The Ceiling
With the doors completed and the wood arriving it was time to make a start on the ceiling.
Decisions
I have to admit I had been very conflicted about this stage of the build. On the one hand I am excited to finally complete the wooden ‘shell’ that we’ve created, but on the other hand I had not been looking forward to it as I know it is going to be very hard going on my shoulder. It’s still a task that we need to get done so let’s get on with it! Our first port of call was to sit down and take a look online at the numerous ways there are to do a camper van ceiling and find a way that would work for us. It’s very popular right now to clad the roof of the van with either wood or PVC tongue and groove panels. From the outset we’d decided that this was not the direction that we wanted to take with Gandalf. This means we’ll have to go down the road of attaching plywood sheets to the ceiling.
After some deliberation we decided to go with flexible plywood. It bends graciously around the curves of the van ceiling, which is something we felt looked nice. We also need to take into account that we are not having cupboards along the entire ceiling length of the van, as is typical in these builds, so we will need to make sure that the ceiling join is relatively tidy (no pressure). We decided that we would not have cupboards above the seating areas either side of the van. This is for two reasons, the first is because Ben is tall and we felt that it would be nicer for him to be able to rise up from a seated position with no fear of banging his head on a cupboard. The second reason is that when I see builds that have done this, despite them being stunning it just feels so crowded. I feel like a never ending wall of cupboards could get a bit claustrophobic.
Onward’s with the ceiling
After the decisions had been made we ventured out and bought the flexible plywood for the ceiling. Unfortunately the store nearest to us only had two sheets in stock, they kindly ordered the remaining two sheets to be delivered to us free of delivery charge a couple of days later. With the wallet £163 lighter we headed home with our two sheets to get started. The plan was to utilise the battens we’d attached to the roof ribs, earlier on in the build to attach the large sheets of bendy ply. I can tell you we had some fun with the ply, whilst I knew it was supposed to be flexible I did not know it was basically going to be like handling an eel! We attempted to lift this big 2440mm x 1220mm sheet of ‘eel’ into the van and hold it up to get an idea of how to position it.
So there we are in the van with the back doors and the sliding door open. At that moment the posties decided to pull up and park behind the van, with both the driver and passenger remaining in the vehicle and watching us. In the chaos that was Ben and a much shorter me trying to lift this undulating piece of wood to the ceiling, the sliding door slammed shut, the gust of wind from which knocked the ply out of our hands and straight down onto us. I can only imagine the hilarity of this ‘chuckle brothers’ scene that the posties had the pleasure of witnessing.
We had wanted to get this up in the least amount of pieces possible but had found that it was just impossible to control the sheet. Even once cut into smaller pieces the day was spent trying to lift the boards around and hold them in place whilst they just slid and flopped around just out of grasp! Despite the fun and games we went ahead with the smaller pieces and started at the front of the van, carefully cutting out around the fan and attaching the first piece of ceiling.
Due to the slippery nature of the wood we decided to use joining trims to connect the pieces, this in effect gave us ‘another hand’ to hold one side of the board up, making the job much more manageable. We carried on over the next few days making it all the way to the back of the van. Although the joining strips don’t look hugely pretty we are not too concerned because we plan to cover it over and make it all look tidy in the end.
Conclusions
As you can see we cut the wood a tad too short on the right hand side for one of the panels. We’ve run out of usable length ‘eel’ for this task to be able to re-cut it and it’s not the end of the world, it’s actually OK that it happened here as it will be hidden by a cupboard at that particular point. We are very pleased to finally have this task done. It was absolute agony for my shoulder and I’m afraid to say I did end up crying on more than one occasion. However, it’s a job well done, with a lot of on the fly problem solving, and never a dull moment. We are now off indoors for a nice weekend!
