Lesson learned: if it sounds easy, it probably isn't Goodness, I cannot believe it’s been three months since our last update! I’ve not wanted to post a new blog until another project was completed… but now so much has happened that I don’t know where to start! To summarize, we removed the garage door and replaced it with swing out doors. We did this in order to add about 28 cubic feet to the van, which is super significant! So, we set aside a Saturday and planned to remove the garage door, build a frame and set up the new doors. *laughs to ourselves at how ambitious we were* It started with the genius plan to purchase hollow doors (also known as: cheaper doors). We knew we’d have to cut off about a foot and half of the length, so we cleverly thought to stuff the doors with insulation and seal the hole! After cutting, we learned the hollow doors had structural inserts which made it impossible to insulate (picture a maze built of cardboard). On to plan B: Tanner found free solid doors off of Craigslist! He came home from work one day with a pair of mismatched solid doors and determination in his eyes. That Saturday, we decided to prep the doors as much as possible before removing the garage door. This included insulating the divots on both sides, attaching a thin layer of wood on the interior side, and attaching a layer of whiteboard-material on the exterior side. Homey on the inside, nondescript on the outside. Prepping the doors themselves took some time: we filled divots with blow-in insulation, used reflectix to keep in place, cut both the wood and whiteboard-material to the exact measurement, and attached with liquid nail/bolts. If we were to do it all over again, we’d probably use foam board insulation or skip the insulation step altogether. About a week after prep, we could see some warping on our exterior layer, due to an unflat surface which was caused by the insulation. Next up came removing the garage door. First step was to cut the spring’s wire, which allows for easy lifting and lowering of the door. Tanner warned a dozen times that we could lose our fingers if we weren’t careful… thus the explosive, nervous laughter in the video below: Once the wire was cut, we planned to roll the door right off the rails! The van’s light fixture, however, is just barely too close to the rails and blocked us from being able to do things the easy way. Anyone noticing a theme, here? On to plan B for the garage door: we’d remove the rivets that hold the rails in place. With the weight of the door, we hoped there would be enough of an angle created to avoid the light fixture. So we got straight to removing the rivets. If you remember from our last post, rivets are the enemy. Therefore, we spent another Saturday just drilling through rivets. For the particularly stubborn rivets, we got out the dremel. By the time we finished, it was dark and we had to call it a day. So rather than finishing in just one Saturday, we are now several Saturdays into this project and just now ready to remove the garage door. Removing rivets did the trick and the garage door was finally off the rails! We felt elated for about two minutes, but then it was back to work. Now we needed to build the frame and get the doors all set up if we didn’t want a giant hole in the back of our van! This is right around the rainy time of autumn, might I add. As if we weren’t stressed already! To start, we made a couple measurement errors. Then we made what feels like the 700th trip to Home Depot. Next we threw in some screws that weren’t strong enough for metal. Skipped dinner. Mixed in as many lanterns and flashlights as we could find. And voila! We had a frame! And by that I mean just a frame. Exhausted and hungry, seeing that it’s about 10 p.m. at this point, we left the van behind with doors clamped in place and a hope that they’d still be there when we got back. Luckily, the doors were still in place the next time we were able to work on the van. We purchased hinges, shims and one of my now favorite tools: a chisel! We opted to carve a notch on the wood frame but not on the doors themselves, leaving a gap should we opt to add metal edging. Then, using shims, we positioned the doors in the exact placement that we hoped to install. This is when we realized that our free doors from Craigslist weren’t exactly even and corners weren’t perfect, 90 degree angles. So that was interesting! We marked where hinges should be installed and got to drilling! Finally, it was time to see if all this work was worth it. I hope the boomerang above gives you an idea of how stoked we were that IT WORKED. We still have finishing touches, such as adding seals and the metal edging mentioned earlier, and of course we’ll paint the frame at some point. But for the first time, it feels like we really accomplished something - regardless of how imperfect it is! And that's the latest news from our van project! Next up on the to do is probably installing windows... that will surely be interesting! I hope to get back to you all with another update soon - definitely don’t want three months to pass by again ;)
Till next time! The Phillips Pack
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