Sprinter Van Build "The Process" Talking Layout With a Custom Van Builder

I'm in the Mercedes right now. We're taking this thing down to John at J5 Custom Vans. I want to talk to him about doing the floors, ceilings, and walls in this thing. Doing the framing, running the electrical. Yeah, this is a discussion that we need to have ASAP. Such a beautiful place for a shop. Ah, the privacy is so good. Look, you look like a woodworker. Oh, isn't that nice of you? It is. Wow. It's going to be a little bench that has shoe rack in it. That's like a footboard to a baby bed. I'm like, what's going on here? It's going to be a seat and then this is the back, but the front is going to have cubbies for putting shoes in. That's wicked. That's nice. I like it. It's going to be kind of, I don't know, shorter than that, but similar to that. Sweet. And this is all that maple that I cut down from here. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Like kind of near where you're standing within like 10 feet. Yeah. That's cool. Hi buddy. I would take this out and you can put the one inch foam in there and you can put this right back on top. Just get longer bolts for that. So running cables and stuff through here? Do you run conduit? I'll show you what I run for conduit. You can use either electrical boxes or you can use, I was using round caps and then I run it to the top of the wall and then I run one across the ceiling so that if you're running from side to side through your overhead cabinets, you can just duck out of the ceiling into the wall and go into the cabinets. But if you bury it in the wall, you can't get it. See, this is where I kind of wish I had a camera person who could like move the camera between each person. And during the conversation, you know, I need a camera person. Basically what I put in the ceiling and then drill a hole accordingly. And then, uh, I, because you were using the heavy, heavy gauge wire, get the bigger size. So a lot of people will just feed the wire through and I don't like that because it's just a wear surface. Yeah, especially being out in the bush and it's like, oh yeah, like just this thing vibrating on the roof. Yeah, it's kind of, so pretty much kind of like just like that. Yeah, exactly. Sweet. And then what I like to do, because there's a cabinet right here, you just have that there and then you get another one up here so you can access the wires. You can go down if you, if you don't, you can make this corner because of this, but if you don't have a way to get the wire into the upper cabinet, cause you're going to have, I don't know, would imagine you're going to have quite a bit of electrical in this area depending on your layout. Yeah, a lot. I think there, and I think I'd like to, cause I'm, I don't know, I think I might be putting an actual legitimate desk there. Okay. Like a legitimate sit down. Sorry, where's the sink going? I was going to do there, but I think we may do it, seems natural to do it here. So far right now, I'm kind of. Are you putting any more windows in? No. Okay. I prefer the sink in this area, but it doesn't matter. You actually have way more room for water tanks on this side. They do make a water tank that fits in here for a gray water. It's kind of tight. Yeah. It's not very big, but it definitely fits nice. And then. Because I mean, like I'm thinking of just about doing a kitchen here. The reason why I thought a desk there is because if I'm going to sit there, it'd be nice to see out the window. Right. So depending on your layout, so you know, you're, once you decide where your stuff's going to go, totally hard wire, most like the, most of the wire doesn't need to be in this, but it needs to be like, if you're going through this hole here, you need some kind of protection on it. Yeah. Grommets. And they do make a ton of different. Yeah. I've seen, I've seen the guys that were telling me when they were running them through here or wherever they were running them through, they just had little rubber, they'd drill a hole, pop the grommets in there and just fed them through. You can go on Amazon and literally, you know, however many grommets that you need, because there's really not much stuff going on. Where's the freezer going to go? Yeah. So yeah, that's, once you determine, like, obviously your fridge is going to be in a location with batteries, you've got to run that. If you've got, like Jared was talking about the pit stops for the switches and stuff like that, that's, yeah, that's the long and short of it. All I need is the layout. So my bed's four feet, so my bed would stop probably there by the time we're finished with everything. Huge, right? Look at the size of that. Seven feet. Well, like, and you know what, I could even do, I could even still, it all depends, because I think the stairwell's gonna, if I do stairs here, we still thought about the benches, I'm undecided, but if we do a legitimate permanent stairwell here so Chris can come up and down anytime he wants, my desk would start here. Sure. Would probably feed over into here a little bit. So yeah, depending on the layout, like, I don't know, I've watched most of your videos on layout, but I'm still unsure what you're planning. Yeah, I have no idea either. Okay, so I could see having, and I, I'm just trying to remember what, I've had so many discussions with so many people, um, a pullout table. See, and I, that was my original