Materials/Spend:
Battening
- Whitewood Timber - 32mm wide (10 pack) x2 - £36.50
- Whitewood Timber - 44mm wide (10 pack) - £33.25
- Drywall Screws - £8.00
Benches
- Whitewood Timber - 34x34x2400mm (4 pack) x2 - £45.60
- Wood screws 5x70mm - £10.45
- Wood screws 4x45mm - £7.95
TOTAL: £141.75
Before I could start thinking about fitting electrics or a water supply, I first needed to frame out some seats so I could work out where my water system will fit, as well as where my electrical units will be housed.
Similarly, before I could start cladding the van, I needed to mount some wooden battens to the internal metal structure of the van that I can use to fasten the cladding too. The battens need to be thick enough to run wires between the cladding and the vapour barrier.
A lot of people opt to place their wiring between the insulation and the side of the van, but I figured in the event I need to access the wires, I would only need to unscrew and remove some wooden panels, rather than dig through some insulation as well.
Battening the Interior Walls and Ceiling
We started by battening the walls of the van. We used some 12mm thick whitewood door stop which is thick enough to leave some distance between the cladding and insulation but thin enough to flex to the side of the van, as it curves in slightly.
Before insulating your van, it’s a good idea to mark out where the metal structure is underneath, as the vapour barrier will obscure this. I didn’t do this but using pre-insulation photos for reference it was simple enough to work out where they were.
We used battens the full height of the wall and then shorter battens over places like the wheel arch.
We simply screwed the battens into place straight into the metal using drywall screws. It’s usually recommended to use self-tapping screws when screwing into metal but drywall screws did just fine.
Although screwing through the vapour barrier will of course pierce a hole in it, as you’re fastening the batten tight to the wall, this will still create a tight seal.
It was the same process for the ceiling - We fastened the battens directly to the metal beams that run width ways across the roof of the van.
Again, the same for the bulkhead, instead of fastening the battens to metal, we screwed them straight into the vertical beams of the timber frame we'd made previously.
Window Frames
For the main window on the right-hand side of the van, we constructed a rectangular frame, using some scrap wood we had lying around. We fastened the wood together using half-lap joints. This is where at the end of each bit of wood, you remove half the depth of wood so that two pieces of wood can overlap at each corner. I’ve added an image as I’ve explained that awfully.
For the rear windows and the small window on the left-hand side, because the windows were quite deep and to obscure as little of the actual window as possible, we turned the wood for the frames 90 degrees and simply fastened them together with screws at each corner.
We then mounted the frames in place by screwing them to the wooden structural battens we’d already fasted to the walls of the van.
For the sliding door, when the door’s fully open I barely have 10mm of space between the inside of the door and the side of the van, so I decided not to mount any battens to it and not build a window frame for the window.
Benches
I want two benches in the van, one over the top of each wheel arch so they face each other. Like I’ve seen a lot of other people do, I’d like to have a section that pulls out from under the bed that links the two benches to make a small bed. As I don’t have a lot of space, I’m planning on housing the majority of my electrical system in one bench and then a diesel heater in the other.
The design of the benches are a simple cuboid but because of the wheel arch, they only have three out of the four lengths of timber.
I used 2x2 timber for the frame and used the 70mm wood screws to fasten the frame together. It’s important to remember to drill some pilot holes before fixing any screws in place too.
In some of the corners, I had screws intersecting each other in two different directions on the right-angle, so it’s also important to make sure you give each pair of screws enough space so they don’t collide with each other.
For the bench on the same side as the sliding door, a section of the interior wall juts out a few centimeters so I cut a length of timber up to this point and then instead of fixing the frame at a right-angle, I joined the two bits of timber by using a small section at 45 degrees.
Once the frame was fixed together, I fastened it to the floor using the 45mm wood screws and then fastened it to the wall using the recently fitted wooden battens.
After I’ve installed my electrical/water/heating systems, I’ll ply each edge of the benches to finish them off.
If you have any questions at all, feel free to ping me an email or drop me a message on Instagram!
