Today we had our sights set on removing all the wall and door paneling from inside the van. There were a few hex bolts to remove and a ton of little plastic clips again but luckily today no clips broke. It’s like we are professionals all of a sudden. Not.
All of panels will be saved until it’s time to put them back on again. Our thinking at the moment is to re-use them all for the sake of saving time and money. Might but be the prettiest but that is not our goal right now. Our goal is to get this done in a month’s time and on a small budget.
Next up is sound deadening. If you look closely, there is some sound deadening installed from the factory, rectangle pieces that are painted over with the stone gray color of our van.
The factory ones don’t cover all the surfaces so we bought some more. We decided to buying Kilmat sound deadening pads. The box had 47 pieces or 50 square feet and it was plenty for our 170 van.
The kids came out of my parents’ house one by one, ready to help.
And by ready to help, I mean they brought out their roller skates, skate boards and scooters. Hehe.
Oh and giggles. Plenty of giggles.
And a little bit of arguing too. My turn, Luka!!
Look at that concentration!
Look at that ollie! Just kidding. He totally ate it, accidentally kicked his board into my foot and we were both of the ground laughing.
Ok down to business. We thought that having the kids help us out on some portions of the projects was a good idea. Having them participate in building our van, even for a minute, is important to us.
The took a piece of the sound deadening pads, peeled off the backing and stuck them to the interior metal walls.
The sticky material on the other side is basically butyl tape and a little messy and stinky to work with so I sent them out for fresh air shortly after.
Thanks for your help, kids!
Now go out and play… or dance 🙂
And done with this part. From a quick glance, it looks like we missed a bunch of spots but there are painted ones in here too. We actually did skip the two back window recesses because our current plan includes installing windows in those sections. We are sorta on the fence about extra windows because building bunks over windows sounds tricky… but we do need more circulation in here besides fans.
Dan thinks we don’t need windows that open but I disagree. I think it will make us more comfortable in the van on those hot muggy days.
After that, we decided to insulate and put back together the cab of the van. The first thing we did was to cut some Reflectix to shape and attach it to the van with 3M Spray Adhesive and Reflectix Tape.
After that, we cut some R-Tech EPS foam board insulation to shape and attached the same way as above, foil side up.
Cutting some of the small pieces of foam board made quite the mess inside.
And does it for day 2 of the build.
Well, not before lots of cussing and sweating getting the cab headliner back into the van. We somehow didn’t set off the airbags nor did we break the seat belts. So I call that a good day.
Here’s the video Dan created for day 2. Enjoy!!
Thanks for following along,
Marlene
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