Let's Go, Jane!

Every day this week I set out with a goal of installing the countertop by the end of the day. It always felt like it was just out of reach. All I needed to do first was…

Spoiler alert: it’s Friday morning and the countertop remains inside the house, sealed and ready to deploy. And yet, I put in 10-hour days for the last four days. How could I be more than 40 hours off on my estimate? I think this is a good analogy for how the van build feels overall. I can’t tell you what percentage I am finished, because it is unknowable.

The first hurdle toward cutting the countertop to length was placing the cabinets in their final position. The fridge cabinet needed a condensation drain line (rubber hose) run through the base of the cabinet and then down through the floor of the van. My first floor hole! Drilling went pretty well. The trickiest thing is figuring out how the exact spot on the inside of the van translates to the exact spot on the underside of the van, so as not to hit anything important. To do this I used a ⅛” drill bit that was 6” long, an “airplane bit,” to serve as my pilot hole.

After installing the condensation line, I wired the outlet that faces the opening of the sliding door and installed the air vent for the fridge and stove. All of the wood pieces needed to be primed and then painted. Plywood edges needed to be covered in edge banding (thin wood veneer tape) before they could be primed and painted. My sink cabinet and pantry cabinet needed backs and sides. This all took the better part of a day—and the countertop was still untouched.

The next challenge was the pantry. I had installed two wire drawers in the bottom half but I had a lot of space to fill above them. On Wednesday morning I whipped up two wooden drawers for cutlery and kitchen utensils and installed them above the wire drawers. The pantry was finished, minus the outer door. 

That left me with the middle cabinet, under the sink. I installed a tip-out drawer at the top for sponges and such. I knew I needed to do all the wiring and plumbing before adding the countertop because it’s a tight space and being able to access it from above helps. The middle cabinet has a lot of electrical wiring (fridge, stove, outlet) and plumbing.

I successfully drilled two more holes through the floor, one for the sink drain and one for conduit, through which I will run the flexible tubing for the air vent for both the sink and the gray water tank, and an electrical wire for the undermounted gray water tank sensor. I left enough space in the conduit for one more wire if I decide to add some sort of heat tape to the outside pipes and tank in the future to keep them from freezing.

On Thursday morning I woke up once again confident that the countertop would be cut by day’s end. Then I spent the entire day wiring the stove outlet and the tank sensors and gluing all the PVC pipes and fittings together, only to realize that I needed one more fitting to make the outside plumbing work. I ordered the part and it should arrive later today. At this point, the only thing standing between me and installing the countertop is a 90° PVC elbow, but I’ve been wrong before. Every day this week in fact.

Is it clear from this week’s post how very technical this project is? These puzzles keep getting more challenging, and while everything takes longer than I expect, I’m having an absolute blast. Next week I either share a picture of the installed countertop or quit vanlife altogether. At this point, both feel equally plausible. Also, this is my 97th post and I only committed to 100—so if the countertop doesn’t get installed soon, I may simply run out of blog before I get around to it.