DIY ‘90s VAN to MODERN TINY HOME... The Entire Build

I know everyone's been asking themselves when and the time is finally here I finally got myself an old pedo van [Music] in this video I'm checking something off my bucket list and restoring this 1990 Chevy G20 Conversion Van into a modern practical and affordable camper van decked out with pretty much everything you could ever need on the road [Music] thank you [Music] so early this winter I bought this 1990 Chevy G20 Conversion Van and like many people have done before I want to turn this into a pretty sweet camper the guy that had this before me did some Renovations of his own and replaced the walls and ceiling and my favorite part these retro Wilderness door panels but I'm going to take this a few steps further and really spare no time and no expense to make this into one of the sweetest fan campers that's on YouTube [Music] so first thing I'm doing is plugging a battery pack into the systems that the other guy had set up just to see if any of the stuff in the ceiling still works and it's sweet that that top vent works so I don't have to replace it because that's going to be really one of the only things that I keep in this everything else I'm going to strip out and replace [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] [Music] it's always funny when you dig into somebody else's work and you see some of the artistic Liberties they took just to get things to work and at this moment you're swearing that you're not going to do anything similar and once you get like halfway through the build you're like I could just make it work [Music] [Music] [Music] so I'm removing pretty much everything in here because it's always easy to start a new build from a clean slate rather than try to work around somebody else's work that you're not entirely sure what's going on in foreign [Music] and after a few days of Demolition and cleaning this van is pretty much a blank canvas ready to start the new build minus the subfloor of the guy head and the vent in the top [Music] so the first thing I'm going to do before I get to any building and it's still easy to access the ceiling is install a couple of 100 watt flexible solar panels so I cleaned off two places on the roof with some mineral spirits and the roof's not in the greatest condition but hey that's what you get for six thousand bucks nowadays so I like using these flexible solar panels because I don't need to screw them into the roof so I'm just using some black silicone around the whole back side of the panel [Music] and then I'm just gonna toss it in place onto the roof in perfect form the silicone should easily hold these panels in place even at highway speeds and then to pass the wires through into the inside I'm using one of these RV rooftop wire glands so I drilled a hole in the roof and then I had to cut the ends off of the wires so that they would pass through the gland and then I put a generous amount of silicone on the back side of this piece and then stuck it into place and used a few screws to secure it into place this is on the roof so it doesn't have to be pretty but it does have to be waterproof so don't be scared to overcock it that's always been my motto with the first panel installed I installed another one of the same thing plus the guy before me had one rigid panel installed already so I'll have 300 watts of total available solar power on here back inside I soldered the mc4 connections back onto the cables [Music] and then I plugged in some extension cables and then ran the cables for all of these panels back to the back of the van [Music] now these are out of the way for a while so I'm going to get started on the ceiling first I have some half inch plywood and I just cut this into some four inch strips to use some strapping underneath where my ceiling's actually going to be [Music] [Applause] [Music] so I screwed the straps into the wood structure that's in the fiberglass top making sure to size the screws that they wouldn't poke through the top [Music] and then up near the front I didn't have any wood structure to screw into so I used some PL construction adhesive to stick down a couple pieces of plywood that I can then strap over later now before I put the ceiling in I've got this big roll of foil bubble wrap insulation and I'm going to cover the entire ceiling in this using some carpet tape to initially stick it into place and then just stapling it into place more rigidly [Music] it'd be really hard to insulate this properly using thick insulation so I'm just going to use this bubble wrap insulation around the entire van and it'll form a bit of a thermal barrier but even more importantly it's going to really limit the airflow that goes through the van and that should really help with the insulation foreign for the ceiling I'm just using these standard eight foot cedar fence boards that I got at Home Depot after sorting through the pile pretty good and I'm just setting up my circular saw to take off about an eighth inch off the side to get me a nice Square Edge instead of the rounded Factory Edge [Applause] [Music] [Music] now I have this rabbiting router bit that I'm setting up with the right bearings to essentially just Mill these pieces of Cedar into some shiplap edging but first let me show you how I messed this up and wasted two days which happens enough when you have about 20 idea of what you're doing eighty percent of the time so first I just routed in this about eighth of an inch deep rabbet on one side of the Cedar and left the other side Square and then I painted the rabbet and both sides of the seat are black and sanded the boards clean then I just installed these over the strapping but in each board up against each other and then I was hoping these would line up pretty much perfectly with each other and then have that little 1 8 inch black Groove between each board for a little accent but it turns out deck boards aren't perfectly straight so in certain areas you could see the foil insulation shining through the cracks between the boards and I was debating just using some black caulking or something to be able to fix this but I decided at this moment I'm going to take these down and re-mill them properly and make sure this build is done