idea. Matching seats on each side, but it can be turned into a bed, it can be turned into a step, like you could have it, you could still sit comfortably on a seat and have it, you know, half, half the seat or a third of the seat where that's a step. Yeah, so like the original thought was to do like a wider bench on one side so somebody can always get out. Yeah. And then my thought was to do a pullout drawer here. Oh yeah. So Chris can get up onto the bench, go across, do a pullout or two on the bed so he can go across and go up. But I know Chris. Yeah. Chris will full send it off the middle. I know him. Right? Right? Because I thought, I pondered that one. I'm like, the drawers is a simple little way, but when I seen, like, if you watch the video, you seen like the one with the steps, it just looks cool. Yeah. I don't know how practical it is because some of those Instagram vans or Instagram vans, they're not practical, but like some of them are just overly pretty. I'm like, how is that functional? Did you see that girls one? It was on, um, did you do it on the live? Yeah. I showed her a live that was on, the video was on Jared's channel. Okay. But she had the little stairwell that goes up around the corner here. Right. I mean, I don't know how you'd get up in it, but it was cute. Like I'm a girl, the perfect little stairwell for the dog to get in and out. Yeah. Hers was, she had an edge on her bed, but I couldn't have the edge on my bed because I like to swing my feet out because I'm not going to get up and shimmy down to the bottom of the bed to come down here. 50 years old, man, that ain't happening. But even like having a little sneaky, like that thing, like that for the dog would be super sweet and having a standard stuff for me to get up and down. It was a cute little stairwell. Sometimes he's in and out quite a bit. That's why I wanted to have something safe for him. Cause if middle of the night, he just gets hot over there and he wants to get down, he'll jump. Yeah. So like, and he'll jump out my window sometimes like, like in my van twice, he's jumped out my windows. Once he jumped off the driver's seat. I'm like, dude, don't do that. But so like, and the second time he jumped, I had the window rolled up halfway. So he literally wiggled over and it flung his back end over. He cut his chin. Yeah. Yeah. You're a nut. You can't eat that. This up in this area and around here. So I like to use half inch plywood, same with the roof. And I like to go a little bit wide and depending on, because if you hit a screw in here and you've got a nice spacing on your screws, you're screwed. So if you have a piece of half plywood, you can use three eights too. I mean, you're not scrubbing the ceiling. Yeah. Quite a bit of work. It usually takes me about a week to do the backing and the paneling. And that's if I'm using solid sheets, if you're doing tongue and groove, that's probably two weeks. Yeah. I'm probably not doing the tongue and groove. I wouldn't mind just, I'd rather have, cause you're not going to see half the wall anyway. Yeah. I don't, I would rather save any pretty stuff for the ceiling. I'm still not sure what I'm doing up there, but I like, I love that look of the wood with the black in the background in the middle. Cause I love that. You're putting a black veneer up and then you're just screwing the wood to that. See, and I love that. So, cause I wouldn't mind doing it. I love the look of that slatted roof with the black in the background and then some led strips down some sections down there. It's so sleek. Yeah. That's don't buy led light strips from Amazon. Yeah. That's the led store or whatever it's called. Their track is like eight foot lengths. Yeah. Whereas if you're piecing together the Amazon three foot length, it's really easy to get a little skew in them. Yeah. Even though it's in a routered line. So, but yeah, you gotta determine all that. So I met a guy that does 3d scanning. Which is super cool. Yeah. And I think we talked about getting that for Andy. Yeah. So I just have to look up his name. Yeah. I think, I think Andy said he's got a guy that was, but yeah, if you can do it here and send it to him there before he starts cutting. Yeah. You can start the Andy. What do you think of that idea, buddy? Well, 3d scan it here and you can get the work. That's right. You can start at any time. Yeah. And then we raised the floor up. Well, we'll change a little bit. Yeah. I mean, really, honestly, if I can, we need to get more solar between the roof and, and back here than I am on my van. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you could, and I'm not, I'm not a solar freak. That's huge. Like if I could get six, I'd be happy that doubles what I have. Yeah. Right. I do enough driving. That stuff doesn't bother me because I'm wanting to move all the time. So when we're doing the floors, can we do a race section through there? So when we're sitting at the swivel, we can stand, I was thinking that maybe if we can come up, cause I even for cruisy to come off that front seat, it's a, it's a dive, right? So for you, maybe if we can come up with some cool little thing, even if it's a storage or something, then, um, can we do like, maybe like a, I don't know, I'll work on my plan on that thing. But I freed, if we can come all the way across and just kind of curve in and then stop wherever the cabinets would be that way. It's like