Lighting and Ceiling Panels

Now that the van was mostly insulated it made it a much more pleasant space to be working through the Winter. My next steps were to add wooden battens to the walls and ceiling to allow me to attach the ceiling panels and the wooden cladding for the walls. The wood sold as battens was thicker than I wanted as I wanted to minimise every bit of space taken away from the useable area in the van. I chose to use 11/12mm doorstop wood that is used for the part of door frames a door shuts against. For the walls I drilled a pilot hole through the insulation and into the van body behind (fiberglass coated plywood) and then screwed into that. For the ceiling before I insulated I added some thicker wooden battens slotted into small metal slots that ran the width of the body at regular intervals along the roof.

I then cut a piece of hardboard to the correct size of the ceiling and painted it with 2 coats of magnolia paint (mold resistant for less future hassle) I marked out and drilled holes for my LED lights with a hole saw. The lights I used are low profile which is great as they only have a 12mm gap above the ceiling panel and regular ones are much deeper. You do pay a bit more for them as they are a niche product but they are well worth it. I went for warm white as I’m not keen on cool white for lighting.

Before I fitted the panel to the ceiling I sellotaped the cabling for my lighting roughly in place. I used regular household light switches which are available very cheaply.