hi guys welcome back to another video do you want to make your van look amazing
with some wood cladding then you need to watch my youtube videos on my youtube
channel where i'm going to show you how to do all this and it's going to be amazing
hi guys welcome back to another video on today's video i'm going to show you how
to clap the back of your van so what i'm going to do is i'm going to build a frame with some
wooden battens and i'm going to use tongue and groove cladding wood to go the top of this so
i've got these my battens which are pretty skinny which allows me to bend them to the
van because obviously if you've got wood that's too strong you're not going to be able to bend
the batons then obviously you're gonna be able to get that curve of the walls which
is fine if you want straight walls but obviously if you want to optimize the most amount of space
you can get out of your van you want to have a bit of bend in the walls that you're cladding
so the wood i've gone to use for the battens is 12 mil by 32 mil and i got that from wix
and the first step i'm going to be doing is putting these buttons onto the roof so what i'm
going to do is i'm going to measure the width of the roof cut the battens to the width that
i need them and then i'm going to screw them into the roof and then after this i'm then going to do
the same process for the walls so i'll probably do three batons one at the back one at the middle and
one at the front and when that's done i can then clad both side walls and then i'll clap the roof
and after that i'm then going to paint it white so it just looks a lot nicer and that will be the
cladding done actually no it won't be so once i've painted it i'm then going to cloud the back of
these panels on these two doors and on the sliding doors as well so i'm going to use the plywood as
a template and then clad over the top of it if i've got enough cladding left if not go buy some
so guys i've cut all the wood for the frame so as you can see here we've got a front section
for the left side so we're gonna screw that in and bend it into position like that
and then we've got the same for the back so that'll go there like that and again that'll
bend in we've got to really really bend that one in so i might have to cut it a little bit more
just yet and then we've got sections like this to go onto the roof so that'll go up there and again
it'll screw and bend into the roof we've got one just here another one there but a third one here
and then a fourth one along here and again we'll bend that up into position and then the same again
we've got battens to go along the left side at the front and the back and then we've also got
two bits spare so i'm undecided yet but i might have to put a third bit
just on the edge there and hopefully i can give that a bit of a bend as well
but obviously i don't want to lose too much room off here because as you can see if you
put it there that's right the edge and i want the cladding to be in the bottom here
you know just off this bit really and come across here push all this in and come to this bit here
so once that's all screwed in we'll get on the cladding so guys to do the roof i've got these
easy drive self-tapping screws which goes into metal you can see that's what they look like
so i've got 25 mils that'll be enough to go through the wood and into the metal so i'd
recommend using these it seems what everyone uses for tapping into the middle of the van
so
as you can see guys i've got the two roof buttons in and the battens down the side as well
any bit i've got left to do is this button here at the back and the same again down at the front
so yeah i think for this one what i'm going to do is because i can't actually
screw it in i think i'm just going to wedge it in and maybe glue it in
just in the corner there and then that i should run at the same level as the other two
yeah and then that will be the framework done and then i can move on to doing the
cladding
as you can see guys i've got the front button on the middle band and the third band the last
one i've got to do is just the back pattern so i'm just going to show you how to do that one so
guys for this last batten it's a bit of an issue because i'm trying to make all the battens as flat
as possible so that when i stick the cladding onto it it doesn't have to bend you know unequally so
it's just nice and flat so the back one up here if i stuck it to this bit here be too low and if
i stuck to this one here be too high so where the button is here it's a perfect hype as you can see
it's on top of this coping instead of underneath like on this one so what i'm gonna have to do is
wedge a piece of wood in here and then once the wood's wedged in i can then screw through here
onto this one and that will ensure that all these battens are fairly level i've seen other people
glue it to the roof but i don't really know how level you get i feel like this is the best way
to do it if you've got a caddy this is a really good way to make sure all your bands are level
so guys i've finished doing the battens to the wooden frame and the next step is to add the
cladding to do this next step what you're going to need is your cladding tape measure of course
and then i'm going to use no more nails to stick it on and also another handy tool is this i don't
actually know what it's called i'll find out and drop in the description pretty much this
is a tool so you can get around the curve so for example if you wanted a curve around this
edge you can just you just push it on like this and then you lock into place and then as you see
you can then use that to draw on your wood and you've got the curvature so then you can cut
your piece of wood and it'll obviously match up that line so that's really really handy
so another way to do it if you've got the old plywood panels you can use them as a template
so you can put the cladding on top obviously get the curves at the bottom here around this bit
it's not going to be perfect because obviously the plot is a little bit smaller but that's a good way
to use a template and make it a lot easier a lot quicker so i'm going to crack on with this and
just film me as you're doing it and then i'll stop at each stage and show you what i've done
i think the easiest way to get the curve of the wall and all the little bits of plastic trim
is to use the old plywood template so that's what i'm going to do if you're not doing that
obviously you can use the other tools i said but doing it this way it's going to be a lot quicker
as you can see i've done one wall of cladding i haven't stuck this on as you can see it's a bit
loose so what i've done is i've just done it by eye really i haven't really used a template i've
just done a buy with pencil cut that side up and i haven't stuck it down so if anything goes wrong
i can just take off again so the next step i now need to do is take all this off i need to then add
