VAN BUILD | FRAMING a RAM PROMASTER

so there's a ton of different ways that you can frame out the inside of your van the way i did it last time and the way i'm gonna do it again this time is i got a full sheet of four foot by eight foot uh half inch plywood i had them rip it in half to make it easier to transport while i was at home depot and i'm going to use my table saw here and rip a ton of strips at two and a half inches wide those will act as almost almost like studs in a house but i'll be using them to attach to the actual structure of the van itself and that's what's going to give the surface to attach walls and other things too so let's just jump right into it let's start cutting some wood [Music] okay that got a little dusty but we're all done we got all of our strips cut for our studs now let's go in the van and see where we're going to put them all so on my last fan i only attached studs to the structure of the van and that wasn't quite enough the walls are a little we're a little flimsy i ended up fixing it but there's a little give to the walls itself and i only used quarter inch cedar wall panels so it just wasn't the strongest this one's going to be much better in between each of these studs when i frame out i'll use that kreg jig to attach from the bottom to the top so that there's multiple studs throughout the entire van for right here instead of doing a half inch sheet because this is i believe it's three-quarter maybe it's an inch either i'm gonna find that dimension and get maybe a two by four actually probably just get a full two by four so that it actually gives out further than this that way i can have it attached on all of this up here and that will be my mounting point so i'm going to start working on the ceiling framing out the ceiling panels first and this is kind of just a general woodworking tip but if you have a lot of repeated cuts to make it's good practice to set up a stop block so i know that five or sorry six of the pieces on the ceiling are going to be 55 inches so if you set up a stop block so that the blade is going to cut right at 55 you can do repeated cuts and you don't have to measure cut measure cut you just measure it one time set up the stop block and then you can just go ahead and make six cuts without measuring anything out it really just helps speed up the process and makes it way more efficient a lot of times if you're going to measure then cut measure then cut you're going to mess up somewhere at some point so this kind of helps prevent [Music] that so all the tools i'm going to be using to install this i have these self-tapping screws i got them an inch and 7 16. but i'm going to be using a drill with an eighth inch eighth inch drill bit my impact driver with the phillips head and then this construction adhesive i'm going to put on the back of all the studs to make sure that they don't ever come loose or so that they're attached even stronger than just a screws so in case you guys were wondering why i went with a half inch instead of like a three quarter inch plywood is because half inch is thin enough that it's able to bend and take the shape of the van itself and it also saves you enough headroom so that you're still able to stand straight up in these [Music] putting in the framework goes in pretty smoothly up until i guarantee most people have trouble putting this one in which is right above the headliner and the reason is because your drill can't fit underneath to get a good good bite on that on the metal so you got to think outside the box a little bit i have my impact driver and instead of having the long bit that goes out the front of it i put just the tiny phillips head bit inside of there that way i can get up underneath it and start screwing these in it's a little unorthodox but so is building in a van so you got to be able to get a little creative and that's how it's done so another tricky part about framing out the ceiling is this back portion because there's no stud or i guess framework uh all the way in the back so what i do is i have a piece um pine board that i'm going to use for when i install the ceiling so i use it kind of like a straight edge and i put it up and where it comes to on this back wall i get my pencil and i scribe a line so you can see the line that comes across so what i'll do is i'll get a piece of wood and i'll cut it and attach it to this part of the van right here that way when i put the boards in i'll put some glue on top of that board i just installed and i'll be able to squeeze it down and that wood glue is what's going to hold it to that board so here's what that piece looks like once it's in and installed i just did some construction adhesive behind it you can see some of it kind of bled through and then attached it with those same self tappers so now the ceiling panel is going to come over and across and sit on top of this remember how earlier i said i was going to use some two by sixes to frame out this part check this out so where that comes up to on the ceiling is perfect so that'll be able to seamless seamlessly transition from the ceiling to the shiplap walls that we're going to have going down [Music] so i think that's where i'm gonna call it for today and i'll tackle the other side tomorrow and continue framing out uh the walls okay good morning we're back at it today we're gonna be framing out the wall panels and before we do that we have to get rid of these t40 factory bolts that come with it so i just have this guy right here i got the snowboarding gloves on again because it's a nice crisp cold morning here but we'll take these things off and we'll start cutting wood and getting after it so also in the mail yesterday i got the driver side swivel seat so i'm going to be throwing that in today but like i said in the last video look at this packaging we've got a giant hole right here in the middle this side's all dented it didn't even have tape on it it's called beat up i don't know what's going on with their packaging department but they need some improvement one way to check to see if it's all flush you get a nice straight edge put it against