correctly especially since I really plan to use this a lot this summer and it'll pretty much be my home on wheels for a little while so I rerouted these boards with a much deeper rabbet on the one side [Music] and then a shallower groove on the other side so that these boards kind of click together and have a bit of an overlap so I shouldn't be able to see any of that foil insulation anymore [Music] then I repainted both sides black with some regular black wall paint and use some 120 grit to sand everything nicely doing before installing I cut away the insulation from where the straps are so I get some nice solid wood on wood contact [Music] and then I used a couple lines of PL construction adhesive right around where the straps are going to be on each ceiling board I did lots of measuring beforehand to make sure all the boards were going to fit properly and line up nicely with the center of the ceiling and the roof vent [Music] I just nailed the boards in place with some one-inch brad nails and this will hold everything secure until that PL adhesive bonds and then this should be pretty much indestructible I already had the wires in place from the first time I did the ceiling so to do that I just used some 16 gauge Automotive two wire and I basically just marked out where my pot lights were going to be in the ceiling and then ran a wire to and from every one of those pot lights and just taped it in place onto the foil insulation since the ceiling will hold this up once it's in place for the lights I'm using these four inch DC pot lights and I just marked out on the boards where the spacing the lights is going to be and then I found something that was similar size to lights like this cup and traced on the cut line and cut it out with a fine tooth plate on my jigsaw [Music] foreign if you did all your measuring properly these holes should line up perfectly with where the ends of your wires are coming out notice I left a bunch of excess on the end of The Wire that starts the Run of Lights this is so that I can connect this into some switches and the power supply once I get a little further along with the build and same thing with the wires for the roof vent they're still accessible to me [Music] [Applause] just for a little more attention to detail I use this laser level I got off of AliExpress and lined it up perfectly with the groove of the first board and the main ceiling so that I could trace these lines on the straps at the front of the van and make sure the grooves of all my boards line up perfectly in the front of the ceiling and the back part of the ceiling [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] the next day I started out by sanding off the excess wood filler with some 120 Grit and then I soaked a rag with this Danish oil and just went over all of the ceiling Cedar just to give it a finished non-dusty look [Music] once that was finished I reinstalled the inside cover for the roof vent [Music] and then strip back the wires for the lights [Music] and then paired up the black wires with the Positive wire of the pot light and connected them using one of these wire nuts and same thing with the white wires and the negative wire [Music] foreign just tuck these wires up into the ceiling and pop the pot light into place and repeat it with the next three [Music] then I just temporarily connected that long dangling wire up to one of these carports and plugged it into a power bank just to make sure everything's working before I move on and that's the ceiling pretty much complete [Music] now to start on the walls I want to cut some wood ribs so that it's easier to screw in the mass of the walls and I don't have to screw everything into Steel plus I'll need more ribs to screw into than the van body even has so to do that I have this scrap piece of one inch foam board and I'm just kind of cutting off pieces until I get it real nice and close to the Contour of the van [Music] this is a real finicky process and there's nothing really right or wrong about any way to do this it's just whatever works for you I had to cut out probably eight or ten of these ribs all unique and each one took probably around an hour to get right [Music] and once I had a foam blank ready I just traced that onto a piece of 2x8 and cut it out with a jigsaw [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] once I had all the ribs cut and I was confident they all kind of flowed together time to glue these in place the glue I'm using is just regular PL construction adhesive that you can get at pretty much any Home Improvement store and I'm putting a good liberal amount down the back side of the rib and then sticking it in place onto the body of the van I'll then go around with some more PL and fill in any of the gaps since this is really the only thing that's adhering these ribs into the van and construction adhesive if you've never used it before is kind of this thick pasty stuff that hardens as it's placed so it's really the only adhesive that will work for this since we don't really have a perfect Bond the hard body of this adhesive will kind of fill the gaps between the wood and the steel and bond them together and then this front window in my design I'm not going to use so I'm covering up with some of this black fabric so you can't see in from the outside of the window into the messy wood back side of the wall that I'm going to have there then I just glued a rib in place in front of it and that'll all get covered up with wall [Music] so for the walls themselves I'm using this six inch pine tongue and groove board that you can get pretty much anywhere but first i'm just going to insulate the walls using that same foil bubble insulation [Music] [Music] [Music] and with that done I just started measuring out and placing the boards one at a time foreign [Music] with some inch and a half brad nails and I placed a few dabs of PL construction adhesive fat most nailing points using individual boards like this turned out to be a lot easier than using plywood panels which I was considering because I could basically just measure the length of each one and cut out any little divots that need to be cut out One board at a time rather than having to trace an entire panel [Applause] before I got too