Bed Update

There's quite a few discount mattress places by work that have been advertising on craigslist. I had actually been planning to buy from a certain store for weeks and then at the last minute I went to a different store to check out their 'fabric mismatch' mattresses. It's all I looked at, I bought one. I haven't used a mattress in so long I really have nothing to compare it to so it will be great.

I took a little nap on it during lunch today. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to lower the bed, I just don't know how I'm going to cut the legs down easily at this point. It's just a little too high and awkward. I can see it becoming pretty cozy once I get used to it and once I lower it.

I bought some new sheets and a pillow for  it all tonight after work. Super excited for my lunch break tomorrow, haha.

New Tires and a Kind-Of-Bed.

Last week we had a bit of snow and the morning commute was interesting to say the least. The van pretty much slid down a hill towards a red light. It turned green but it's a short light and in the end I just ended up running the red light rather than try to get my slip sliding hulk of a van to stop. With more snow slated for this week I decided it was time to stop trying to find decent tires on craigslist and went yesterday morning to buy two brand new tires. Here's hoping it stops better now that it has decent tires all the way around.

I thought I had mentioned it here but found no mention. There was some free wood around the corner from my work a few weeks ago so I got that, and now I've made a bed out of it. None of the pieces were long enough to span the entire length of a twin mattress so I had to use two pieces joined in the middle. Not my ideal situation but it was free.

A twin mattress takes up a lot of space. I'm having second thoughts now. I don't have a mattress yet so I'm not entirely sure this will work out. While I was building it the bed slowly got higher and higher as I thought things through. Now that it's built I think it's a little too high, but I won't know until I get a mattress and give it a try. And to be honest I don't really want to go through and saw all the legs down at this point either.

 

 

The weather has been nice while I'm at work, but lately every weekend has been snowy or rainy or I just don't have time. I find it very frustrating.

 

While I enjoy building my van and knowing exactly how things were put together and all of that, right now I'm thinking I would have enjoyed it a lot more to just buy a premade camper van. Even if things weren't the way I wanted them at least I could have had things already built and then do small modifications to suit myself. This coming from a guy that's pretty handy, but doesn't really have the best construction skills. 

Part of living in a van is supposed to simplify my life. With putting so much time into building it, I feel like it has only complicated my life for the time being.

I'll get there eventually.

I'll just say it..

.. I'm getting nervous. With the inside of the van finally at a place where I can start building a bed and cabinets and whatnot I'm getting nervous. It's time to really pull it together and pretend I know what I'm doing. I want to start on the bed. I find it to be the most exciting aspect and the one that takes up the most space so I want to get it done and then build out from around it.

Since it would seem I have decided to upgrade to a twin size and get an actual REAL mattress, that's a good chunk of space, and even more space underneath. How am I going to access all of that beautiful space underneath? I don't know. And it seems like at this point I should know. As of right now I want that to be my big goal for the weekend, to build the bed. And build it well. I've been toying with ideas all week. Originally I planned to close the whole area in underneath the bed. I guess I'm still leaning that way. However, I've seen pictures of people who just leave it all open and slide stuff underneath. I kind of appreciate that approach too.

I guess we'll wait and see how it goes.

Yay for Craigslist

Yesterday I put the bench seats from the van on craigslist. Originally for $20 for a few hours and then changed to FREE. Today I met up with a nice guy who has the same van without the high top and he took the seats from me. Finally I have space in the back of the van. After months of working around them and taking them in and out a dozen times.

With the seats out of the back I was finally able to clean up a bit of the mess I've been making and I finished up the floor too.

 

 

I'm proud to say today I made all cuts and did all drilling with my solar setup. No grid power at all.

 

That's all I did today. Got rid of the seats and put down the skinny piece and the big piece in the very rear. It's COLD out there. Wind chill in the 20's.

 

At this point I really need to sit down and plan out the interior now. Some people might think I should have done that long ago. Haha. I've had a vague idea that has changed over time. I'd like to get things on paper now and really measure things out. 

Interior is paneled.

Last week went fine with the solar panels held on to the roof with tape. And so far this week it's been going great too. In fact, I don't even check on them most days any more. I'll probably get out the ladder this weekend (or Thursday) and look everything over but at this point I'm pretty confident that my solar panels are staying put. All with no holes drilled in the roof other than the one hole I made to run the wiring through. Not too shabby.

