An Inspirational Journey
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The upper cabinet doors are added and the shower is fully working now. I still need to seal things up, fine-tune some things and get the grey tank installed underneath the van. All the hard and complicated things are done. Now I’m just finishing things up like sealing things, molding, touching things up, flooring, plumbing underneath and installing the shower door when it gets here.
Getting real close to finishing up. The plumbing took longer than planned as I wanted to make sure everything was done without any issues. Today was first time running the water through the tubes and there were no leaks. The water pump, accumulator and heater all worked as expected.
Installed the cabinet doors (which I will be updating soon) and dimmable lights underneath them. Also built the shower frame and drilled the drain hole for the shower precisely where it needed to be. So far I’m 11 out of 11 for drilling holes in the van in the exact spot it needed to be within all the obstacles (especially underneath).
I wanted to setup the van to have the 3 main power sources: solar power, shore power and startup battery (vehicle power).
I have just over 2 weeks left to reach my goal of finishing version 1 of the van. I’ve been working when the sun rises and until around 9-10 each night whenever I have breaks from normal work.
I have to wait for some specific fuses to be delivered to finish up the electrical board. While waiting for that, I went ahead and connected the solar panels to the solar controller, fuse and the 3 lithium LifePO batteries as the manual says to charge the batteries up before using them for the first time.
I took everything out and cleaned, re applied polyurethane and painted the boxes. I then brought the kitchen cabinets in with the appliances to get ready for working on the electrical and plumbing.
Buying a roof rack for a van conversion from a vendor can easily cost $1500-$2500. I spent less than $400 building it myself. Building a custom one to fit 3 large solar panels and making sure they can fit between the rooftop fans while making sure you can secure everything to the van is complex. It took some time to complete the puzzle.
To save money and get cabinet sizes I needed to fit the things I want in the van, I decided to custom build the kitchen cabinet. It needed it to be sized up based upon what I had to work with in the van space and which appliances I wanted.
I got a cheap mini sewing machine and was watching a lot of YouTube to learn how to use it. I don’t have any zippers to close them up yet, I’m happy with what I’ve learned so far. I’ll need to redo them before finishing things but good enough for now. Also installed some blackout curtains on shower racks for both the front and the back.
I had a meeting with the service manager after they were done with working on the oil issue and it went pretty good. Overall, I’m happy that it didn’t have any issues. He provided everything I requested based on the document I sent him the morning they were to start work on it. He pretty much followed up with all my requests (scans, reporting, transparency, warranty, what happened, what about the future, etc.).
Took it to a dealership to get the oil changed and check the fuel cap sensor since the service alert started showing the past week. I go to leave and notice the service alert was still showing. They tell me it’s just from the fuel cap sensor and to give it some time as it will likely turn off. I leave. Once I’m on the interstate for a while, I started getting a new service alert for “oil pressure low”.
Driving to Milton High School twice a day from Pensacola to dropoff/pickup Riley accumulates to about 3 hours a day. So even though the van is not completed yet, working from the van is already saving me time and money. New work location for today!
Thought I would test out working remotely from the van. Things are working good!
The foam got delivered early so I went ahead and cut up the sections for bed/table modes. Just need to find the fabric/design I want to use for the cushions. I guess I need to work on the lack of my sewing skills sooner than later!
The lagun style table leg was installed. Going to add some extra wood inside the utility box to give the table leg some extra support for the table. The foam I ordered should be here next week. I’ll be cutting it into 4 pieces to sit on – 2 on each side to sit on and for back comfort.
Finished putting extra support to the piano hinge openings and the extra storage box between the main boxes where you would be stepping on. Insulated the wheel well and covered them up inside the main boxes so the electrical/plumbing can be isolated.
Been working on these over the past days and have the overall boxes made and just need to fix up a few things. I still have some more wood cuts to make which will stabilize the tops of all 3 boxes better, especially once I add the piano hinges to open up the utility/storage boxes when needed or whenever it’s in table mode where people would be stepping on it.