far I decided to run a few wires through the wall that I knew I was going to need later so I ran a couple of 16 gauge electrical wires that are going to be used for the water pump in the fridge I also have this extension cord that I cut the female end off of and then I ran it through the wall up to about where the backsplash is going to be above the counter and then there's going to be an outlet there and this cord will get wired into that and fed off the AC outlet in the power supply [Music] thank you [Music] and here I'm just cutting the hole for that outlet box that I was just talking about [Music] [Applause] [Applause] all right [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] for the walls have been placed and to close up the back here I'm just making a template out of some paper and tracing on the basic shape of what I need and then I'm transferring that template onto a piece of quarter inch Maple plywood and cutting that out with a jigsaw [Music] and then after I made sure it fits fairly perfectly I screwed it in with a few self-tapping stainless steel screws [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign now I'm at the top of where I can take the wall straight up since it has this little steel piece that sticks out here so I need to figure out a way to bring the wall out a little bit so that I can continue the wall straight up to reach the ceiling [Music] [Applause] so I played around with some angles on my table saw until I had this piece that has a couple of funky angled edges and then I can nail this into the top of the current wall and then this is the perfect spacer to get over that piece of Steel and be able to continue straight up towards the ceiling [Music] and since this is going to overhang a little bit I cut one of the boards with a square Edge and then I used a half inch round over just to soften up that edge since it's probably going to have quite a few heads bouncing off it [Music] then I nailed the boards in place with a little bit of overhang [Music] and then I wasn't even planning to do this but the way these boards worked out made it a perfect opportunity to add some LED strip lights so first since everything in the van is pretty much going to be run off DC power I'm cutting the AC adapter off of the power cord and then this will just get wired directly into the fuse box but for now I'm just hooking it up to another DC plug so I can plug it into my power bank and test it out yeah so I fed the wires up through a little hole that's around the seat belt there [Music] and then I drilled this hole through so that the IR sensor can poke through the wall and I can still use the remote [Applause] and then I just stuck these strip lights in place onto the back side of that overhanging board I just put up [Music] foreign [Music] a piece to fill in that top Gap I just made a dash on the board every six inches and then I took a measurement there and transferred that measurement to the corresponding dash on a fresh board and then trace the lines together and cut that out with a jigsaw [Applause] then this board will pretty much just wedge right in place [Music] I also used a good dab of PL adhesive every foot or so to tack weld this in place [Music] foreign [Music] for the front and back I just added a few strips for support [Music] and then I measured it out the exact same way I just did leaving some dashes and then transferring the measurements onto a fresh board foreign [Music] then I glued and nailed the pieces into place [Music] and that's the structure of the wall is complete now we're ready for some paint [Music] before I get to painting I'm just using some paintable caulking to fill in a bunch of the gaps and cracks between the boards and I know I'm known for a good caulking joke but I seem to do those a lot so I'm just gonna sit on this one sit on this joke and then I'm going to Prime the wood the type of primer you use for this wood is really important so I have this bin primer from zinser [Music] and I'm first going around to the brush and doing all the edging and covering up all the knots [Music] I covered the knots twice with the brush and then I did two coats with the roller over everything this wood really needs to be covered by the specific bin primer so that the knots don't bleed through the paint after a few months and you don't have these brown spots everywhere the knots are [Music] two coats of primer I went around with some 220 grit and gave everything a good finish sanding [Music] then it's ready to paint with just some regular household paint in white color foreign [Music] foreign [Music] now to get started on the floor I first removed the seats in the front [Music] and then I traced out some paper templates to add some subfloor to the front part of the van [Music] I just use a scrap piece of half inch plywood and installed them over a little bit of foil insulation [Music] then I swept it up and vacuumed the floor as best I could before I started installing the flooring [Music] [Applause] [Music] for flooring I'm using this four millimeter vinyl flooring from Lowe's in Maple color I wanted to use vinyl because it's 100 waterproof and I kind of have like some bends and Curves in my floor here so I want it to be a little bit bendable for that I took some measurements off the wall to give my best guess at getting this Square to the body and then I want to run the floor right up to the front of the van so to get around some of these complex curves I literally just started cutting out little baby pieces at a time and until it fit [Music] the hardest part was for sure going up around the dash but I just took my time and got it as precise as possible taking off little chunks at a time and it took about two days to do this about 80 square feet of floor but hey damn does it look good [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] with the main floor done I cut some strips of flooring to case in around the doorways I just used some construction adhesive and nails to fasten these in place [Music] and then around these curved Corners I use a heat gun to heat up the vinyl and then it bends nicely and I can just Snail and glue it right into place and it looks pretty slick with those curves [Music] finish up the floor at