As for last weekend I managed to get the ceiling done in terms of insulation and paneling. And also the lower section of the driver's side that I still had left to do. There's a small section of the ceiling in front over the front seats that I need to do still. That section will require a different frame/support setup. Just need to sit down and plan it out, but to be honest it's not a big concern to me at this point.

My next step really needs to be craigslist. I need to list those bench seats on CL for free and hopefully get rid of them quickly and easily as they've been taking up far too much space in the back of the van. I'm a bit of a hoarder which doesn't bode well with vandwelling and to tell the truth I'd totally be keeping those bench seats if I had room in my storage unit for them. But I don't need them! The brackets that hold them in the van have long been covered up and I can promise you I'd never put the time and effort into tearing everything out of the van just to put those seats back in.

The radio in the van died last week. I used to have to hit the dashboard every now and then and it'd come back on but it's officially dead. I had been planning to buy a new radio for months now and I've been putting it off because I didn't want to spend the money. Sometimes I get impulsive because I know otherwise I'd NEVER spend the money. I ordered a new radio and installation kit from Amazon tonight. Should be here Friday so I can install it this weekend. The new one has an aux port so I can hook my phone up to it and listen to Pandora while driving. Yay!

You'll see a regular-type chair in  one of the pictures below. I bought that for $10 on CL. I don't know if it'll be staying in the van. It came with a swivel base that costs $169 online. No clue if I'll use any of it, but because I knew how much those swivel bases were, I couldn't pass it up. I would love to rig  up the swivel base to work with my passenger seat I think. And right now I'm kind of toying with the idea of keeping the chair in there basically in the same spot as it is now but I'd have it permanently facing the side door.

Uneventful Sunday

Such a beautiful day. Wind was a bit much, but up into the 60's and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the last of the 60's for a while. With the sun shining brightly up here (weak sun this time of year where I'm at) my charge controller was showing a full charge by 10 or 11. The battery wasn't very low to begin with. I ran my laptop off of it for about a half hour last night and it had been sitting on Walmart's shelf for 2 months. The sun is almost down for the day and I really could get a very small amount done, and I should, but I probably won't be getting out there.

Besides monitoring the charge controller a little today and just taking the van for a 7 mile loop, I didn't get anything done on the van. I topped out at 65mph on my test drive and the panels are still there! Didn't budge a centimeter from what I can tell. I'll leave them there for my 25 mile drive to work tomorrow. Check them during my lunch break. It's supposed to snow tomorrow. Yuck. The van needs new front tires very soon now that snow is threatening.

We Have Solar

Went out this morning and bought a deep cycle battery from Walmart. Stopped by the car wash on the way home and tried to clean off the fiberglass roof. It worked a little but I didn't have many quarters and had to get out the hose and scrub the roof for a while when I got home. It was dirty and fungus-y.

I didn't get any work done on the interior today, other than wiring the battery and the charge controller. None of that is mounted or installed permanently yet.

I got the solar panels put on the roof this afternoon but at this point I'm not sure if they're going to stay put, and if I don't feel comfortable with the setup tomorrow afternoon I'll either be bolting everything down or else taking the panels off so I can drive the van to work on Monday.

I'm using some high bond tape to mount the panels on the roof. I've heard of others out there using the same tape and their panels are still there after miles upon miles of driving but it's a pretty scary way to go and I'm still not confident that it'll work at this point. If it works, I'll only have one hole in the roof where my wires from the panels go through.

 

Updates!

If I'm not careful, it will be a whole month since I've last posted here. Oh noes!

Since my last update I've insulated the passenger side, paneled the passenger side with 1/4" plywood, paneled the top two thirds of the driver's side, and got about a quarter of the ceiling in the rear fully insulated and paneled.

An update on the trash bags around the sheet foam covering the windows. I went a couple weeks and in the beginning I thought it looked fine, but as time went on and I had seen plenty of sunlight shining on the windows at different angles and whatnot I decided the wrinkles in the plastic showed up too well. Last weekend I took the insulation back out, took off the trash bags, and used regular old flat black spray paint on the foam. I think it was 'valspar economy' spray paint, from Lowes. The spray paint did very minimal damage to the foam and I was very pleased with the result. I did 4 or 5 coats.

