Finishing my Camper Van Conversion. Wiring, Plumbing, Insulation & Everything Else

At the end of the last video I got all the cabinets, walls and ceiling test fitted so now I'm pulling everything back out to get painted and get the rest of this van ready for final installations. Summer is already upon us down here in the southern hemisphere and I need to get this van finished as ASAP as possible if I'm going to get out there and enjoy that sunshine. I'm kicking things off by dismantling the kitchen cabinet. It's a pretty awkward structure and I knew it'd be a pain to prep and paint with it all together, especially trying to reach some of those smaller spaces. But with it broken down into panels it's super quick with the roller and much easier to get a good finish when you don't have to worry about getting around all of those internal corners. For the top coat I've chosen a lovely lichen green in honor of what used to be living on the van's roof when I first got it. I'm going to lean those pieces up to dry overnight which gives me room to bring the overhead cabinets in and after a quick round of filling and sanding they're ready for a ceiling coat as well. With these cabinets already being glued up I found it easier to get the corners first with a brush before switching to the roller. I'm doing the top coat of these cabinets in a slightly warm shade of white called seashell which is going to be the same as the walls and the ceiling panels, sorry spoiler alert there, but I chose to do these cabinets in a shade of white because lighter colours, especially when they're above you, make a space feel more open and light filled and I'll gladly take any perception wins like that for inside this van. But that's not what I did for the pull out bed, it gets hit with a colour called gravel because we need a bit of contrast in here. And the final colour in our paint palette today is a super light grey for the framing and I know it looks pretty much like white on camera but if you ever see it in real life you'll notice a nice subtle difference as a negative detail between the panels. With the cabinets all painted I can get to properly installing them back in the van. You can see there that the green kitchen cabinet is still in pieces so I better get that back together now that the paint's dry. And luckily my nephew was on school holiday so he was kind enough to give me a hand lifting it back in and then I could get all the hardware reattached and put the drawers back in. Now over to the... wait what? Whoa whoa whoa what are you doing? No don't don't even think about it we gotta finish this van we don't have time for stop stop it stop... Ah you're right though it does look better in white. Okay back at the pull out bed I'm installing the off-grid electrical system for the final time. If you want to see details on that check out part two of these videos but in a nutshell I can pull power from three places. The van's alternator while the engine is running, the 400 watts of solar panels on the roof or as a last resort I can bring an extension lead in from a house or a powered campsite to charge the battery. To make doing that super easy I've run a cable gland through the bottom of the van right here and I've mounted an electrical inlet under the sill of the van. It's not something I want to use a lot so I'm keeping it kind of hidden. I also went through and fastened down all the cables as I went to make sure they all had strain relief and wouldn't want to vibrate loose anytime soon. The battery also gets a couple of blocks to stop any movement as well and after threading the kilometer long cable that came with the battery monitor and putting in the final fuse I could turn the system on and make sure I hadn't got my wires crossed somewhere along the way. Everything's working sweet though so I could finish up by putting the protective covers back on. With the cabinet and electrical system installed I now know exactly where I can run all the wiring without it getting in the way of anything so I'm starting with running a cable up to the roof fan which I installed way back in part one and I still actually haven't tested yet. That black rectangle thing is my DC fuse panel which I'm running all my 12 volt circuits out of. At the top there it's got common negatives and then down the sides are the positive terminals so I can run a bunch of separate circuits each with their own automotive blade fuse. So with the fuse installed I can give the fan a test. I don't know if you can hear that but it sounds like it's going to take off. Ah yes that that seems to be working. Next I'll run all the wiring for the USB outlets. There's one above the kitchen and another one at the head of the bed. Now it's time to tackle the lighting for the van. I'm going to have three lighting circuits. The first one here is going to be a task light for above the desk. I've chosen a daylight colored white LED strip for that. It's definitely going to be the easiest out of the three circuits so I'm going to do it first and hopefully iron out any kinks in my process before we get to the tricky ones. For the on off switch I'm using this cool little touch dimmer and I'm putting that on the side of the cabinet so that it's also easy to turn on and off if you're entering the van by the rear doors. So the best way I can think to do this is to cut the LED strip to the length of the housing then bring it over to my little setup here and solder a short lead onto the positive and negative contacts. You can get clips that fit onto the ends of LED strips so you don't have to solder them but I'd also heard that they were prone to coming loose. So while a lot more time consuming doing a solder joint and then heat shrink