the front I'm taping off around the vinyl and then I'm using some of this black standard Automotive carpet to go around the wheel wells and any weird curves and just places that look like so I used some spray adhesive to spray onto the steel and then I basically just press the carpet into place and worked it flat from one end to the other I thought this was going to be really hard going around this complex of a curve but the carpet's so thick it can kind of compress and expand so it's no problem going around complex curves without getting any Folds and once that was sitting in place nicely I just cut away the excess with a real sharp utility knife foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] to fill in the gaps around the floor or the carpet I used some black silicone to kind of seal everything together all right [Music] then I finished up that floor side wall Trim in the front foreign touch on the floor I have this three-quarter inch by one half inch aluminum angle and I want to trim this around all the doorways Memphis in the most archaic way possible with the edge of a table and a mallet until it was close enough to screw into place I pre-drilled some holes and then I screwed it into place with some stainless steel screws [Music] I also made sure to measure out the screw placement so that everything looks even and even more professional [Music] [Applause] now while I have the seat still unbolted I'm going to do all the work at the front of the van so first I'm going to replace this old stereo that doesn't work [Music] and I replaced it with this cheap one I got off Amazon there's not actually any speakers in here I really just want this so I can add in a backup camera and use my phone in carplay [Music] so I mounted the camera on the back bumper and I had already run a wire up to the dash before I put the floor in [Music] and then instead of having to track down the reverse wire I just added in this switch that has a positive wire going through it and then when I flick this on the stereo will think it's getting a signal from the reverse wire and it'll turn on the backup camera hey [Music] now I'm going to use some of this gray fabric to go around all the steel and just cover up anything that doesn't look good up in the cabin [Music] so basically I just used some spray adhesive to spray down anywhere I could and then I set the fabric over top and stapled it into the ceiling and cut away as much excess as I could [Music] and then just started working it into every little crevice that I could cover in as much as possible so I did this in three separate chunks so I had two of these seams that needed to be closed up I was gonna try to sew it but I was talking to the lady at the local dollar store and she said just to hot glue it so I tried that out and it actually worked like amazingly like way better than I thought it was going to so thank you Crystal for that one [Music] the hot glue also worked good just to seal up any loose edges [Music] now I have this piece of wood I pulled out of the van originally and it just goes up right above the windshield and I'm just giving this a sand down and a restain and then just to spray with some spray lacquer then I'm installing this back in the exact same place it came from [Music] to cover up the staple seam where the fabric meets the ceiling I just cut up these thin strips of cedar [Music] and then I'm just nailing it in place as some trim [Music] a few other finishing touches I painted the bottom part of the dash here black since it looked really dirty and nasty before [Music] and I wanted to remove this cup holder and repair and refinish it but apparently it's structural to the van because I tried for like an hour to get this thing out so instead I rebuilt it the best I could and place taped it off and just painted it with some black paint then I just gave everything a good deep clean foreign bolted the seats back in and the front is done [Music] now it's time to start on all the cabinets for the back and this is a massive part of this build it took me about a week and a half to do all of them so I have some three-quarter inch Maple plywood and I'm first cutting them into some rough dimensions for the sides of my base cabinet all right [Music] then I'm taking them inside to line them up against the wall and then I traced on the profile of the wall using this stick with a line on it [Music] and after jigsawing that out it fits pretty much perfectly you really don't need a lot of fancy tools to get a lot of jobs done so now using my combination Square I'm cutting out a little square for a toe kick at the bottom of the cabinet foreign [Music] and then I'm just cutting up a bunch more panels according to the specs of what I need [Music] a bunch of these panels are going to need Edge banding on their front faces so I have 250 feet of this Maple Edge banding and to install this is really easy you really just line it up with one end of the board and then using a household iron you just heat up the front side of the banding and this heats up the hot glue that comes pre-stuck to the back side of the banding and then you remove the Heat and then I just use a wood block to press this into the wood as much as possible and make sure this banding really adheres and then I just work my way down the board heating up about a foot or two at a time for the cabinet frames all the front edges of the plywood need band-ins that when you open the doors you can't see the plywood itself it looks like solid maple in my gaming simulator video a couple months ago there was a lot of debate in the comments on how to say iron I mentioned nothing about this in the video but there was dozens of comments and all of them seem to say a different way was right so I say iron or iron there was a lot of people saying I should be saying more iron there are some people saying I should be saying more about iron and there are some that just left out the r altogether like iron so I want to hear from you in the comments which is right and we're going to get to the bottom of this once we have a definitive answer I'll be sure to contact my buddy Webster from Webster's Dictionary and he'll change that for us all right now that we're done solving language on Drew build