Hopefully I'll update again at the end of the weekend but my goals for this weekend, as of right now, are to finish paneling the bottom section of the driver's side and also finish insulating and paneling the rest of the ceiling. I want to get my solar panels installed before I finish off the ceiling though.

Now here's a few pictures!

Upper part of the passenger side paneled.

Passenger side paneled.

Foam that covers the windows painted flat black.

Upper part of driver's side paneled.

 

Rear quarter of ceiling fully insulated with wood framing.

 

Rear quarter of ceiling paneled.

 

Guess what day it is!

Cold and Rainy Weekends

Last weekend was cold so I didn't work on the van much. I did get some more insulation up on the passenger side but that was it.

This weekend it rained the entire two days, so I did nothing with the van. I have to take materials OUT of the van when I want to work on it. I couldn't take them out and have them sitting in the rain while I worked.

I've noticed a leak in the van now that I took all the old upholstery type stuff down from the ceiling. The caulking in the very back where the fiberglass top meets the metal door frame thing (since it used to have a lift in the back) is bad and a lot of water leaks through. Annoying, but I don't consider it a big issue. Clean off the old caulk and put some new stuff up there. Keep an eye on it in the future. Done.

I'm pretty sure that this week I'm going to be ordering solar panels, a charge controller, and an inverter. I've shuffled money around from my savings to my checking so that I could do this any day now. I'm thinking I'll put the order in tomorrow or Tuesday. I kind of want to schedule around the rain so when they get delivered it will be dry, but it's supposed to rain all week apparently. Either way, I went against what a lot of experienced people on the internet have said. I will be getting poly-crystalline panels, not mono-crystalline. I will be getting a PWM controller, not an MPPT. And I will be getting a random 1250w inverter that I feel good about.

You can research forever but in the end it doesn't mean anything if you don't act.

I will have everything I need except miscellaneous wiring and a battery or two. I figure I can get all the wiring, switches, fuses, and 12v outlets from my work for a good discount since I work at an auto parts store. Still trying to decide if I want to get a battery from work or from Walmart.

I got my own domain yesterday. Drivebyandy.com. You're using it now. It cost me $3. This should be bigger news than a little side paragraph but web sites are what I've done for a lot of my life, so it's not really that special for me. I'm kind of developing an overall picture of what I eventually want this site to be, but whether I end up doing any of it or not will remain to be seen.

It looks as though next weekend will be dry, so maybe I'll get something of noteworthiness done (and hopefully have my panels and stuff). I have an hour lunch at work and am right next to all three big stores (Menards, Home Depot, and Lowes) but I've taken a liking to going out to the van and taking a nap in the drivers seat.

Driver's Side Insulation

One of my biggest problems with this project is that I haven't planned it out very much. I reach a point every day that I work on it where I kind of freeze up because I suddenly becoming worried about future wiring or future projects that will end up being hindered by something I do today. But the fact is, there's no way I'm capable of planning it out enough. One, I don't really know what I'm doing and two, I just don't have that kind of focus anymore.

This becomes a big problem because in my book the subflooring goes first, then walls and ceiling. These are all the first things! So if I'm just making it up as I go, how am I supposed to know where I need to leave holes for things I haven't figured out yet? Haha.

All of that aside, today I ended up getting the driver's side mostly insulated. Below the line of windows I did my predetermined Reflectix against the skin and then 1" foam sheeting with foil side in. I also covered two of the three windows. I had decided early on that I was going to leave the window next to the bed uncovered. In the end (of course, I guess there's plenty of time before the real "end" of this project), I even decided to use the original plastic trim piece around the window. I figure I'll end up painting it so it's not the original color. I want to make the back of the van to be as non-vanny as I can. In the end this might not be accomplished due to sheer lack of skills on my part but I really want the illusion that once you enter the back portion, you're not in a van, you're in a home. A very tiny home.

