A week, A van, & a dream

     Today we’re going to talk about my vacation. I got a week off and it was beautiful. Now in April in Minnesota you can get anything as a matter of fact as I write this it’s the last day of April in 2017 and there is a Winter storm watch for Northern and Central Minnesota. Nothing like that happened on my days off though. It was a beautiful time and I got a lot of stuff done.

I put a sub-floor in, a laminate floor on top of that, painted and finished the walls, and built a counter top which I sunk my homemade sink into. There’s a blog about that sink here. All of this got done in a week.

     Before you tell yourself that I must have all of this experience doing this sort of thing let me assure you that I don’t. I don’t know my ass from my elbow when it comes to construction and constructing things. I did however make it a goal to learn as much as I could about it while doing fun stuff in life. Hence the van. The sub-floor that I built, and I’m sure that I did it wrong, was made with plywood cut to the shape (more or less) that the floor of the van was in. I did put this sticky stuff that I bought at Lowe's which I forget the name of. It’s suppose to keep heat out and take the noise down. It was a lot cheaper then that name brand stuff.

Now I saw pictures of people doing floors like this and they had this special tape they put on the boards to make the pieces hold together better. Eh, I used duct tape.

                             ****shrugs shoulders and makes a funny face****

I don’t know if it’ll work. I just did it. Afterword I got to thinking. I probably should have made sure that the floor was level which is something to remember for next time. 

     Then I started putting the laminate flooring in. Now everyone will tell you it’s super easy. They’re lying; however, having said that I will also say I’ve done harder things. Think post hole digging in August then think a lot of post hole digging in August and you’ll be on the right track.

Okay the laminate wasn’t super hard, but it had challenging parts. I think if someone does it a few times they will get it quickly or if someone has a nice square area to put it in you’ll be fine. A Chevy Express 1500 is known as a curvy lady. She is not square anywhere.

     Elissa, and I also finished with insulating, priming, and painting the walls as well. We found the primer and the paint in the basement. We used them when we painted the house a couple of years ago. We have the same green on our windows and edging. 

     The counter-top was relatively easy. It had it’s tough moments, and I’m sure would have been screwed up without the help of my neighbor who asked me if I was going to be using a guide when I sawed the board. I had no idea what that was so he showed me. Then he changed the blade on the circular saw I got at a pawn shop. Imagine my surprise when I realized that cutting the wood could be easy and not have burn marks with the new blade.

I built the legs for the counter from what I figured they needed to be to hold the top, and I was right. I got the shape, the support, the size everything right.

     Next came the hard part. I had to drill the holes which would become the cut out for the sink. I measured like three or four times. This wood was my baby. I had sanded it, and preened it with mineral oil I didn’t want it screwed up with one miss measured hole.  Eventually I got it drilled, and cut out but I had to keep cutting and slowly widen the hole for the sink. I did it slow and took my time so that it would work well. Elissa was right there helping with her eye’s as well. As you will see in the video it turned out terrific.

Now the next steps are to start building the bed and begin putting the ceiling together. Keep tuning in to see how this goes.

Thanks

Trevor

Insulating the van and snow.

Greetings fellow spirits on this grand adventure called, 'Life'.

     These are photo's, and two videos on insulating our van which we have lovingly called, 'Woody'.  First off we did buy heavy R value insulation and made sure that there was no formaldehyde in it. The R value is a way of rating how good it is at keeping the cold out or in. We went with the biggest we could afford.

     The foam board stuff was two inches thick (I think) and easy to cut and shape, but be aware it makes a nasty squeaky sound and a hell of a mess as you'll see. I found it difficult to measure all of the shapes in our van and struggled to remember what Mrs. Kleppe, my 7th grade math teacher, taught me about measuring arches. In the end I just kept cutting and shoving pieces into the hole till it was filled not very clever or interesting to see. If you're interested this is the formula for measuring an arch. (ie the wheel well)
The radius of the arch is the radius of it's finished circle which it is a part. R = H/2 + W(small2)/8H Yes, I agree with you. I'll just skip over that and stuff that hole with parts of insulation till it's full, or you could always go here and plug your numbers in. Height and Width.
  Link to carpentry website.

From that point I took out the fiberglass stuff and started cramming it into every little crevice I could find. I reminded myself of a bird preparing a nest for a hoped for lady-friend and babies.

Stuffing it in.

I wore gloves, a breathing mask, glasses and covered all of my skin just like they tell you to.
Using a straight edge, a measuring tape, and my Swiss Army knife I did all of the cutting for everything. I'm pretty sure I'll need to sharpen that knife now.

Straight edge, Swiss Army Knife, and the dreaded insulation.

We have a 2001 Chevy Express 1500 with two TV's and a big sub speaker in the back. I took the TV's out and am keeping the speaker if I can. The TV's were mounted to a smallish black plastic square which is stuck to the ceiling. I tried to take it out but the bolts were stripped so I thought I'd cut it out with my rotary tool. Here it is before and after.

Mounting square for the TV before cutting it.

After

As you can see I was not successful in cutting it off. That cut goes all the way through, but it still wouldn't move. Yes, I even tried to break it. Cut through like that it still held my weight.

Gave up and cut around it.

Here you can see I just went around the whole thing. I hate being beat by a plastic square.

The best I could do.

You know when you look at other peoples insulation it looks so sweet and nice. Everything fits just right, and they don't have any duct tape holding it in. I totally thought this would be the easiest part, and it turned out not to be. Oh well. Next is the wiring. Here's the final video of the insulation.
We wish you all the best in everything you do.

Peace, Love, and Doritto's
The Marty's