stuff back to my Edge band in here once I have a strip fully installed I just cut it off flush at the ends with a box cutter and then you can cut off this little bit of overhang with a knife but in my case I'm just going to sand this off and give everything a good finish sanding with some 180 Grit [Music] all right so now I've got the two side panels of my base cabinet ready and I'm just marking out and pre-drilling some holes for the hinges [Music] and then I'm installing the hinges with the provided screws and then I'm just popping off the door portion of the hinge and this part will get installed onto the doors and then the doors will just pop right into place once they're ready so now I've got the top and bottom piece of this cabinet and the four main pieces of this cabinet are going to be all screwed together just using some pocket hole screws [Applause] so I have this Crag pocket hole jig that drills these pocket holes perfect every time and it's really easy to use so I put three holes down both sides of both the top and bottom panel and then I just screwed these panels right into the side pieces using some inch and a quarter pocket hole screws it's really simple as that to build these cabinet frames everything's put together with these pocket hole screws [Music] bunch more to go with that one done I started on another base cabinet this one's pretty much the same only difference is it's gonna have two drawers instead of the doors so I went ahead and measured out where the drawer slides need to be and then screwed them in place with the provided screws [Music] foreign [Music] and then I assembled the cabinet the exact same as the last one only difference in this one is I have this little strip in the middle that's going to go right in between where the two doors meet up for the drawers [Music] then I took these scrap strips of plywood and I'm installing two straps on the back side of the cabinet so that I can screw these cabinets into the wall through these straps then I started measuring out to make a drawer and the drawer I just made about an inch shallower than the depth of the cabinet and for the width the total inside width of this cabinet is 16 inches plus I have to subtract a half inch for each drawer slide so this drawer is going to be 15 inches wide so I ripped a few strips of plywood with my track saw and then I cut up the four pieces to the lengths that I needed all four of these pieces are going to need Edge banding on their top side so I went ahead and did that and sanded them down and then to put these together I'm just using glue and then some inch and a half brad nails foreign with the body of the drawer together I cut out a piece of quarter inch plywood to the exact dimensions of the drawer [Music] and then I just glued and nailed this into place [Music] to install a drawer I have these scrap strips a quarter inch plywood that I'm going to use to space it off of the bottom of the cabinet and then I just slide the drawer into place and pull it out a little bit with the drawer slides that I can install the first set of screws and then I just keep pulling it out a little bit more at a time until I have three or four screws installed on each slide and that's a pretty easy way to make a drawer [Music] to size the doors I measured out the overall width of the cabinet and then I take a quarter inch off so if this cabinet's 17 and a half inches wide the finished door size is going to be 17 and a quarter inch and same thing for the height so I cut out two door panels out of the same three-quarter inch maple and I'm just going to Edge band these on all four sides and that's pretty much the door done I'm just using these flat panel design to install these doors with only one person is a little tricky so the solution I came up with is I just flipped it onto its front side and then spent a bunch of time making sure that door was in perfect position and evenly spaced and then I just screwed the door into place and through the front panel on the drawer using four screws for the top drawer I just used this quarter inch spacer and Tack nailed it into place and then screwed in the same way from the back and that's pretty much a finished cabinet also note I use these soft closed drawer slides they're a little bit more expensive but notice how they kind of suction the door in before they pop free and open up that's going to be really handy on the road so the drawers aren't opening all the time they have that little bit of resistance to keep them suctioned up to the cabinet to make the hinge doors for the other cabinet I made the doors the exact same way and then I'm using this Kreg concealed hinge jig that drills me a perfect hole every time for these kitchen cabinet concealed hinges I'm using [Applause] [Music] then you just screw the hinge into place and if you did all your measuring properly these hinges should just pop right into the other part of the hinge these hinges are also soft closed for the same reason as before [Music] now both these cabinets are ready to be installed so I screwed them together and then just shimmed them up level and then screwed them into the wall of the van using those slats at the back so that's pretty much the methods I'm going to use to build all the cabinets in here next I built two upper cabinets using that same tracing method and then I have some concealed door hinges on them [Music] all right and then using some strap wood I just cut up these little pieces of trim to go around the bottom of the cabinet I just think this made it look a little more professional and then I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this last strand of LED lights if I was going to wrap it around the base of the cabinet but I decided to just install it just like all the rest foreign go any further I have these window coverings that I pulled out of the van originally [Music] and I'm just cleaning them up and getting rid of any residue then I'm scuffing them up with a maroon pad [Music] so that this black plastic spray paint will adhere nicely [Music] thank you now with those installed we're ready to install all the rest of the cabinets for the coach slash bed [Music] now I'm going to start working away at the rest of these cabinets in pieces