After the success of the bulkhead walls it was now time to turn our attention to building the hatch door. I can tell you that this task was quite the DIY feat and certainly brought us a challenge.

Getting Started

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I had been really looking forward to this part of the build, it would be the first thing we’ve done so far that would hint at a finished interior. I’ve been super excited to finally be able to show everyone a sneak peak of things to come. I also got to spend time hunting down decorative hinges and a handle with a specific look in mind.

Cue day one of the hatch build…. Armed with my hinges and handle I was pumped thinking about how well the bulkhead turned out and how this door would add the finishing touches, somehow in my mind we’d become awesome at DIY. Out we went ready to get going, we’d had some discussions whilst working on the bulkhead and had been planning the intricacies of putting a door together, surely it wouldn’t be too complicated…. right?

Framing The Hatch

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Realizing that the most logical place to start would be to frame the hole of the hatch we made a quick trip to B&Q to get ourselves some fancy wood and dashed back eager to make a start.

Fancy window frame wood

We quickly set to measuring and cutting the wood, with Ben on the handsaw making quick work of it. During our first test fit a couple of issues came up

1. The top and bottom pieces needed to be raised slightly so that they would be flush with the edges of the bulkhead metal. We had to cut the bulkhead exactly at this point so as to avoid the seams in the metal.
2. We realized that they wouldn’t quite go together because of the rounded ends. We decided to cut the wood in such a way that it joined as you see in the diagram below and hoped this would solve the problem.

We decided that the best way to tackle the first issue was to add a couple of very thin strips of wood underneath our fancy wood to bring it up to the right height. We tested this and it resolved the problem so we moved on to the cutting of the corners. We quickly sawed off the corners at a diagonal angle, which seemed to be surprisingly easy without any special equipment and raced back to the van ready to fit the frame.

It was not that easy… We discovered that whilst we were almost there with it, the parts didn’t quite fit together it took several rounds of filing and test fitting before finally we struck lucky and the frame fit snugly. Now that the fancy wood finally slips into place, it was time to begin gluing it down. It was rather awkward to glue this because you cant use any kind of clamp to hold it, so we were stuck standing and holding the wood in place.

Despite how easy I have made the frame construction sound it was quite difficult and frustrating. It makes you have a lot of respect for people who do this for a living, and neither of us are in a rush to tackle the second hatch door at this point! We feel that this part could have gone better, but with the trials and tribulations of the hatch behind us we are still pleased with the progress, now it’s time to build the door.

Creating The Door

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With the stress of the hatch frame behind us we moved on to creating the door. The excitement had somewhat died down on this task, but we still had a nice handle and nice hinges to use so we got going hoping that the door would turn out like we’d hoped.

When we cut the bulkhead hatch out we kept hold of the off-cut piece of sheet metal, intending to use it for this part of the build. We felt that by using the same material as the cab wall we’d manage to keep the hatch fairly discreet when looking in from the windscreen. The frame for the hatch is quite deep to accommodate the 50mm of Celotex in the walls either side, which meant that we’d also be able to insulate the door with the same thickness of Celotex. We were really pleased with this as we didn’t want to have gone to all the trouble of insulating the walls only to let all the heat out/in through the hatch door.

Starting with the bulkhead off-cut we decided we needed to attach a wooden frame. This would help protect the Celotex and give a nice edge to the door when opened. We pre-drilled the holes through the metal off-cut, which was no easy feat and built a wooden frame to fit, we then attached this through the pre-drilled holes and quickly cut a square of 50mm Celotex to fit in the void.

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have taken any pictures of the actual construction of the hatch so I’ve made a rather crude diagram in order to explain it.

Hopefully this makes sense!

Next up was to cut a nice square of marine plywood to attach to the other side of the fame. This piece would face into the living area, excitement brewed as we were almost there and I finally got to whip out my nice handle and hinges. We had a bit of a game positioning the hinges just right to ensure that the door would open once attached to the wall.

Pleased with the work we headed into the van to fit the hatch. We were super happy to find that it fit into the gap nicely, however were not so happy to find that the door was catching and not opening properly. We spent some time sanding down part of the metal edge on the bulkhead side in hopes that it would open. As the end of the day rolled around the hatch was so close to working but not quite. By now as you can imagine we were both physically tired and slightly frustrated so we decided to head in and pick up on this at a later point. We had just enough time to step back and actually admire how lovely the door actually looks!

Taaadaaa!

Boy are we glad this part is over for now, I think we’ll tackle the upper door at a later date. There’s plenty to be done anyhow.