Phase 3

Phase 3.3: Slider Door Shoe Storage

This was a shot in the dark. I had seen this mostly on aftermarket van conversion company builds. And I had seen a couple on some DIY builds around on the internet and I loved the idea of making that a muddy shoe storage area to utilize that space, especially because our Sink was going to be sitting over some of it anyway. But, I had found no how to’s, no Youtube videos anywhere! 

So, I hope this helps you out in brainstorming a way to make the Slider step your shoe storage!

First, my go to—stenciling the step out on cardboard. I used a stencil here because seeing it 3D always helps for me. I cut my stencil out on some left over plywood we used on The Attic.  I wanted the plywood to sit flush with the floor. That way we could lay our flooring over our addition and hopefully it would look build-in.

Luckily, at both ends of the step, where it comes to a corner, the corner piece sticks out a bit so it can act as a perfect support for the plywood. I didn’t want to make the step go all the way across towards the front cab because it becomes a huge step for anybody to clear. So, I left enough room to still have a comfortable step up area into the van. 

Once the top piece was cut out of stencil, I measured and cut out the bottom piece. It is slightly shorter because the contouring of the step. I measured the shoe box dividers that would also act as support. Then, cut those out. 

Now that I had my anchor and support point on that fortuitous lip on the corner, I had to figure out where and how I was going to give the storage top support for the rest of the box, but also keep the flooring flush with it. 

I used some 4-5” flat metal braces with 6 holes. These live in the Structural Hardware area of Lowe’s, where the joists are. I don’t know what they are called, but I had walked passed them many times in Lowe’s noting their existence and useful possibilities. Their time had come. 

I slid them in-between the subfloor so they would hang out enough to hold my shoe box top up, from underneath to sit flush with the floor and support weight if someone used it as a step up. It looked like it was going to work perfectly if I countersunk and used small nuts and bolts. So I pulled them out and placed them on top, marking the holes to pre-drill.  When the holes were pre-drilled into the sub-floor, I slid the braces underneath my pre-drilled holes and moved them around until they lined up. Then, I marked and pre-drilled them onto the box top. I installed just the top. It was pretty sturdy already!

 

Once the box top was floating in place, I placed the bottom piece down. Then, I slid my dividers in where they were going to go and I marked the holes for these corner braces on each side of the divider. 

Once I had all my holes marked, I removed the floating shelf so that I could drill the holes for the nuts to hold those corner braces up against the top and still sit down into the wood, again to sit flush with the flooring. Once I had the box top and dividers connected, I went back and pseudo-installed so it was floating again, without a base, but with dividers this time. I slid the bottom piece in place and marked where the dividers would land on the bottom piece. 

I had a piece of angle aluminum left over from The Attic Build lying around so I tried to see if that would work, instead of more corner braces. The upper corner braces were fine because you couldn’t see them, but I wanted it to look nice and finished inside on the places you could see. I liked the way that it looked and it was functional. So, I went to Lowe’s and grabbed another Aluminum angle. I also grabbed some Aluminum channel to fit over the divider fronts to finish it an make it look nice. I measured giving it enough space in the front to allow that new channel I picked up to fit on divider and not bump into the brace. The design is to brace them on each side with the angle aluminum. So I marked off where they would sit.  I pre-drilled holes in the aluminum angles being careful to keep them consistent so that a machine screw can slide thru one side, the wood divider and out the other side to be fastened with a nut on the other side. 

I took the whole thing off again. So that I could get the freshly cut aluminum angles in place to mark off a pre-drill on my dividers. I marked off the corner first. I made sure it was a right angle and actually put one machine screw and nut thru it just so to make sure to get the others lining up correctly. I marked off all their corresponding holes from their aluminum angles and took the screw and nut out. I installed the angles to the bottom, with out the top on. I used the same gauge plywood as a little spacer as I did this. 

Once the angles were all installed to the base, I was able to just slide the dividers into place and then secure them with machine screws and bolts. I slid the finished box into the braces in the van and secured it down with machine screws and bolts.

Probably no the best time to stain, but I really was making this box as a prototype while Kevin was out of town (that's also why there is a lack of building pictures, sorry), but it ended up working perfectly and taking forever so I didn’t want to make another one. So, I stained it a really dark color, while it was installed, to kinda blend with the dark step. It really muted that loud just-built plywood-look. 

I re-used some more of the rubber floor matting that came with the van to put on the bottom of the box to protect them and make it easy to clean. 

Then, I measured and cut the channeling and glued it on with Gorilla Glue (kinda of a messy cure… I would use something else. I just did it to avoid screwing into the aluminum finish).

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Phase 3.2: Framing

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Phase 3.2: Framing

 

We took 1x3’s and cut them to size to fit across the top of the van, on each one to the ribs that hang down. That way, we would have some wood to anchor our ceiling into. 

Once we were done with the easy part, we moved on to the bottom half of the van. We re-used the Embossed FRP White panels that the previous owner had installed. They were cut to size, easy to clean, easy to re-install, and it was going behind the cabinets and under the bed any way. 