so here I'm making a side cabinet that's going to have three storage compartments in it foreign I added in these dividers so that this splits nicely into three separate pieces [Music] so the two outside compartments here are going to have flip up doors on them with concealed hinges and then the middle one is going to have a drawer that slides up vertically so I'm making that drawer here the same as the other ones the only difference is I put a half inch backing piece on this instead of the quarter inch and then you're probably wondering why do I need a vertical drawer well I think the answer is pretty obvious it's because every Drew build stuff video needs to have a TV in it somewhere [Music] so I measured out the spacing for the bolt mounts on the back of the TV and then I mounting this in using some M4 screws right through the back plate of the drawer [Music] thank you foreign [Music] the drawer slides within the cabinet and then installing the drawer [Music] [Music] I added on all three of the cabinet doors and for the door that holds up the drawer and TV I used some good solid screws because this is going to have quite a bit of weight pulling down on it and then this cabinet will have two compartments that are just wide open for storage and then the third cabinet that pulls out the entertainment and that TV pulling out of the cabinet has got to be one of my favorite things I've built before you'd never even know it's in there when it's closed and it just works so nicely in the space and in the end it looks awesome I mean you'll see it looks sweet so here I'm framing in the first portion of the couch and fastening everything together with some more pocket hole screws and and then I'm building up this drawer the same as the other ones a difference on this one is I have these one inch strips of plywood that I banded the top on and then I'm setting these in place around the inside of the drawer about a half inch from the top Edge then I installed the drawer onto some 34 inch drawer slides [Music] and then I cut out these two pieces of half inch Maple plywood and I used a one inch hole saw to drill a finger hole in each one of the panels these panels can then be set in place right on top of the drawer and this creates a little table top with storage underneath it slides 34 inches out the back of the van so this is going to be perfect for a little portable barbecue later on [Music] now for the last section of our couch cabinets I'm framing in this base that has room for two drawers in it [Music] foreign [Music] couch that pulls out to make it into a bed so the way this is going to work is there's basically these two front plates and then there's going to be slats running along the top here some of these slats will be attached to the back plate and some of them will be attached to the front plate and then they'll basically pull apart when I pull this front plate out to extend the bed out and then the cushions can be filled in over top it probably doesn't make sense right now but you'll see in a couple minutes [Music] so on the cabinet portion I installed four three and a half inch slats [Music] and then on the moving portion I installed the opposite five three and a half inch slats [Music] and a support piece on both sides [Music] this will then just set right into place between the slats that are on the cabinet I have this little backing piece of plywood that I'm screwing the loose end of the moving slats into [Music] and then this will stop the piece from moving once it gets to the end of the rail so it doesn't slide out of place [Music] then I installed the two drawers and the drawer faces and we're getting really really close to being done the Cabinetry on this thank God next time I'd probably set up a dedicated cutting table so I'm not bending down cutting everything on the floor because that gets taxing on the body after eight or ten days so here I'm just installing a pretty simple backrest that kind of bridges over that window and the way I cut this I left enough space so that I could still get my hand in between the backrest and the window to open up that window or repair it if need be lastly I dropped in a couple panels a three-quarter inch plywood [Music] and then I cut five one-quarter inch pieces of plywood that are going to be the backer pieces for my cushions so I'm just setting them in place to make sure everything fits [Music] [Music] [Music] so now I have my five plywood cushioned backing panels and then I have this four inch foam mattress so I'm basically just tracing a panel onto the foam and then cutting it out with a brand new sharp utility knife [Music] and then I have this kind of denim colored couch fabric so I'm placing the foam down on it and then the plywood backing panel and then I'm cutting the fabric to size [Music] then I start with the long sides and I just fold the fabric up over the edge and staple it into the back do this to both sides and I pull everything tight but I make sure not to pull it too tight that it compresses the foam at all now at the ends I have to cut out this little wedge shape [Music] and then I fold the fabric in as Square as possible and staple it into place [Music] and then fold up the remaining Fabric and try to keep it as tight as possible without compressing in that foam again this is actually pretty easy it only took me about an hour to do all five cushions they look pretty good in the end they could be a little bit tighter but I'll maybe tighten them up someday foreign [Music] I'm taking them out to the van to see how they look installed so now I had a tough decision I didn't know if I wanted to leave these all Maple cabinets or paint all of them or paint some of them and I'm really curious to know what you guys would prefer since this obviously had to be done before I released the video I decided I was going to paint the couch portion of the cabinets a dark gray and then leave the kitchen portion of the cabinets and the upper cabinets the raw maple so first I'm priming everywhere I'm going to paint with that same bin primer I used before [Music] and I did a couple coats of this just to be absolutely certain that I'm not going to get any bleeding from the wood out through the paint [Music] after I let that dry for