seemed like a sturdier option. The LED strip is backed with mounting tape so I can just stick that up into the housing and then press the diffuser into place. The LED lead then gets connected to the dimmer switch which gets power from a cable which runs back to that 12 volt fuse panel. The dimming function works by just holding your finger on the switch which I think is a pretty slick way of doing it. One of the things that I was worried about with using LED strip lights is that they can cause flickering effect in your video footage but these are looking real clean so I'm happy. Remember how I said I'm doing three lighting circuits? Well the second circuit is for a set of strip lights mounted under the overhead cabinets. These are going to be a warm white color which I'm hoping will give a nice ambient wash of light down the walls for those relaxing evenings. I need to make up three sets of strip lights for this one which is a little slow but it's not too bad. I'm mounting the same type of dimmer switch for these lights at the front of the van so that they're easy to reach from the driver's seat or if you're walking in from the sliding door. I'll show you how these look when it gets dark but let's get that last lighting circuit wired in and you can probably guess why I left this to last. This is one of those times where you have a cool idea when you're designing a CAD in the cushy comfort of your office chair with all the time in the world but then when you actually get down to doing the installation you're just like why? Why did I have to do this? Just a simple strip down the middle would have been totally fine. So there's 12 led strips which means I need to make up 22 leads which each have two connections. Each one of those connections needs to be tinned at both ends and then joined together which means, hang on I can work this out, 132 soldering operations and well that's a lot. It does make me extremely grateful I didn't do the triangle pattern any smaller. Originally I think I had them at about half this size which would have looked awesome but just been an absolute nightmare. So what do you think? Was it worth it or should I have just done a single strip down the middle? Is it a bit much? Oh and here's what the warm white LEDs look like and just if you're wondering I decided not to go with RGB LEDs because I found in the past the white light they give off was much more prone to flickering and the color temperature wasn't quite as nice. That might have just been due to me having a bad batch but that's why I thought it was safer to Okay moving on to the kitchen. I'm installing a couple of pieces of right angle aluminium as brackets for the benchtop and pre-drilling a few holes in the frame. The sink is going to be sandwiched between the frame and the benchtop but to make doubly sure it's holding tight I'm adding a few dollops of silicone before I set it in place. Now I can finally get that benchtop on. I did have a bit of a hiccup earlier though when I realized the length of the benchtop was like three millimeters too short to cover the cabinet properly so I had to add that little strip on the end there to extend it which is a bummer but you know using salvaged timber you just you kind of get the length that you get and you got to work around it. I'm only bringing it up because any woodworkers watching right now are thinking Rob what have you done that strip it's not going to allow for seasonal wood movement within the timbers. Look I know I know if it becomes a problem I will fix it but for now I just needed to keep moving forward. My plumbing system is going to be cold water only at this stage so I wanted a tap with a single fitting that was nice and minimal so I've got this one that was actually designed to be one of those little filler taps you get off the side of a big main tap. As I'm saying tap multiple times I'm realizing a lot of people probably call these faucets but yeah in New Zealand we call them taps I don't know why. All right I'm going to lay out the fresh water plumbing so you can see all the parts. It'll be easier to show you out here on the bench instead of me trying to film it all under the sink. So we'll put together all the little sub assemblies and then we'll go put it in the van. So the first thing here is to bring fresh water up from the container which is a male hose connector screwed into a barb fitting with the cap of the container sandwiched between. The feeder hose is press fit into the barb and fastened with a stainless steel hose clamp. Next we've got a hose to bring the water up to the pump's inlet and that's simply a female quick release connector and another barb fitting which came supplied with the pump. The pump has a little filter that is attached to the inlet side and now over at the pressurized outlet side things get a little more tricky. First is a non-return valve which lets the pressurized water flow through but stops it from backwashing. Then a t-valve that splits off for the water filter tap and then finally a connector for the hose that goes out to the sprayer nozzle. So let's get that all fitted up into the cabinet and hook up 12 volt power for the pump. I also want a switch to turn the pump on and off when I don't need it and after raiding my parts bin I found this little guy which had once been used as a power switch for an electric motorbike that I'd made while on a reality tv show but that's a story for another time perhaps so stop distracting me. Here's the other side of the plumbing equation. All the parts for taking the waste water from the sink down to the grey water container. Again I've got a fitting which sandwiches through the cap for easy removal then a threaded female elbow to barb