VAN BUILD | INSTALLING A CELIING AND 12V PUCK LIGHTS | HOW TO

hello and welcome back i'm colton from ankeny van builds and today we're going to be putting a ceiling into our van as well as our 12 volt puck lights and as always i'm going to show you everything that you're going to need to install those so if you haven't already hit that subscribe button and let's just jump right into it for the ceiling panels i went with these pine tongue and groove boards you can see on one side there's a groove on the other side you can see there's a tongue to it that allows the boards to join in together so that there's no gaps and it looks very nice i'm also going to be staining and sealing these boards up to match the floorboards so let me show you everything i used to do that so before staining any of these boards it's really important that you sand it down i plan on going down to 220 grit so it's nice and smooth so because there's gonna be a lot of sanding i'm gonna be wearing a mask so i'm not breathing in a bunch of sawdust all day and then i have this orbital sander which makes sanding much easier so before i start staining anything i'm going to be using this pre-conditioner what that does is it helps even out the amount of stain that gets put onto these pine boards because this pine is very porous if i didn't use this this stain when i would go to put it on would kind of pull up or group up in one area of the board and i can show you some examples here so this one i didn't use any pre-stain so you can see right here it got a little blotchy up top on this ridge it got darker than the rest of it whereas the same exact kind of wood with pre-conditioner it gives it a nice smooth even finish so the way i'm going to be applying these is just with a simple rag you apply it to the wood then you wait about two to three minutes you wipe off all the excess and then you let it dry completely and then the stains that i'm going to be using are both from varathane weathered oak for one of them and then provincial for the other just to make it a little bit darker after we apply all the stain where you need to seal up all the wood because stain doesn't help protect the wood it just changes the color of it so i have clear coat and i'm going to be applying it to both the face of it and the back of it so once all the stain and the clear coats are done drying we can go ahead and start to install these boards into the van itself and to do that i'm going to be using a nail gun with one inch nails and just to make it even stronger i'm going to use wood glue and while we are installing all these with the nail gun i will be using this drill with a two and a half inch hole saw to make some holes for my 12 volt puck lights that i'm going to be putting into the ceiling so with that out of the way i'm gonna mask up and get to sanding [Music] so with all the boards sanded i'm going to go ahead and start putting on this pre-conditioner it's really important when you start using something new to read the back of the bottle and know exactly how to apply it and what to avoid one really important consideration that isn't really talked about a lot is when you're using these rags to apply the stain and to soak them in water after you're done using them and to not just wobble them up and throw them in a trash can if you do that the chemicals and the stains and the oils have a potential of heating up and catching on fire there's cases of garages burning down because of this reaction so always soak them in water before you throw them away that being said let's go ahead i'm gonna start mixing my stains once this is done drying i can start applying that stain to the boards and then let it dry [Music] just [Music] so i just finished staining all these boards they're done waiting for them to dry so then i can put a clear coat on it but just for reference i want you guys to notice this board down here that is actually one of the floorboards and i put it up there just for reference so you can see how closely that stain is matched so i'm pretty happy with how that looks okay so it's been 24 hours since the stain has been applied so we're ready to put some clear coat on but let me just show you what i'm doing right now as far as uh how i'm applying this clear coat so this is a clear coat that i'm using it's just this water-based clear coat i went with satin so it's not too shiny but also not too flat i apply it with just this brush right here i set these boards up right here so that it's not the entire board isn't touching the bottom because what i'll do is i'll apply the bottom side first flip it over and then i'll put the clear coat on the top and i'm planning on doing two coats of this stuff [Music] okay so there we go all the clear coat is on and if i'm being honest putting clear coat on takes a very long time and it's kind of monotonous and it's really not that fun because it doesn't look a whole lot different but this is definitely not something that you want to overlook or skip because it really does seal and protect the wood and prevents it from cupping and twisting and bending and warping and all of those things it prevents it so do not overlook it [Music] okay everything's prepped ready to go and it's time to finally install this ceiling so let's just jump right into it [Music] foreign so so [Music] foreign [Music] just [Music] super happy with how it turned out when you compare that to the floors i think it's almost a perfect match it's going to look great with the white chip lap walls going up the side the overhead cabinets over here i love the way these recessed lights look so before i wrap up today's video i just want to quickly go over how i wired all of these 12 volt lights and how i got them to work so so coming out of here is our cables from the solar panel which go into the goal zero and that's what's charging right now from there i have a cigarette plug that connects into a 12-volt system it goes in to this bus bar it's like a fuse block so when you take this cover off you can see i have it all wired up so that there's a 15 amp fuse we got our lights max air fan and a usb wall plug this is going to be a reading light on this side and i'll also wire like the fridge and the heater and other stuff on this side so coming from that it goes into this big bundle of mess and into our light switch so our light switch just has on the back side you can see there's an input and an output i just connected that to the positive and the negative coming from that bus bar and i connect it using these little uh male and female adapters then we got an output so that goes out this way and these are all 14 gauge wires so right here it's on a dimmer switch i flip it on light comes on and you can dim them brighten them up so from here i have a positive and a negative and i ran that up and all the way around all the way through and around and i ended it about right here so with that line going through i got one of these off of amazon and i filmed this in depth while i was doing it and i realized that the microphone wasn't turned on so i apologize but what you do is you get this clip you run that positive and the negative through one side and then you feed another cable from the light itself actually i can pull one of these out so you pull this out and you see on this positive lead you would run that through the hole of this and then with a pair of pliers this metal clip you squeeze that in and that's what connects the circuit and you do that for the positive and the negatives for both of them and then you just connect the lights using those same spade clips and you have a light so all in all putting the ceiling in is about 98 prep work prep work prep work getting all your wires run and the frame framework done sanding staining and then it all comes together when you finally get to put it in which is super exciting i'm really happy with how it turned out and on that i'm going to end this video here i hope you guys really enjoyed it learned something if you did please leave a like comment down below and subscribe hit the notification bell so you don't miss out on any other videos and i'll see you guys next week [Music] you

Channel: Ankeney Van Builds

Views: 10,349

Rating: 4.8733029 out of 5

Keywords: VAN BUILD, CEILING, 12V, 12V LIGHTS, LIGHTING, VAN LIFE, ELECTRICAL, HOW TO, DIY, RAM, PROMASTER, SPRINTER, SPRINTER VAN, LOW BUDGET, VANS, VANLIFE CEILING, RV PUCK LIGHTS, PUCK LIGHTS

Id: IcgmIr1mUtM

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020