Van Build - The Ceiling
Another project down! It is ridiculous how fun it is when you are finishing a project on the van and things start looking like the home it will be in the end. With the ceilings up it feels like I am getting somewhere, even if it is a small step.
I began by deciding to use plus nuts as my method for installing furrings strips in the van. Of all the methods I researched this seemed like the most secure method, and a secure hold is key when your house experiences a small earthquake every time you drive. The 10/32 cross nuts fit perfectly into the existing holes/squares in the ribs that run across the roof of my van, so I installed them across each rib, only skipping one of the two back ribs that are close together.
With that decision made I moved on to the furring strips. I ended up using 3/4” birch plywood, which I sealed with Zinsser Bullseye 123 Primer. This primer seals wood and is mold and mildew resistant, which I figured would help prevent either from growing behind my ceiling as my van goes through temperature swings and condensation inevitably forms. I ripped the plywood with a circular saw into strips and then cut them into thirds for each rib that crossed the van to better mimic the mild curvature of the roof.
From there the question then became how do I transfer where the plus nuts are to the furring strips so I can pre-drill and countersink before installing my furring strips. I saw a few videos online, one where a girl used play doh and another where a guy made paper templates to transfer onto every single furring strip. The play doh wasn’t working for me, and I was not really looking forward to making templates. Here is where my father jumped in and suggested cutting the tops off of two of the bolts. He then used a Dremel tool (one he inherited from my grandfather!) to shape the cut ends into points. I then would screw them into the holes of the plus nuts, line up my furring strip, and tap on the wood to make an indent.
This turned out to be the perfect solution and saved me a ton of time (thank you dad!). Once each furring strip was properly labeled had it’s indents I got to pre-drilling and countersinking with a drill press. I then brought all of my furring strips upstairs and began installing them into the plus nuts. I used the 10/32 bolts with washers and Blue 242 Loctite to secure the bolts in the plus nuts. These furring strips definitely aren’t going anywhere!
But before I could install the ceiling, I had to figure out how to secure the tongue and groove at the front of the van. There is a headliner in the bulkhead storage area that comes off with push pin pliers, and the removal of a few foam blocks. Once that was removed I was able to insulate that upper area. Additionally, removing this exposed another cross rib, which was similar to the ribs I had attached the rest of the furring strips to for the ceiling.
Unfortunately this rib was above the bulkhead storage area, meaning that there is limited space between the rib in the ceiling and the shelving of the bulkhead. There was no way I was going to be able to get the cross nut installation tool in there to install cross nuts along the bottom of the rib so I ended up installing it along the sloped side of it. This was where I was so grateful to have my dad to lean on for his know-how. We had to take one of my furring strips and figure out the slope of the rib. Once we had that he was able to rip that off on the table saw.
Furring Strips
Installing this front furring strip was NOT easy, but ultimately super important to securing the tongue and groove panels.
From there it was just a matter of figuring out how to drive a screw through the exact right spot on the slope, and here is where I am pretty proud of myself for coming up with a solution. My solution was to set the furring strip down flat along it’s sloped side and then drilling straight down from above with the drill press. We had to guess about where the middle part was and draw that line, and I drew pencil marks where the plus nuts were and extended those lines around it as well. We then had bullseyes to aim for on the furring strip with the drill press. This ended up working out perfectly, and I’m so glad it came together the way it did! The final step was to install another furring strip into the one we had just attached to get that furring strip down to the same level as the others.
Finally it was time to install the ceiling! I stained/sealed/painted the tongue and groove boards a while back so they were ready to go. And frankly, they were taking up space in the work area! Luckily they came in 12 foot lengths and the length of the van’s roof ended up being shorter than that so I could run them all the full length. Side to side I also somehow miraculously got the exact right amount of boards, but I had to account for the Maxxair fan in the front and my Dometic skylight in the back.
And then there was light!
The first electrical wiring I did was for these puck lights that will run down the length of the aisle in my van.
I measured the cutout for the fan, and when doing the same for the skylight realized that the boards’ width was just perfect to fit around it without having to cutout anything from the boards. I would only have to cut the first three boards to length, but the next two would just run along each side perfectly. For the Maxxair fan I had to cut into the two boards on either side of the first middle board to the size of the fan opening.
This is also when I measured out and placed my ceiling lights. I will have three zones of lighting in the end, but the other two will be under the upper cabinets so for now this was all I had to worry about. I placed the first three of the four lights along the middle board, evenly spaced. The fourth light I decided I wanted over my sink area next to the sliding door, so I placed it on the board that was the middle one between the center lights and the final board by the door, but kept it in line with the light closest to the front of the van. They basically will follow my “hallway” in and L shape and I am calling then my aisle lights. Once I knew where they were going I used a hole saw to cut the holes out.
Pre-Wiring the Van
It is important to pre-wire anything that needs to go from one side of the van to the other across the ceiling, in addition to the ceiling fixtures like puck lighting and your Maxxair fan.
After that it was time to wire. I am lucky that my father is an engineer with extensive electrical systems experience and access to electrical engineers when we have questions. (side note: this makes me feel incredibly safe with the electrical plan for the van because I know I can trust it. As someone who deals with OCD you can’t put a price tag on that.) I had already purchased everything we would need to do the wiring so it was at this point where me dad taught me how to wire the lights in parallel. I learned how to soder, crimp and heat shrink and then wired up the first line of lights in my first/middle board.
Now it was install time! The first board was a breeze but the next few were an absolutely nightmare. To line the first board up as straight as possible I used a pencil to mark on the fan’s wooden frame the exact middle point and did the same to the tongue and groove board. I was then able to line those up, and my dad was able to use a feature on the skylight in the back that was right in the middle to line his end up with. This ensured that the boards were straight all the way to the outside boards.
After that, the next two boards were difficult to get into place and my mom ended up coming out to help as well because we needed the hands. Thankfully once those two boards were up the rest popped right into place as we went. I ended up using gold deck screws to secure the tongue and groove to the furring strips, using the pre-drill countersink bit before driving the screws. I did not use wood glue as added security to the furring strips because if I ever need to remove my ceiling I want to be able to do so with relative ease.
After getting all the boards installed towards the slider it was time to tackle the other half of the ceiling. But before I could do that I had to wire up the fan. I went ahead and got that done and then also attached a stablizing strip of wood on the tongue and groove section right behind the fan. This is one place where the partition will likely attach to, so it needs to be secure.
The final step was to finish installing the rest of the tongue and groove boards and then I had a ceiling!