it and notice that all points are touching so we have a nice flush framework to install some cabinets so for framing out the bed frame what i'm going to do is i'm going to get the those brackets that hold two by fours vertically so then those will span all the way across the bed frame in my last fan i put them on top of this 2x4 and run across and that made the bed just too tall so this one i'm going to have it lower that way it's easier to get into and out of bed but you also don't lose that much garage space so i have this two by six here i have it clamped now i'm gonna drill right into the frame and then use these three inch screws let's get to it [Music] so one thing about building a van is that's really hard is making sure everything is square and plumb and flush because there's really no straight edges or anything in the van so now that i have this one attached to make sure that this one is the same height just find the same point on the ground so i'll use these bolts that are in the floor and i'll measure up to the bottom of the 2x4 and if they line up then that's as square as you're going to get it so that's what we're going to do now before i start working on the wall panels i'm going attach those two by sixes up to those points up there and then i'll be able to work on the vertical pieces one little tip i'd like to share with you just so you know you're actually going to hit some metal when you're drilling through your 2x6 but just so i don't miss it on all of them i'm marked on them on the wall behind it where those studs are going to be just to make your life a little bit [Music] easier [Music] so remember that straight edge test i told you guys about to make sure everything was all flushed up and i showed it to you guys up here well i just tried it out again so i used half inch plywood for these supports when i tried to do my my test here i hit this support beam so what i should have done was use three quarter inch for these but because i have it all liquid nails i ripped some quarter inch plywood and i plan on nail gun and wood gluing it to this and then that gives me enough clearance to make it all the way across learn from my mistakes okay so you can see they completely lined up that it's completely flush with this support beam here so from here on out on these ones over here and i guess that's it just this one right here i'm going to be using three quarter inch plywood and not half inch [Music] okay so check it out i'm actually pretty happy with how this went i thought it was not going to be that strong because you can see it doesn't flush up exactly but the way these craig screws work it went right into this the corner of this 2x6 and had all of this wood to go into so it's actually way stronger than i thought it's actually shaking the whole van with it tomorrow i'll finish up on this side and i'm especially going to make this side strong because it's going to be holding all of our overhead cabinets anyways that is where i'm gonna leave it today and i'll see you guys in the morning youtube good morning we're back at it uh today we should be finishing up the framing here and maybe just a couple hours let's just jump right into it [Music] so there it is all complete ready for an overhead shelf and then this i decided to triple up because or quadruple up that is because i'm going to be tiling here so i want this as sturdy as possible so that nothing no tiles will shake loose or grout lines will break or anything like that so i think that is good to go now i'm just going to try to figure out the best way to have the most possible space for the bed over here okay so change of plans here i'm going to start i started taking these out already these vertical pieces because i think it's a huge waste of space when it comes to the sleeping area the whole point of the pro masters is to sleep side to side so i think the best way to go about it is i'm going to attach the shiplap walls directly to the metal frame itself just out to where this uh 2x6 is the only problem is when you get back here there's nothing really to attach something to and i don't want these boards just being loose so i'll have to figure something out here with it whether i stick it to the wall or if i attach it to the support there but other than that that should work this just goes to show how good wood glue works because i've already taken screws out there we go man wood glue strong stuff things are finally starting to come together with this so what i did here this is going to be the vertical piece i'm going to put the craig screws in the top of this and then i attached with wood glue and nails uh another piece that's going to fit in just like this and then now when i attach the chip lap to these metal supports the shiplap's gonna butt right up against it i don't know if you can see that so that's gonna give me the most amount of room from side to side to be able to fit that 74 inch mattress so off to good things and there it is let's get a better look at this so i got a bunch of wood glue and some nails so this is really sturdy so i'll be able to put the shiplap right on these metal pieces right here let me come to this side it's also squared off so that the shiplock can butt right up against it i did that on both sides and when you measure from this support beam to the one on the other side of it it's 76 inches so when you add that with a half inch ship lap you got 75 so our mattress will fit in there just right got all the overhead stuff done the ceiling's done and now i guess i can start insulating running wires all the fun stuff and as always thank you for watching before you go make sure you hit that like button subscribe and the notification bell next to the subscribe button and uh leave me a comment and i'll see you on the next one peace [Music]

Channel: Ankeney Van Builds

Views: 30,066

Rating: 4.9532557 out of 5

Keywords: VAN BUILD, VANLIFE, DIY, DIY VANBUILD, RAM PROMASTER, FRAMING, DIY FRAMING, CAMPERVAN, HOW TO FRAME A RAM PROMASTER, HOW TO, WOODWORKING, KREG JIG, DIY VAN LIFE

Id: bQCx4cjDcKA

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020