it up for the other bolt holes. We removed the unistrut and used a jigsaw to open up the slots in the unistrut. Then we painted the exposed steel.
I was hoping to bolt the unistrut back up on the wall, but when we tried to do that, we noticed that the washers that I had were too small for the openings in the unistrut and they slid into the slot instead of holding the unistrut to the wall. So, at lunchtime I was off to the hardware store to pick up some bigger washers. In the afternoon, Artie and I were able to bolt the unistrut back up on the walls. It looks good and is very secure.
While I was waiting for the paint to dry on the unistrut, I began work on cutting out furring strips to attach to the walls. The furring strips are basically the studs on the walls of the van. The furring strips will be used to secure the wall panels, the electrical boxes, and anything else that needs to be attached to the walls.
As I watched YouTube videos on this part of the van build process, I came across several different methods of putting furring strips on the wall. The process that I decided to use is kind of a hybrid of these different processes. My process will be to use M6 rivnuts to bolt each furring strip to the wall of the van. I’ll use some marine grade adhesive as well, so I won’t need too many M6 bolts in each furring strip. I set up my circular saw with a guide board to cut the furring strips out of a sheet of 1/2″ Baltic Birch plywood.
In the lower part of the passenger side wall, Ford had already put holes for M6 rivnuts just above the unistrut that I installed. So, I took advantage of those and placed a M6 rivnut in some of them. In this picture, the hole on the right has the rivnut in it, and the hole on the left is open. You can also see the unistrut at the bottom of the picture.
When I went to bolt on the first furring strip, I realized that I didn’t have the correct bolts. Somehow, I forgot to purchase them. So, I added these bolts to the list for the hardware store when I went out to lunch. Anyway, I put a few of the incorrect bolts into two the the furring strips so you can see what it will look like. That’s the rivnut tool laying on the floor.
At this point, it was about lunchtime so I headed to the hardware store. I was able to find the bigger washers (as I mentioned above), but the screws for the furring strips were way too expensive (and they didn’t have enough of them). So, I ordered them on Amazon and they will be delivered in a couple of days.
When I got back to the van in the afternoon, I did a little project on the step into the van at the sliding door. The sliding door is a big opening, and I don’t want to lose all that space. So, I plan to have the galley come out into the opening of the sliding door. You can see this in the picture below where the piece of subfloor on the left of the opening is “hanging” in mid air.
That hanging piece of plywood is not going to hold much weight, so I constructed a brace to support it. I used some scrap aluminum extrusions to create the frame and some 3/4″ Baltic Birch plywood to fill inside of the frame. This is the same method that I will use inside the van on the cabinets and shelving, so it will match. Here is what the finished brace looked like.
The rest of the day, I worked to prepare furring strips for attaching them to the van walls (once the correct M6 bolts arrive). The basic process is to 1) drill holes in the van (where needed) to install an M6 rivnut, 2) paint the exposed metal and let it dry, 3) insert the M6 rivnut, 4) cut the furring strip to the desired width and length, 5) mark the furring strip for where the rivnuts are, 6) drill holes in the furring strip, and counter-sink them so the bolt head sits flush, and 7) mark the furring strip for location and orientation (to install later).
That process is probably my entire day tomorrow. I feel like I can get all the horizontal furring strips done without any of them attached to the walls. But, the vertical furring strips would be better to measure their lengths with the horizontal ones attached to the wall. We’ll see….this whole van build project is about problem solving and overcoming adversity. 🙂