another batten and bits behind because i realize that when i'm doing it it's actually quite weak
so i'm worried if you lean against it it might crack but another batten down there another
batter on the other side i'm going to add another bit of batten just at the ends here just so that
again the plan has got something to stick to at the front and then i can sand all the bits of
cladding and then start sticking it back on what i'm going to do is i'm going to first do the roof
now i figured out how i'm doing it get the roof done because i want to use long pieces of cladding
for the roof then i can come back do the sides cut the other side and then i can use all the leftover
short bits like this on the two back doors and the two sliding doors because i really want to use
long pieces for the sides of the roof so i don't have any joins and i'll obviously make it stronger
oh my god is that even gonna be that's gonna be too high for now
there'll be
to get around this little weird bit this tool comes in really handy as you can see
i've measured like that swap this in so i can take that to the wood and draw around it
roof is done yay
so you've done all the cladding we've done the cladding on both walls and on the roof
the next step we've got to do is clad the panels that go back on these doors and two sliding doors
and then what we're going to do is rebuild these wheel boxes so we put them on and cover
up the wheel arches so to do the cladding for the two rear doors and the two sliding doors
we use the old panels from the ply lining kit as you can see we're laying down the apply
lining kit on the floor and putting the tongue and green cladding on top of this we then mark
round this to make sure it's exactly the same size i then use the jigsaw to cut this to shape
so what i'm using is wood glue and to help it bond i put a few wood screws in
so i took one panel off at a time put some wood glue down put it back in
slide it together and add a few wood screws really help it bond and make it secure
once this was completed i then reattach the panel back onto the barn door using self-tapping screws
so first of all i drilled pilot holes for self-tapping screws
that i then used to attach it back onto the door
once i was sure that all the cladding was in the right position and measured up properly
and i took it off at a few planks at a time i then spread wood glue onto the plywood
and put each plank down one at a time slowing it into place as it was tongue and groove i then
use short wood screws to screw this in place if you own a van you'll know the side of the
vans are curves as you put the plywood panel back in it has to bend into shape
so i wanted to make sure it was nice and solid and nothing would pop off
once the panel was complete i then secured it back onto the sliding door using self-tapping screws
this is quite difficult as you have to hold the door slightly open while attaching it so if i
was you i'd get someone to help you do this as it'll make it a lot easier i've decided
to use the old wheel boxes instead of making new ones this was just to save time and save on wood
i tidied up the old wheel boxes by sanding them down and getting some of the massive off the edges
if you watched our first video when we bought the van you all know the applied lining kit had mastic
all the way around the edges so i'm just using a standing knife here to cut it all off and tidy up
to reattach the wheel boxes i didn't want to screw them into wheel arches because i was worried this
would create a hull and could lead to rust and therefore damaging the van so again i use wood
glue to secure the wheel boxes down in position i used wood glue along the bottom of the wheel boxes
and along the top edges so this would secure it to the plywood floor and the cladding on the walls
and then place weights on top of the wheel boxes and left is 24 hours
once the wheel box is set in place i've got more tongue and groove cladding and covered them up
and as you can see it looks amazing the finish is really really good
and i'm really really proud of this bit
so guys the cladding is done we've still got a few tiny little bits to do just around the edges
just off the edges here just to tidy up but the cladding is done it took a lot longer than
expected when we tried to use the no nails i think it's called so we weren't gonna have any screws
it was just absolutely terrible it didn't stick at all it said it was meant to stick in five minutes
and then after two hours it should be set and hold 50 kilograms so we left it for an hour with loads
of weights on and it all just came off it's awful don't buy it i think evo stick is the one to buy
if you want to do that but no nails terrible so the no nails guys watching this you know reach
out and tell me why your product's so bad anyway cladding we've cladded the back doors we've done
the sides the roof the sliding doors and then we've done over the wheel box as well which
just looks so much better it looks amazing so now we're going to paint it white so we're gonna have
the white and the gray but yeah it's a really long taste in the cladding it looks amazing and i think
you'll agree it does look amazing but it takes a lot longer than you think we've been super super
busy so you've only been able to do like an hour in the evenings and the odd weekend here and there
so to do the cladding it's probably taken us two or three weeks but obviously if you actually did
it i'd say you probably need you know i would say you need at least like two full days and
that you know full days i'd say go from eight a.m in the morning to probably six o'clock at
night you know if you get two full days you can probably do it and then obviously you've
got to paint it as well but it's a little fiddly bits you know around the wheel box
and everything like that it takes a while but anyway it looks great let's go on the painting
so guys the painting is complete and we're absolutely blown away it looks so good i
wish i'd done this in my other van it takes a huge amount of time but the cladding just looks
amazing the white and the gray the white paint against the gray carpet just looks so good i mean
the cladding just that effect and then we haven't done a super thick coat so we've got a bit of the
grain of the wood coming through we've got some little bits to finish off but it looks amazing
so i hope this video has helped you out if it has please hit that subscribe button let's get to 10
000 subscribers but the main point is i hope this video has helped you guys out and it's helped your
van projects come along it'd be great to see what you guys are up to and what you're doing as well
so let me know in the comments and like always if you've got any questions or you get stuck
drop a question in the comments i'll help you out but yeah we'll see you next video