Saturday the 2nd was shaping up to be a big work day on the van with temperatures in the 70’s. However, I got pulled away from the van for most of the day and didn’t get much done. Artie and I worked on the ceiling in the van for an hour and a half and managed to install the first five boards in the ceiling. Here is what it looked like at the end of the day.
It took us a while to work out a process that worked. And it definately took two people to attach these boards to the furring strips in the ceiling. Basicallly, I cut the boards to length and also cut out any relief cuts (such as around the styrofoam blobs in the front). Then we used a 1/4″ spacer to set the position of the board relative to the one next to it. I drilled a countersink hole, and Artie secured the board with wood screws. The biggest delays were when we had to cut around something.
On the 3rd, we again had excellent weather in the 70’s and Artie and I worked several hours to put up the rest of the ceiling boards. I started the day by selecting the straightest boards in the batch of finished boards. Then we followed the same process as the day before. We also installed the backplate of the fan that I am installing in the ceiling near the galley. We also wired it to it’s wiring harness, so it will work once the electronics module is finished.
We also had to cut boards around the MaxAir fan and the AC unit. So, some boards took a while, but others were straight-forward. Overall, I think it looked good. We added a strip of wood near the front and under these ceiling boards to ensure that all the boards curved at the same rate toward the front of the van. We painted that board black, so you can’t see it and it blends in with the black fabric background. Here is what it looks like at the end of our workday.
I think it came out nice. I still have a few items to do on the ceiling, which I’ll get to next. One is to put up some molding along the back furring strip to clean up the look at the back. I also have to install the ceiling LED lights (the wiring harness for these lights is hanging down from the center of the ceiling). I wanted the ceiling up first, so I could measure how to evenly space out those lights. Finally, I’ll put up the decor panels around the AC unit and the MaxAir fan, and that will finish off the ceiling.
Looks great.