a day the primer actually brings up the grain in the woods so I'm sanding everything down with the finishing 180 Grit then I thoroughly wiped everything down with a microfiber cloth to get rid as much dust as possible and then I have this gray cabinet and furniture paint that I'm going to go over all the primer with [Music] I used a brush to trim out all the edge work and then I used a foam roller with really thin coats so I could get everything with as even of a Sheen as possible I think I did four real thin coats in total and that got me some really nice coverage with an overall even Sheen in texture I didn't have to do any more sanding in between coats after I sanded the primer but one of the most important things I found was to leave the paint wet with an overall even texture so once I was done the coat I would just take the roller and go back and forth until everything looked as even as possible and then it would dry that way [Music] to finish up all the stuff I left Maple I'm using that same Danish oil I used on the cedar earlier [Music] there'd be a thousand different ways you could finish this I'm just using the Danish oil because it's quick and easy and these are just upright cabinets they don't need to be bulletproof I'm just looking for a little bit extra protection that also brings out the grain so I just wiped it on onto all the raw Maple with just a dampened Rag and that's it it hardens up within a day or so [Music] then with all that finished up I can measure out to start placing in the door handles on all the doors [Music] oh [Music] and then everything can be reassembled [Music] so now that you've seen both I'm really curious to know what you like better do you like The Painted base cabinets or what do you preferred I've kept everything raw Maple or do you wish I painted everything be sure to let me know in the comments below what's your favorite or any other color suggestions [Music] foreign just getting into some finishing touches so first of all I have this stainless steel sink and I'm cutting a proper size hole for that in the base cabinet and then I have this scrap piece of chipboard where I'm making up a template for my countertop just that I don't miscut the actual countertop I can make sure everything fits perfectly beforehand with this template for the actual countertop I wanted a nice clean piece of Walnut that didn't need too much extra work so I went to my friends at Backwoods timber in Listowel Ontario and look through their huge selection of slabs these guys have been friends of mine for as long as I can remember so if you're local go check them out they have tons of slabs plus they do custom Woodworking and epoxy tables and pretty much anything you need plus you know everything was dried and stored properly so you're not going to run into any issues with your Lumber later on so once I found the perfect slab I brought it home and I'm just tracing the chipboard template onto the slab and then I'm cutting it out with my track saw and this is a full two inches thick so I had to actually remove the track and do an extra pass just with the circular saw [Music] foreign [Music] once I had that cut to size I drilled a couple holes in the four corners of the sink cut out and then cut that through with my jigsaw [Music] [Music] for a nice professional Edge I used an eighth inch round over bit in my router [Music] and went around the top and bottom sides of the countertop [Music] now I'm going to install this faucet [Music] so I used a forstner bit to drill through the Walnut and then I had to Route out a little more on the bottom since the slab is two inches thick the threads on the faucet wouldn't actually reach all the way through so I had to route that out to get the knot to lock into place on the bottom so now it's time to sand this slab up I'm starting with some 60 grit and I'm going to be working my way all the way up to 220 Grit [Music] took me probably about 45 minutes to sand through all the Grits on this just taking my time and making sure everything's as evenly sanded as possible once I was confident in the sanding I took some mineral spirits and just wiped down the slab to get rid of any remaining dust [Music] and then the finish I'm using for this I use a lot is called Rubio monocoat and it's really easy to use I just trickle it on and then work it into the wood with a white applicator pad [Music] and then after I let it sit for a couple minutes I just come back with a fresh Terry towel and wipe off as much of the excess as I possibly can and that's it this slab is fully finished as easy as that this stuff looks amazing and you can handle it right away you don't have to worry about any dust selling and wet finish or anything like that then I screwed it in place to the cabinet using about eight of these inch and a half screws [Music] now it's time to tackle backsplash [Music] so I have this aluminum tile ledge I'm going to screw into the wall above the countertop to [Music] okay [Music] and then I have this hexagonal tile that I'm going to install all the way up from the base cabinet to the top cabinet so I cut the first piece Square on two sides with my tile saw [Music] and then I'm using this pre-mixed tile adhesive and spreading it over the area for about enough space for one or two tiles [Music] once I have a good spread coat on I use my v-notch trowel on a 45 degree angle and scrape off any excess the v-not should leave just enough adhesive on the wall to adhere the tiles then I just start pressing the tiles into place and adding more adhesive as I need it [Music] once I was done I made sure there was no adhesive left on the outside of the tiles and then a day later I came back with this pre-mixed grout and I just worked it in between all the crevices between the tiles with a sponge tile float [Music] thank you [Music] once all the gaps and cracks were filled I used a wet sponge to go around and remove all the grout residue [Music] I'd regularly wring out the sponge with some fresh water and then I just kept going over and over it until there was no residue left just pure water then I just used some paper towels to wipe up the excess water now it's time to install the sink so I put a bead of silicone around the cutout and then I