Back to the windows I covered. I had been wondering what to do about this for some time, and in the end what I did was the only thing that made much sense and what fit quite well. Earlier in the day I had screwed a 1" x 3" board to one of the metal pieces that ran the length of the van. This is for securing the plywood walls later. It also created a nice tight cavity for the bottom of the 1" foam to fit into to cover the windows. A snug fit along the top is there too. The way the van curves keeps this foam an inch or two or who knows, I didn't measure, away from actually touching the window. Which originally was a concern of mine. I had envisioned something being pressed right up against the window to black it out but then I started to worry about condensation and mold and a slow water damage process. I like the foam. My only concern now is that it's not enough insulation but it's going to have to be. The other 'issue' was how to black out the window. Factory tinted quite dark, but still see through. A lot of materials you could plainly see behind the window. My goal is not 100% stealth but at least if you're from a distance you can't tell something is blocking the window.

I had a couple ideas, nothing really worked. Today I finally took down the ceiling lining and I thought that might be great to put along the foam. It was gray and didn't look too bad really but in the end I had problems with securing it to the foam, the quantity I had, and the quality of it. I went with black trash bags. Wrapped around to the backside of the foam and secured to the foiled side with some Reflectix foil tape that I had. By the time I got this done the sun wasn't shining on that side of the van and it was getting darker out anyway. It looked good being on the shady side. I'm hoping to remember to look tomorrow morning before work when the sun is shining on those windows. It might look hideous. Who knows. Even still, I like the idea and if the trash bags don't work out I'm going to be looking for some better black plastic material with less creases.

So the driver's side is insulated from the floor to the bottom of the fiberglass top. I spent a lot of time staring at that fiberglass top trying to figure out how I'm going to frame it, insulate it, and panel it. Haven't come up with that answer yet.

The bed is removed here. It won't be screwed down permanently probably until I finish insulating and paneling the wall. I'm tempted to start driving the van to work. Besides the problems my other vehicle is having, I'm kind of excited to give the bed a try on my lunch break. Nap times are good.

Back at it.

Work on the van had halted. I've been really into the idea of a small motorhome. Something I can stand up in and that gives me the extra foot or two in width compared to the van. But really about the same length as the van. I've got a couple I'm quite interested in, and in theory could afford, but I'd be spending all of my money and that idea scares me.

This afternoon I put some gear oil in the rear diff on the van. Didn't fix the noise. I'm not completely sure where the noise is coming from. But in driving it around and everything I decided I'd stick with the van plan for now, as it's all I've got right now. I ended up buying some more screws, one sheet of plywood for the top of my bed, and 4 sheets of 1" foam insulation with foil on one side.

Definitely been up in the air on the insulation issue but again, I've decided to just to SOMETHING. It seems the walls will now be a layer of Reflectix by the outer skin of the van, and then the 1" foam with the foil facing towards the inside of the van (not sure if that's the way it should be, but I figure foil facing foil would be pointless too), and then 1/4" plywood.

It was getting dark by the time I got home so I just got a little bit of the foam insulation put in and covered with plywood in a small section I had already been working on next to the bed. I got the piece of the plywood for the top of the bed cut, and that was it for the night.

My bed is kind of flimsy and I didn't plan it out. Just built it as I went. But it did support my weight for the minute I laid there tonight. And then I put an old hospital mattress that I got for free from my friend's neighbor a few years ago on it. The mattress itself is quite heavy and I don't like it for that reason. BUT, even with that and myself it held up. Was a little wobbly but I still need to secure the bed and add a bit more support.

So, if you can excuse the blurry phone picture (it was pitch dark), then here is a small picture update.

Ankle update: Still hurts, and is a long way from being healed. The bruising has all finally gone away this week and I've stopped using my air cast, but really should get some other kind of support before I twist it again.

Uncertainty

I wonder if I'm one of those people that does more thinking about their dreams than actually living their dreams. It would seem that it's in my DNA.

The two times I've managed to break free from my home state and live in my travel trailer, I've always come crawling back after my seasonal job is done. Each time I've intended to stay away. I had plans lined up for afterwards. 'Car troubles' usually send me crawling back, but maybe it's more than that. Maybe that's just a convenient excuse.

Anyway, I worked on the van some more last weekend. Didn't get a whole lot accomplished. Bought some more supplies and started framing out a bed, which might end up getting scraped.

The bigger picture, however, is that the few times I've driven the van around lately I'm becoming increasing aware of a howling, roaring, grinding type noise coming from the rearend. Always while slowing down, and usually starts around 20mph. Maybe it's something as easy as just putting some rear differential fluid in there. I've never done that. Maybe that's not easy at all. But it's possible that it's something larger, more complicated. Maybe even an entire rear end swap is required.