whoever's on the swivel has a foot. Cause that drives me crazy. You're just dangling your feet. Yeah. 50 year old man. Like you're in a high chair. So I figured maybe we could make something that just kind of went in. So cruisy didn't have that. Cause that's a huge fall, man. That's like two and a half feet, but, but that's my plan over the next few days to come up with a plan, right? So we're going to spend a few nights in here. And I thought about if we do my desk, save, just say it was here, there, I wanted to do, um, you know, that's that sound treatment foam, the little ones with the waves in it or the designs in it. Like you'd use in a recording studio to put on the walls. I was just going to do that on the back part of it. That way, when I'm doing voiceovers, I don't have to worry about the van. It's just sucks it all in. Right. And have it set up done. Like it's just, there's no more setting up anything anymore. I strap her back up. I mean, if Trent, the traveler can have a full gaming system in there with a thing, I mean, I'm pretty sure, pretty sure I can make it. I'm going to spend the next few days here and come up with a plan. Like I'm just going to come up with it. I'm just going to go. Cause like, there's only so many things you can do. It's just a matter of finding the label. My only question is the little cruisy bear thing. What do you guys say? We build a van interior. I just keep thinking about that as like a staple gun, like the Milwaukee's got an electric 12 volt staple gun and just two by twos or just scrap wood. And you can staple to whatever. I forget what the guy's called. Cause the only, the only spot I need to figure out is just here. That's it. The bed is determined. I like the kitchen on this side, but that's just me. I do too. There's no particular reason. I mean, I've done probably as many on this side as that side. So yeah, I don't know. The sink just seems natural here. Yeah. I like, cause you, you know, you're, you're cooking and you're washing dishes. So you can look out the window and have a beautiful spot. What about the shower? Where's the shower going at the end of this cabinet? Just like you had it in the other one, because I like that idea. Cause it's right there. It's in a wasted space. So what's the space anyway? Oh, that was awesome. Hi buddy. Can we come in? Can we come in? Hey, can we come in? You're so cute. Oh man. I just left John's place and it just started to pour. Oh, this weather turned miserable and fast. So Chrissy just jumped down off that chair. It is a substantial, like quite a ways down. So I think I'd like to put some kind of a platform between the two seats as much as I can to raise it up just a little bit and yet still allow the seats to swivel. It was really nice to be at John's place today. Can you guys even hear me? You got the rain pelting on the window right behind my camera. So I think the next thing I'm going to do, I'm going to do it tonight is download the van building app. I don't know what it's called. It's a 3d app, which allows me to completely lay out this whole entire space within the app. So I can get a visual because me without that visual, it doesn't work well. So, but going down and talking to John today to kind of see, you know, what is needed and what I can do on my own prior to taking it down to John's because I'm going to let John do the floor. John do the walls. I can probably do the wiring. I could probably do the insulation. Um, I'll leave all the furring strips and stuff like that up to him because he will be the one doing the walls as well too. But I could definitely get all of these steps started and these steps I can afford because right now I got all the wire, bam, right there. So we could probably get moving on this next step soon. But before I do that, I need to figure out a layout and I'm going to download that app tonight and start playing around with it. And maybe in a few days, I will have it figured out and boom, we can see a visual build, which would be damn epic. I mean, the build won't be exactly like I lay it out because I'm going to let Andy at Overland Interiors work some design magic in there, but at least we'll get an idea on the electrical part because that's important right now to know where I want my electrical panels, where my switches are going to be, where my fridge and my heater is and all that stuff we need to figure out now. So yeah, if anybody's ever used one of those apps, let me know how it's worked out. I don't know what it's called. Van something 3D. Yeah, I don't know. It's pretty cool. At least it'll help me get a full blown visual and you never know. Maybe we'll make a video and we'll play around with it and see how easy it is to use. If it's complex and it's going to take me a week to figure it out, forget it. So it was awesome talking to John today about him being able to do the floor and then build a lip around here. So that way when you're sitting there, we can put our feet down because here your feet literally just dangle like that's super, super high up. And then bringing this into here, allowing crews to come down without having that ginormous fall. Hey buddy, a big part of this build is thinking about you and how you're going to maneuver in this thing. You know, buddy, we'll never forget about you. No, we do never forget about you. Alright guys, that's it. Thanks for watching today and I'll see you guys on the next one.