fitting for a flexible waste hose which gets a coupler on the other end for this slimline smell trap. Then another short length of hose going to an elbow and finally to an adapter for the sink drain. Yeah there's not much to it so let's chuck it in. Okay let me just go fill up some water and we'll test it out. Hose test. It's way too powerful. The pump turns on when you turn a tap on and then turns off when you don't need it and then also I have the master switch. All right with that sorted the last thing we need to do before we wrap up on the plumbing is the air vents. In particular the grey water container needs to be vented outside the vehicle so it doesn't emit any smells back into the van. Actually let me explain a bit of context. Here in New Zealand we have legislation around vehicles used for camping which means they need to meet certain requirements in order to pass a test which certifies them as being self-contained and appropriate for use. While you don't need this to enjoy a lot of camping spots around New Zealand there are places where you do so I've been building this van to those requirements since the beginning because not only do I want to get it certified there are also good common sense things to have inside a camping vehicle. I'm telling you this now because this vent is one of those things that they're particularly strict on so while I hate putting more holes through the van having a tube running from the grey water container up to the top of the water line of the sink and then down through the bottom of the vehicle was part of those requirements. I need to stop these containers from being able to move around so I'm putting some blocking in around them so they can't slide and screwing down a strap to stop them from jumping about. Back on goes the axis panel and also a little trim piece and to close it out I've got this panel I want to flip down as a little outside table so to make it hang horizontal I've got some rigging to do. I'm using these turn buckles to hang the rope off because they're going to let me adjust the angle the panel hangs at in case I'm not parked on level ground and don't feel like having my drink slide off and I've got the carabiners at the other end so that I can disconnect them easily to let the panel hang all the way down should I want to get it out of the way while lifting a heavy water container. Next for the kitchen is a flip-up extension for the benchtop which I'm making from more salvaged pieces of Rimu. I'm actually making two things one is the flip-up extension and the other is a pair of cutting boards that will fit into the sink when it's not in use. I made one big cutting board put a finger pull in the middle and then cut it in half so the grain of the wood matches. Having it in two pieces lets me use half the sink while keeping a bit of extra prep space and also now they'll be able to fit inside the sink to be washed and they get a finish of food safe cutting board oil. And actually while I'm here with the timber I'll just add a piece of corner trim to help protect the paint from getting banged up when you're carrying things in and out of the side door. For getting the extension aligned and level instead of trying to measure everything up with the brackets I decided the easiest way to do it would be to clamp a couple of straight bits of wood to the benchtop and then just hold everything in situ while I screwed the brackets in underneath. Now we're over in the cavity for the fridge and I'm connecting up the fridge plug to the 12 volt power supply. I'd spent an evening designing some simple latches to stop the drawers sliding out while the van's moving. I know you can buy RV latches that already do this but what's the fun in that? They're by no means perfect and it obviously remains to be seen how well they hold up over time but I thought it was an interesting idea that was worth exploring. So let's get the fridge in and check that it's working. I don't know if I mentioned this before but this is a dual zone fridge so you can set one side to be a freezer or turn off one side completely to save on power which is pretty nifty. I then decided that the cubby I'd made for the gas cooker in part three of this build was an inconvenient use of space so I replaced it with a regular drawer. You've probably noticed by now but I've been treating this whole van build kind of like a prototype. I know there are just so many things that I don't know yet so if I get something wrong or there's a better way of doing something I'm happy to make changes as I go because for me this is all just a learning experience. But now finally the last thing on the list for the kitchen is sealing up between the sink and the benchtop and to get a nice smooth finish I'm using the old soapy water finger trick. Moving on to the next task which is dismantling, painting and remantling the drawers for the pullout bed. And the verdict for whether this process is worth it? No absolutely not. Yes the painting is easier and the finish is a bit better but it takes so much longer. Taking apart, masking the edges, painting and then putting it all back together with glue it's just a very tedious process for something as simple as drawer boxes. I'm happy with the final result but I don't think I'll do it again like this. These timber boards I'm putting on the drawer fronts are going to act as kick plates and just give a bit more protection through the narrow area of the van. I mean the whole van is a narrow area of the van but you know you get what I mean. I'd been holding off putting the sliding slats back in until I'd got all the other bits sorted but now hopefully this is the last time I'll need to install them. Touch wood. I go into detail