So I'm not sure what to do at this point. I'd hate to back out on the idea and get rid of the van. But I might have to. My daily driver is falling apart too. I'm just waiting for the transmission to give out on that one. Sometimes I hate vehicles. I've spent an awful lot of time and money on them in the last year and a half and I'm still nowhere better than I was before. It might be time to retire the car I've had for 8 years, and the van I've had for 8 months. But then where does that leave me?


Update on the ankle. It goes well. I did end up going to the ER and getting it x-rayed. They said it was just sprained. Numerous people have told me that initial x-rays won't show fractures and they take a while to show up, but I'm not going to get it x-rayed again. Still waiting to see how much the first visit is going to cost me. Most of the initial brusing is gone, or near gone. The bruises have shifted around a lot and the newer ones are still there. I'm still wearing my aircast I got from the ER and walk all day at work.

Twisted Ankle

Here it is, a glorious three day weekend and I was supposed to get a lot done on the van.

Nope. Yesterday afternoon I had just started working on the van and got my first piece of underlayment down and then I twisted my ankle jumping out the side door. Bad. Now it's swollen up and it's impossible to put any weight on it. So much for getting any work done.

I had also planned to take the two old seats out of the van so I could take some pictures of what I've been doing on the inside without things cluttering up the space. Didn't get that far.

I only managed to take one picture right before I twisted my ankle.

Here you can see the Dricore (OSB with plastic underside) as well as the first sheet of the underlayment I'm going to be putting on top of the Dricore. I also put some Reflectix on the far wall yesterday morning when I had a few minutes to spare. Just wanted to see how much of a difference it'd make. Still planning to add some type of other insulation also.

Flooring 1/3 Complete

To my great personal suprise and delight I was able to get a bit done on the van this weekend. I did most of it on Saturday, with only a bit today. Today required a trip to Lowes (they were sold out), followed by a trip to Menards to get a few more panels of Dricore. They also had rolls of Reflectix for $9 off normal price, until September 9th. I bought two for now.

So yes, in the end I went with a Dricore subfloor. It's 2' x 2' tongue and groove OSB with a hard plastic underside to act as a moisture barrier. Intended for concrete basements. Compared to the alternatives it was a pretty expensive route to go but it went down pretty easily and I have to hope that it will have benefits down the road. If not, who cares. I went a slightly different route than normal and I'm happy with that. I used 20 of those for my 11' x 6' space.

That's the first third done. I consider putting a 1/4" underlayment on top of that to be another third. And then the final third will be when everything else is laid out and I put down vinyl planks in areas still visible at that point.

I suppose I should mention that before I laid down the Dricore I removed all the original wall panels and old insulation. The old insulation was often piled up at the bottom and useless. I also removed the AC ducts that were in the walls and put sheet metal over the associated AC holes in the floor. The metal walls with no insulation or panels to cover them really radiate heat in the sun. It was a real lesson for me and now I'm thinking about beefing up my insulation plans.

My van is a 15 passenger so had real wall panels. It's amazing how much taking those off changed the van. It changed it from an old 15 passenger van to a blank canvas. And then to have the subflooring installed. Very inspiring and I can start picturing the rest.

I really wish I had some pictures to show of the work done so far but I don't. Instead I will leave you with some long overdue pictures of what the interior originally looked like when I bought it.

 

 

A Slow Start

Van things continue to go slowly, if not entirely non-existant.

Yesterday I was able to get most of the items being stored in the back of the van out of there. Sadly, this means my travel trailer now has more junk in it. I still need to find somewhere to put the two bench seats I'm removing. I should probably just get rid of them. Craigslist or free or whatever. I guess there's still enough doubt in my plans that I feel like I should keep them around.

That's basically all I've done. I went around to some self serve junkyards yesterday looking for power window switches for my sister's car. One of them had a bunch of old vans, and even a class B motorhome. It was an old Transvan and it was nasty and scary inside. I poked around but didn't see anything too worthwhile.

Right now I'm researching flooring and wall insulation options.

Oh, I guess I did rip out all the back carpet yesterday. It's been kind of rolled up towards the front for a while but I finally cut it out. I left the carpet up in the cab area.

