Building The Interiors

The journey of creating a liveable van is finally coming to fruition. After long nights and weekends of hard work, the walls and roof are now lined with plywood and it's time to start building the interior features. Installing overhead storage cabinets proved challenging, as we didn't have any battens to securely attach them. However, we found a solution by adding full-length 100x30 wood battens to the corners where the wall and roof meet. These cabinets are now securely attached to the battens, and in the rear end, they're directly fastened to the van's chassis. This experience taught us to think things through more and take fewer shortcuts. (And after traveling over 4 000 km on rough roads, the cabinets are still firmly in place!)
 

When searching for a gas cabinet for our van, we struggled to find one in Finland that met our needs. So, we took matters into our own hands and built our own gas cabinet. The goal was simple: to create a cabinet that would keep gas from leaking into the living area in case of a bottle failure. Of course, another safe matter is that if the van gets to fire the gas cabinet should protect the bottle from flames and heat and might not explode. But when have a look at ready-made motorhomes and campers the gas cabinets are done with the same materials as the rest of the vans so how much does it actually protect?

We used standard plywood to construct the cabinet, sealing the corners with a sealant, and drilled a 72mm hole in the floor to allow any gas leaks to escape. With the assistance of Caravan Myllymäki Oy, the gas pipe was professionally installed and the rest of the modifications were handled by us, ensuring that our van was truly customized to our needs.

Building interior structures for our van was challenging due to the lack of battens or laser-straight walls and lines. We had to use a floor line as a guide for constructing cabinets, seats, and counters that were straight and aesthetically pleasing. Though building everything from scratch took more effort than lifting pre-made structures into the van, the custom-building process taught us valuable skills and was a rewarding experience.

Our neighbor, a professional furniture maker, had a good laugh at our conversion process. He told me, 'I couldn't do this kind of work. When I work with wood, everything must be precise to the millimeter, but for this, you need to be more like a construction worker where millimeters don't matter.' A humorous memory I'll always cherish.