about these in part two of the build if you haven't already seen that. The last little thing for the pullout bed is putting the latches on the drawers. Same concept as the other ones just a slightly different shape to accommodate for reaching the pullout slats. Alright strike another one off the list we are moving on to the wall and ceiling panels. I hit the edges of the panels with a slight chamfer to soften the corners and gave them a quick sand before laying down a few coats of paint. Giving a light sand between each of course. No point in skipping finishing steps when I've already come this far. And here we go the most backwards ever van build of finally putting installation in. For me though I wasn't thinking about traditional construction when I was planning this build, I mean that's probably pretty obvious but instead I wanted something more modular and upgradable so being able to remove the panels and cabinets separately from each other without any major dramas I think is a smart choice for inside a vehicle because now if I need to run extra wiring or do maintenance, everything except really the subfloor can be accessed by just dropping out a few screws. So that's kind of my thinking behind it all, however having said that I have zero experience building campervans so this is all purely speculation on my part and just kind of what made sense to me. The installation I'm using here is sheep's wool and it's pretty nice to work with. It is an odd combination of being quite structurally firm in large pieces but the individual fibers are super soft so it's quick to cover large areas but you can also break it down into smaller bits for getting into all the tiny gaps. It feels so nice now to be putting these panels on for the last time. Months of staring at steel walls feeling like progress is going at a snail's pace and now within a couple of days it's looking close to finished. For closing out the cabinets I'm using three millimeter or eighth inch ply and they're purely just backing panels so I made them as thin as I could and I don't think I ever properly showed you this window or rather the window frame. I got this type specifically because it has a blind and a bug screen built into it which is an extremely useful feature. Well that's the ceiling and the walls done, the next task is finishing up the work desk. I still want to add drawers into it but I am acutely conscious I'm running out of time for finishing this van build before summer is over so I need to optimize for speed a little bit more. I'm using aluminium angle extrusions as drawer runners and making a bunch of simple boxes out of nine millimeter plywood. I made a cupboard door for each side and then installed latches to hold everything in place and off camera I also put in some foam packers so that they wouldn't rattle around. Hey so have you ever done something that you know isn't correct but you also know that once you've done that thing you'll probably think of a better way to do it so you just do it the incorrect way first anyway? Yeah well this is one of those times. I need to fit a toilet into this van both because it's smart to have one at least for emergencies but also I need one to meet the requirements of that self-contained vehicle test thing that I was telling you about before. I also need some way to sit at my desk. You can you can see where I'm going with this right and I can tell that because I can see that you're cringing already. So yes it is both uncomfortable to sit at and awkward to access but it was fast and it technically ticks all the boxes. Do I want to make something better every time I look at it? Yes. Do we have time to deal with it now? No. Let's just pack this away in the dark corner of our mind and move on. If I had a dollar for every time I've hit my head on the shelf before muscle memory started kicking in I'd have like eight dollars. So before I give myself a mild concussion I'm rounding over the front lip of the shelf and while I've got it down I want to stick some carpet on the underside so that it matches the cabin better. I'm using high tack contact adhesive spraying both the carpet and the plywood then after letting it set up for a few minutes pressing both the sides down with a roller to make sure they're fully bonded and then it's all back into the van. The sliding doors for the large overhead cabinet still don't exist so I cut down some three millimeter acrylic panels to do the job. Again rather than measuring I set the clearance of the sliding tracks by just clamping things in situ. That's definitely something I've learned over this build is knowing when not to get carried away with perfect measurements but rather just work to what you have in front of you. I wanted frosted acrylic for the doors but they only had clear acrylic in stock so I thought I'd cheat a little and get some frosted vinyl wrap instead and after drilling out some finger pulls I can get them slid into place. I haven't got a latch for them or anything yet but they are reasonably stiff to slide open so I'm just going to try them first as they are and you know sort something out later if it becomes a problem. Though I did put a little end cap on anyway. If you have an abundance of cardboard packaging lying around your house may I suggest you consider templating out your floor. It's a fun activity and uses a lot of cardboard scraps. I wanted a floor covering that was waterproof and hard wearing so I chose this industrial rubber matting. I'm using the draw boxes here as large heavy things to hold the template down while I cut around it with a knife and I was actually surprised how well this worked. The fitment I got first time around was pretty dang close but then I discovered