just dropped the sink right into place and the silicone should hold just fine I installed the faucet and finished up the outlet in the backsplash I'll hook up the plumbing after I go through all the electrical shortly now just time for some finishing touches I put the toe kick on the cabinet [Music] that pretty much looks like a kitchen [Music] I cut up some thin pieces of cedar for some trim around the ceiling [Music] I used some quarter inch Maple plywood for panels on the exposed doors [Music] and now it's time to hook up all the electrical so basically this one compartment into the couch here I have all my electrical run into and then I have this portable all-in-one power bank I got off Amazon and it has 1500 watt hours of available power storage and it only costs like twelve hundred dollars Canadian which is like half the price of anything else I could find for the same size so then I just took some solar mc4 to DC power connector and plugged in my solar panels into the input and then I have this fuse box I'm going to hook up for the DC power so basically there will be a connector that connects this to the power bank and the positive lead will go on the top and the negative on the bottom and then a wire coming in say from a light the positive lead will come into one of these fuse blocks and then we'll have a fuse and the negative lead will come to this negative bus bar so I hook the fuse box up to the power bank using this DC power plug and then I just started running my mess of wires for the lights and the ventilation fan and everything else over to the fuse box so just to show you how a utility is hooked up these are the wires for the ventilation fan so I hook the negative wire up to the bus bar then I hook the positive wire up to a positive terminal and I added the appropriate size fuse I turned on the power bank and hit the power button on the ventilation fan to see if we have power and everything's working good so I'm going to go ahead and hook up everything else [Music] for the two sets of Lights I wanted to add some switches right on the inside of the door so I drilled through with a forstner bit and then I pulled through the two positive wires one that comes from the lights and one that comes from the power bank and then I soldered on these connections that came with the switches I have and then just plug the two wires into the switch and popped it into place [Music] so these switches will interrupt the positive flow of electricity and basically shut the power on and off perfect next I have this 12 volt fridge slash freezer and I'm going to hook it up in one of the sliding drawers of the base cabinet so I just soldered the power cable into the supply wires I had in there and plugged it into the fridge set it in place and that's it I can set the temperature on this to be anything I want it also only uses about 35 watts of power when it's running so now to hook up the plumbing for the sink I have this DC pressure pump so basically I'm just going to use this half inch tubing and then I'll have a supply bucket that's filled with fresh water that the pump will suck water out of and then it'll pump water up through the faucet and the sink will just drain into this drain bucket that I can empty whenever I need to I'm just keeping it simple for now until I figure out how I actually want to use this and set it up then I just hooked up another Outlet in the back and ran an extension cord to the TV and then these two outlets in the TV all run on AC so I just have these plug into the power bank directly one last thing inside I have to figure out a way to hold the TV up so I decided to just keep this as simple as possible and I made this tether cord and then this just attaches to the handle on the cabinet and then this eye hook I have in the upper cabinet and holds the TV up simple as that and that's the inside fully done one last thing outside I removed the sticker off the paint and it took off the clear coat with it since it's probably 30 years old so I got this custom printed car magnet and I just cut it to size and I'll use this to cover up the paint without risk of doing more damage and that's it for this build thank you so much for sticking around if you made it through the whole thing and it's time to test this thing out foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] took me six weeks of working 10 or 12 hour days and the video alone contains over 2 000 clips and 1.5 terabytes of footage so I want to thank everybody watching this video because it's your views that makes it possible for me to make all this cool stuff this is by far the coolest and most practical thing I've ever built and I'll be using it a ton this summer [Music] as for total costs the van itself cost me six thousand dollars and then I had to pay about thirty five hundred dollars to a mechanic to get it safety for the entire renovation all my receipts added up to just under seven thousand dollars and that includes everything you see in this video including the barbecue and the power bank and the solar panels the lumber everything so that got me this awesome one-of-a-kind band camper for Just Around 16 or 17 000 Canadian thank you I guess [Music] by the way if you want to show your appreciation for the amount of effort I put into my videos I just launched my very first merch line in collaboration with bunker branding so I have a few t-shirts stickers and hoodies and you might have noticed I've been wearing them throughout the video so if you want to wear the same stuff I do and let's be real who doesn't that's the best way you can go above and beyond and showing your appreciation for the channel and help me make even crazier things in the future check out my page on their website at bunkerbrandon.com now it's time to enjoy the weather of my favorite time of year in my new van [Music] foreign [Music] thanks so much for watching my video and if you haven't already hit the Subscribe button so you can see what I get up to next you can also follow my Instagram at Drew build stuff thanks again and we'll see you next time foreign foreign

Channel: Drew Builds Stuff

Views: 9,733,533

Keywords:

Id: MeCZXOO7RPE

Length: 77min 11sec (4631 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 23 2023