Almost a kitchen
Hello world! Welcome back to some updated van news. Let’s kick off with the kitchen. As mentioned previously the countertop had been sent off to be crafted by John, a neighbour of Ben’s parents. It’s now time to get the kitchen install underway!
Fitting the countertop
A quick update on our other progress before we get into the countertop. After finding and purchasing the sink and tap for the kitchen, and looking into various other parts of the build we moved onto the electrics. It’s been quite the slog with heavy research, planning and then the eventual purchasing of the electrical items that we need to support our lovely Tesla batteries. Looking into and understanding 12, 24, 120 & 240 Volt electrics and setting up the appropriate systems for the Tesla has been quite a time consuming process and quite a learning curve for the both of us, more on this soon!
We were very glad to have a break from electrics and get back outside with Gandalf. Our recently delivered countertop, complete with sink cover/chopping board looks fantastic and we are thrilled with it! I undertook the measuring and modelling stage of the cutouts some time ago, which was quite nerve-wracking as I would not say that it is one of my strengths. I was especially nervous as the plans were then to be passed onto a very experienced cabinet maker!
countertop in hand we were very excited to get the installation under way, the countertop fits the space perfectly, it looks great, the radius corner on the left hand side is fantastic. We headed out to the van ready to install the hob, sink and tap. Along the topside of the countertop it looks quite spacious but the underneath is going to be a different story because of the appliances and the struts that the countertop will sit on. The measurements had to be so precise. Today was the day that we would find out if I’d gotten it right!
Installing the hob
Initially we wanted to start by installing the sink, however, we found that the clips that came with it were unsuitable because of the struts underneath. Realising that we were still waiting on our clear sealant to arrive and that we’d have to come up with another way of attaching the sink to the countertop we decided to move on and tuck into the hob install instead. The instructions that came with the Webasto X100 hob left a little to be desired. After some confusion with the bag of unlabelled mixed screws, we managed to figure out what went where and move on through the steps and soon enough the ceramic face of the hob was in place! It gets dark so quickly in the evenings now and as we do not have our electrics ready yet, we have no light and decided to call it a day and head in, leaving the electrical and exhaust connections until there was adequate light.
A new day dawned, fresh faced and with the sealant in hand we headed back out eager to finish what we’d started. The hob comes in two parts, the ceramic face plate with the electrical board attached to the rear, which we fitted yesterday, and the ventilation box for the underneath. We focused on connecting up all the bits that need to come out of the hob; the electrical connections, exhaust tubes, diesel fuel line and the controls. We needed to connect all these to the back of the ceramic face plate and then pass them through the ventilation box, which in turn needed to be secured to the back of the countertop.
The picture above shows most of the wires in place, unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture after the two communication wires for the controls had been put in place, but they basically attached to the board and went out of the box where the ‘Electrics’ are. The panel with the fan is then attached to the ventilation box once all the wires have been threaded through. After making sure everything was tidy we set about screwing the ventilation box in place. We took a moment to admire the work before getting stuck into the sink. The sink will be mounted under the countertop so we decided to drill through around the lip of the sink and fit it much in the same way as the ventilation box. It took a while to drill enough holes through the stainless steel lip of the sink, a quick check of positioning and a generous squidge of clear plumbers sealant and on it went! With darkness upon us we raced to screw the sink down via torch light and headed in, another successful day!
We had one more trip out to the van the next day to get the tap in place, it’s a shame we did not have time the day before to get it in, however, as they say good things come to those who wait! I am also overjoyed to find everything fits exactly as it should!
Without further ado here is the completed kitchen in all it’s glory:
Wow looks fab! Excellent Job!!!! Well done my darlings!