STORAGE. STORAGE. STORAGE
We think one of the most important parts of building the camper van is having enough storage for your day to day essentials. Without that you will be living in an unorganized cluttered mess. So we made an overhead storage area that runs 15 feet along the driver side of the van. It’s 12″ tall and 12″ deep, and we will be storing our clothes and some personal items on the half that’s over the bed. Then the other half, the half over the kitchen area will be used to store cooking supplies, toiletries, paper goods, plates, cups, napkins and other misc items.
The build for the overhead shelves was straight foward. After making the templets out of cardboard to be able to attach to the ribs on the roof it was pretty simple from there. We made the middle dividers, which will also be bearing the weight of all the shelves, out of 1/2 birch wood. We attached each divider with liquid nail adhesive and then drilled a hole for 6 large stainless sheet metal screws. The way we designed the dividers or supports seems that the actual divider will bear weight from the ledge of the van structure. We put 3 vertical dividers with 2 end pieces which will give us 4 compartments. The bottom of the shelves are also made of 1/2 birch. We ran it through our table saw at 12″ deep. We attached the bottom with liquid nails for added strength and wood screws attached to each vertical divider. To finish off the wood work we then added a something similar to a facia or a lip or edge out of white pine to keep things from falling out while en route. We also adhered this pine with liquid nails, then used brad nails to hold the glue in. The original plans were to make doors that we would flip up to access the shelves but we ended up just using a curtain to cover up the storage area.
With the overhead storage complete, it’s time to get knotty.
