Alright so where did I leave you guys?...Ah yes. Okay. The bench was looking decent, but I had to do better, obviously. It's really just paint doing the bulk of the work. I painted the louver and the wall/bench support piece. I also put some apple wood structure to the storage area floor piece, because the 1/4" underlayment is flimsy as. These strips help immensely. We'll probably add a forward wall piece, just so small objects don't fall down into the abyss. But right now we're just storing sleeping bags in this area, which can't fit into the hole. Anyway, it looks like this now, and this is pretty representative of the finished product. For my part.
Mandy strung together 5 days off work so she could...work. Different kinda work, you know. So, the bench is obviously supreme comfort already because of my amazing design skills. That's called exaggeration. But considering the size and space, and my zero hours of experience in furniture making, it is more comfortable than I expected. But, like anything, more is better. Nothing in moderation. So Mandy whipped up some cushions for the bench from scratch. They really take the bench to another level of finished and comfort. The
only drawback, is that the added height of the seat makes the already short back even shorter. But no worry, she saw that one coming and resolved it straight away by making up this sweet pillow that we can sit on the top of the bench back, against the cubbies. It works perfectly in this location, and you can fully lean back. Plus it uses the same fabric as the bench and the flare, so it's custom as heck and no one else has this pillow.
Meanwhile she was getting her sew on, I set to work on installing a set of steps which are sorely needed on these 4WD jobbies. I mean, my legs are swole as hell so it's really no trouble at all and I totally enjoy doing that huge one-legged squat hundreds of times a day while I build this thing. Not. OK, the reality is, the climb in is not
terrible, but it would be better if it was easier. But we do really appreciate the massive ground clearance, and we want to retain it as much as possible, because we intend to utilize the function. Not that we'll be doing full on rock crawling, but we want to get to really remote areas and if we get stuck on a rock in the middle of nowhere because of a step, that's not okay. Or, if we just hit it and damage or break the step, or the body of the van, that's not ideal either. So, would that actually happen? I don't know. But to us it wasn't worth the risk.
So powered steps. We waited for months; pretty much since we took ownership of the van; for Amp-Research to release the kit for the VS30. I finally got an email saying they were ready to accept preorders, so I placed an order through Sprinter Store, because they added a new product to their website at about the same time. It was within a day or two of the email I got from Amp-Research. And the product was specifically 2019+ Amp-Research power steps. Excellent. So the parts arrived just last week, and I opened up the box to find a modified Amp-Research 2018 kit. Someone adds some okay-ish instructions and a magnet switch for the sliding door. I understand the kit for the 2018s is not
exactly plug 'n' play, but I believe the needed door-open signal wires are easier accessed under the dash. After talking with Amp-Research about the kit they haven't yet released, I learned that the
real VS30 kit will be plug 'n' play, with an OBDII plug for door open signals. That's what I thought we had ordered. I feel like I was mislead by Sprinter Store and honestly it's not the first time they've been a disappointment. But I just want to talk about our van, not trash vendors. At least, not here. So. Whatever. The installation was kind of a slog, but I think I was just frustrated that it wasn't what we thought we'd ordered. Now that it's over, we love the steps.
I dunno if this website can handle a video, but I'm sure they'll show up in a future video on our Youtubes, if you guys watch us there. But here's a picture:
It's way easier getting in and out of the van. Way less fatigue. So, this next part is going to be in process for a while now, because I can't finish it until other stuff is done, but we did get a decent jump on it yesterday, and we've got some of the finer points of the design and the process worked out. We used to be homeowners. Now we're houseless. But when we did have a house, we did a bunch of mods to it. One of those things was to continue hardwood flooring where the previous owner quit and left some nasty carpet. We couldn't get an
exact match to the existing hardwood floor, but it was pretty close, and that's not the point here. We ended up with a bunch of leftover maple that's just gorgeous. And we kept it because of that. At the time, we didn't know what it would be used for. But now we know. We put the floor on the ceiling. But by Mandy's calculations, factoring in scrap from cutting (she literally mapped out each cut), we were short like 22 board-inches. And it would be super heavy.
So I began ripping all the boards in half, from 3/4" to about 3/8". Well, 3/8" was the theoretical goal, but my bandsawing is not perfect, and the blade removes material as well. And the finish is bleh. So next, the boards were all run through the planer. This took them down to a little over 1/4". Somewhere around .270" if I remember correctly. Just enough to get rid of the bandsaw texture. Then they got ripped on the table saw to remove the tongues and grooves (what was left of them), and the microbevel. Then chopped to appropriate lengths. The layout is hard to tell in the picture, but there are short pieces running from to back in the van; these sit in between the roof channels, flush with the bottom face. There are long stringers running across the van from side to side; these are secured to the roof channels with nutserts, and are about 1" wider than the roof channels. So the front to back pieces sit on top of the stringers and can't fall out. Hopefully that makes sense. With this configuration, we only lose that 1/4" of height in the areas where there are roof channels. The rest of the ceiling is the same roof channel height. This leaves plenty of room for a bunch of wool insulation to get stuffed in there, which should finally finish off our insulating.
There's a lot of work left to do on the ceiling yet, but I'm stoked on how great it looks. I was on the fence about a wood ceiling. A lot of the ones I've seen lose the full thickness of the boards over the whole ceiling which I didn't like, and I just don't quite love the look, I'm not sure why. It's not
bad, I'm just not crazy about them. I obviously have to do some final fitment of the boards, mainly in the corners. I have to add a few more nutserts into the ceiling channels, but they're not here yet. The edges are sharp because my equipment is good and square, so I will probably apply a chamfer to the edges of the boards, at least the ones that run side-to-side. I have to select and apply a finish to all of it. I want to adhere the short pieces of each section all together, which should ease installation and removal, as well as reduce the noise from vibrations, I hope. But at least you guys get to see a rough idea of what it will look like, and then it will appear to you as if nothing happened, and then magically it will be complete.