Before we put the FRP back where it went. We marked up where the metal lies behind it. That way, we could put the framing exposed and it was easier to work with building the cabinets. 

Once the bottom framing was finished, we moved on to the upper panels framing them out on each metal rib, like we did on the ceiling. Upper cabinets are going above on the drivers side only. So that should be some good support. Then we ran one 1x3 across the center. All we need to do is anchor our wall paneling to it.

Phase 3.1 : Sprinter Overcab Storage Addition - The Attic

We call this: The Attic. 

YouTube Inspiration:

We had narrowed down the overcab remodel to two ideas that we liked from our YouTube brainstorming adventure.

  • The first Youtube idea was simple, cheap and we could move on from this project and have extra storage. We almost went for it. It involved a wire shelf like this one cut to size, with L-Brackets secured where the stock coat hanger screws went, some L-brackets where the visor/“oh shit handle” bolt in, on both sides. The wire shelf is easily removable, secured to the L-brackets with velcro, but it didn’t maximize that space. It utilized it, but didn’t maximize it.

  • Then, Kevin showed me another video on the other end of the spectrum, work and design wise. It would really maximize that space above any idea I have thought of or seen on the interwebs. We knew that it was a serious remodel and if we didn’t maximize this space (in this way), now, early… this stupid last minute idea we just found would haunt us forever. So, we took on this three day project.

Here’s our version of the Attic re-model:

First, we taped a line across from the left side around to the right side, trying to stay as straight as possible above the visor upper storage (we liked that and wanted to keep it). When we were happy with that line, we sharpie’d a line on there. 

Then, we took off grey plastic sheathing that was holding the overhead piece up. First, you pull off the coat hangers to expose the screw underneath. Unscrew those. Then, unscrew the plastic visor piece and keep unscrewing till you get the whole piece off. Once you have that off, the over head piece should just lift out of place. Then, jigsaw that Sharpie line top off the cab. We also cut out a little box area, above the light, to utilize that dead space there, as well. The cabover wasn’t too difficult to get thru with the jigsaw. It was scary and a commitment once we sharpie’d it. 

Stencils for the paneling

We probably should have used our Reflextix as a stencil for this, but we #90 sprayed it to the Thinsulate and it wasn’t coming off. So, we got to making more stencils of the front area. I cut a paper grocery bag flat and pressed it up against the corner to crease the bag so we could get an idea of the corner cut for the stencil. We transferred that to cardboard and shoved that into place, cut out where it wasn’t lining up, trim here, trim there. Sometimes, we would tape little pieces to the stencil to replace or create weird curvatures and then transfer that to another piece of cardboard. 

 

Because we didn’t want to have a rivet look and had no idea where we were going to anchor in some screws, without taping into some metal and going thru to the outside—yikes. So, Kevin used a little skate ramp knowledge to the build. He suggested that we cut and experiment with the free plywood that we found in the scrap bin at Lowe's (Yes, this is a real thing! And it is awesome!) 

Our plan was to bend them to contour to the van. We puddled some water on the boards and spread it out over the area we were wanting to bend. Then, we straddled them across our work horses. We placed our AGM batteries and weights on the center to make them bow over night. We left them for about 30 hours. 

Stoked on the new curves, we chucked them in the van, even tho they weren’t cut to size. Just to make sure the curve fit the van. It was perfect so, we immediately threw our stencil on them and jigsaw’d it out. When we were checking the curve, we noticed there is place where you can wedge the plywood in between the frame above the windshield. It held the board in place almost without screws. So, we accounted for that when we marked our cut line. There were three panels we cut to fit. On the seams, we ran a rope molding. Once the panelling was finished, we started on the shelf.

Building the Shelf 

We got a 6’ x 3/4” Square Steel and cut it to fit and act as a the support for the shelf. We cut it to size with a hacksaw. Then, we banana peeled each side to create eight places to mount the steel on the frame. That was cut with a hacksaw as well. Not the cleanest, but it feels sturdy with 8 self tappers holding that guy in.

We made heaps of stencils to cut the plywood that would become the shelf above the cabin. Because it is such a weird space, where the front area, right above the windshield, of the shelf is bigger than the back area. So one piece of wood wouldn’t work. We watched the guy say it in the video and we tried it anyway. So we had to cut the shelf into two pieces so it would fit snuggly. 

To support the cut down the center of the shelf, we got a 3’x3/4” Flat Aluminum steel and bent it to be able to add support down the middle but also to cover up that seam in the plywood. 

We were going to cover the plywood in some of this like our Camparu (Subaru Build out) but, last minute, I thought I’d rather re-use some cool old rug or free fabric, if I could find something that fit. I used a blanket we keep in the car for picnics. And luckily our aluminum flat iron happened to line up with the grey line in the fabric. Yay! We screwed the plywood into the Aluminum and cut out some of the old rubber flooring to cover the plywood for shelf protection and easy cleaning.  

Next, we hung out in the plumbing area of Lowe’s for a good 45 minutes messing with all the fittings until we had some sort of railing made out of copper to finish the project off. 

If we had to do this project again, we totally would. It was struggle street for a bit. But, there is so much more room for hiking back packs, tents, whatever up there!