something extremely important. I had made a terrible choice. The anti-slip texture turned out to be a cheese grater against exposed skin and the pitch black color of the rubber made the whole inside of the van feel dark and small and it's just it's bad it's really bad and even knowing how much it cost and the time that I'm going to be wasting I have to change it. Luck was on my side today because literally a couple of hours later I found an off cut of commercial vinyl for sale that was the perfect size like 10 minutes drive down the road. So using the rubber pieces as a template now I was able to cut a new set in just a few minutes and get them fitted into the van. I'm so much happier with this new floor and it's funny because I never would have picked this color if I hadn't seen how much I hated the black rubber floor. So I guess the moral of the story is that everything happens for I'm stupid and I wasted $200. Hanging curtains is going to let me kill two birds with one stone. The first is being able to cover the windows at night and the second with the addition of some magnets sewn into the seams is to hide these ugly corners and if I add a tieback with the help of a magnetic hook I can keep the curtains from impacting my rear visibility. Nice. Let's finish up a few more loose ends. All the cabinets that don't have slidey latches get magnetic ones to keep the doors shut. I'm putting a grab rail from the original cab partition back on to help with stepping in and out of the door. The outside edges of the floor get a piece of trim each and I scribed a piece for the kitchen cabinet too. Oh and you can see I added a little butterfly catch to the fridge drawer because I don't fully trust my 3d printed latch to stop the way to the fridge from crashing it open. I also installed a smoke detector and I have a carbon monoxide detector on its way as well. So that's all the little jobs done which means there's only two things left that I've been putting off. The car stereo has been haunting me since part one of this van build. I bought a generic sony head unit that has a screen and stuff to replace the stock one but I don't know German cars are weird and nothing fit properly so I ended up having to design custom mounts and a frame to fill the gap between the stereo and the dash. So between all of that and running new wiring for a reversing camera it's kind of been an ongoing saga happening in the background but I'm calling it done now. Which just leaves us with one last thing which is completely out of my comfort zone and I literally can't avoid it any longer. It's time to make the mattress cushions for the pullout bed. So first I need to cut down this foam into two pieces so it works as a sofa. Actually it's going to be five pieces but I'll explain that in a bit. So let's get the track saw out and I'm kidding we just need the long guide rail. I bought this foam as a bed mattress so it came already fitted with a quilted mattress protector so I figured I could cut that in half and reuse it too. But that means using this terrifying piece of machinery. The last time I used a sewing machine I think I was about 12 years old so I guess you could say I'm a bit of a novice. Thankfully only a bit of overlocking on the edge and a straight stitch on the box corners is all that's needed here. For the outer covers I wanted something that was easy to wash and take on and off so I worked out that I could get all the covers made by using two king-size bed sheets. I'd spent the entire day before practicing on pieces of calico so at this point I think this is about my 14th attempt but I was definitely getting better. These big ones were okay because they're large and there was a proportional margin of error. The small ones I ended up having to do on the other hand they were a little less forgiving but I got it done. One final clear out of the van and a clean later and I can put the cushions in. Originally I'd intended to only have two cushions but the backrest cushion ended up being too tall and covered half the window which is why I made those three tiny cushions so that I could completely fill out the space and they're also perfect for pillow fights so you know swings and roundabouts but uh that's that's everything. This van is as finished as it needs to be right now and I want to get out and use it so I'm calling this build done and since it'll probably never ever be this van again let me give you a final mini tour. You've just seen the pull-out bed but did I show you how to reach the hidden switches for the electrical system? Out the sliding door we have the little drop-down table and a friggin water blaster of a spray nozzle. Up on the bench top there's the flip-up extension and the fitted cutting boards for the sink. I've got a little fire extinguisher down there in the cupboard now as well. I made a foam insert for the gas cooker and the canisters so they don't slide around and the finished terrible toilet box which snugs away nicely but also proves that not all of my ideas are good ones. The remote for the roof fan is tucked away in the overhead cabinet and finally the LED lighting. There's the small task light above the desk, the warm wash lights and of course the spaceship lights for when I need it to be brighter than the sun in here. I'll probably do a full tour after I put some miles on and we can see how things hold up but before I sign off I just want to say thank you for watching. This has been the biggest personal project I've done so far and it means a lot to me to be able to share it with you. I mean it's not perfect but I had a lot of fun building it so I hope you enjoyed watching. It's probably time now that I hit the open road so I'll see you next time.