Anyway, back when I used to own a house the basement would leak when it rained. Basically the slope away from the house wasn't there and the water would pool in the window well and then leak in the window. This caused the entire finished basement to be ripped out. I researched a lot on subfloors for basements back then because I planned to eventually refinish everything. Never did.

I'm toying with the idea of the basement subflooring systems in the van. Simply, they're a layer of dimpled or designed plastic to create air pockets for moisture to evaporate in, and also act as a moisture barrier from the actual plywood on top. I've seen no mention of this on any van sites or groups. I like the idea, especially since I've already been putting  sheet metal down over rusted through holes in the metal floor of the van. My main hold up is not knowing the insulation situation in that setup.

Research continues.

It's been a while.

Hello, there. It's been a while since I've been around these parts. I'm probably not back for very long.

Last time I posted I was working a terrible job at Toys R Us. But it made me enough money to scrape together a cheap van purchase as my previous entry showed. And I had just been changed to 'permanent' employment instead of 'seasonal'. Turns out 'permanent' at TRU after the holidays means one day a week, and only 4 hours. Luckily a few weeks after my last post I was contacted by a company I had applied for back in November. I got the job. It's not a great job, but it's good enough to make me stick around for a while I guess.

That said, I didn't make it to Yellowstone this summer. They apparently had issues with a van being an 'RV', or at least the one lady on the phone did. So I would have had to take my car and travel trailer and in the end I backed out due to 'car issues'.

So I'm still back living with my parents. I work so far away from here that 20% of each paycheck goes directly towards gas for my car to get there and back 5 days a week. That frustrates me. And there's some other forces happening that make me put a lot of thought into the van these days.

Basically, the van has just been sitting there for the last 6 months. The extent of any work I've done to it is limited to putting some sheet metal patches over holes in the floor in the back. Lots of holes. Rust. Blech. The tires were also junk. Two of them were pretty much separating and I'm just lucky they never blew apart on the handful of times I drove it around. I found a really nice pair of Michelin's on craigslist for $100. I'm still looking for another pair of the same tires for the front. This past week I bought a new battery because the old one turned to junk in the last 6 months. And yesterday I put a new belt on because it had a very minor squeal/squeak. The old belt had cracks all over in it.

Another project this spring was stripping an old vehicle of mine to put the engine and everything in a different body. Well, this has left the van with a wide assortment of parts inside with no where else to store them. Kind of hinders any forward motion with the van until I can get those out of there.

The main plan I want to start pursuing and getting serious about is the van. Custom build the back of it into a living space. I think for now I'm planning to keep my current job, even though I'm getting frustrated and restless there. But overall, I don't have much of a plan. Living with my parents has drained the life out of me or something. I see no future now. My job doesn't make enough to move out on my own, but I'm pretty sure I don't plan on staying here forever.

The van seems to make the most sense.

A New Van

Obviously I wiped this blog and haven't posted anything in it in a very long time. To be honest, I'm still not sure if I'm going to keep this blog up, or if maybe I want to come up with a new name. But right now I'm just too excited.

I'm getting a van! I'm equal parts nervous and excited about it. It's an old beast at the ripe birthyear of 1994. It's not my normal Ford. I've owned almost exclusively Fords up until now. It's a Dodge B350 15 passenger with a raised roof. 119k miles. It does have rust issues and I'm hoping there aren't even bigger rust issues that I didn't notice.

I still have to go pay the man the money and pick it up hopefully in the next few days, but it's only about 15 miles away and was a local craigslist deal.

Funny enough, I got a call from West Yellowstone, Montana last night 10 minutes after I emailed the guy my offer on the van. I have a phone interview for a position for the summer with them next Tuesday. This timing seems too intense to be a coincidence.

Here's a craigslist picture of the van!

The family that I'm buying it from calls it Moby. I'm not really one to name vehicles or actually use the names I come up with but Moby is just the perfect name for this thing and I think the name will stick. It used to have a wheelchair lift in the back but they took it out. They seem to be some sort of foster family or something and have multiple children with disabilities. Really nice people. I have yet to meet the husband face to face but he seems like my grandpa in the fact that under the hood he has little stickers telling when he did such and such repairs to the van.