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Mounting Kitching Galley & Drawers In Van | VBHQ Live!
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May 3, 2025
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View Video Transcript
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[Music]
1:30
he
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[Music]
2:14
all right guys welcome back to the live stream today we are inside the van it is a very
2:21
good day because we have completed the fabrication of the Kitchen
2:27
Gallery less the uh countertop which we'll also be doing today and the back
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uh those two pieces have to be um they're not part of the kitchen
2:39
galy because they have uh separate components such as the electrical boxes on the top and the bottom but we'll talk
2:45
about that in just a minute what we're going to kick off and talk about
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is uh the drawers so we're going to start by putting the drawers in um if
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you see any type of weird stuff on the paint it's just just sawdust so I'm going to clean that off um but John and
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Susan if you're watching this is a little surprise here uh this bamboo door I think it looks really cool
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[Music] um I went with that because these panels because we're
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working uh with this BAL of birch some of these panels This is the original
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door uh it was bowed and
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um usually for doors I do a double uh I have one piece of wood on
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the front and the back and I glue them together and then I cut it down to do all that stuff and I said you know what
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what would be better um for this door in the long term and bamboo so if you do
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want it to be painted we can do that um but I think right now the bamboo uh
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looks awesome I think it'll match it will match the countertop which is going to
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be super cool so uh kind of like a happy accident it's kind of funny how things like that
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happen but uh so this door is super true um just extremely straight not only that
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it's going to be very resilient over time so right here you guys can hear
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that slam latch and this thing is no rattle
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whatsoever um behind here I have a strip and I put this I did this in Thomas's
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van so up here we've got two cork pads and then we have this uh piece of
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Baltic Birch right here which is pretty much the door limiter if you don't have that the door will continue to go in
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even because the latch is only holding it from going out um so the drawer Glides that's what
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keeps the drawer from going in um but for a door like
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this uh you have to do this so just like that again super sturdy
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looks really nice with this hinge now this hinge Mount matches the hinge over there for access to the garage and then
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also the toilet box which we'll be building today
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um all right let's get into uh putting the boxes in um I've actually mounted this already
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to the floor and so we have pocket hole screws that are holding and they're
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glued and pocket hole screwed is the structure of this build and then where those joints are at the bottom is also
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where it's tied into the floor and then we're actually going to be bolting it to that uh divider wall That's bolted to
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the riv nuts of the structure of the van so everything is really um so right now
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this kitchen Galley you know you can move the whole entire van it's extremely strong so I'm happy with that um but
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let's get right into putting some drawers in if you guys have any questions just
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uh you know let me know in the chat
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um so we have a humongous pots and pans
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drawer so this is kind of the construction uh we've got
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um undermount drawer slides uh a little bit more challenging
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to put together but I think there's some much they're so much nicer um than the
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Cheapo kind of stuff you can buy from a box store these are Rockler uh drawer
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slides and then you guys can see here the construction where I've got the this
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one has six of the Craig screws and that's bolting the face frame on and this thing's really Overkill I mean you
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could actually I don't know you could probably probably set a car on this um not joking
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uh it's a pretty chunky box but I really same thing I reason I chose
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the bamboo is I don't want uh I don't want any warping over time or anything
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like that so I'm going to go ahead and put
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this in I can find my sliders
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here there we go
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actually I need to back off um I've got some locating screws in the
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back and I drove them in too far so I need to
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back them out really
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quick if you want to maintain squareness um like these two screws I put in the
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back they pulled galle in square to this uh but then I've got it bolted uh in
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place so now I can actually remove
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[Music] those so they're actually what's holding
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this in
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place all right let's see if I back those out enough yep all right
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and so what's cool is I can access from the back side and I'm just going to click it in and then
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now you can see got a drawer it comes all the way
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out to there and this is another important point you don't want this to
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go all the way out and touch the other side so imagine if you build a box and
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it went the whole depth of this cabinet so this cabinet you can go an additional
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4 in but when you build you have to make keep in mind that if you need to take
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this drawer out to do you know clean or just take the drawer out in general you got to make sure you have
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room to take the drawer out so that's why it stops um and is short about 4 in
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from the other side but the soft close works really nice um we're going to put all the
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drawers in and then we're going to go through through and uh put our slam
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latches so they're pretty much just going step by step and making sure everything
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fits if you hear a leaf blower that's just me blowing out the dust of the boxes
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again just to show you the construction of this box some really nice Baltic
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Birch under mount drawer slides painted drawer face and using a
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Benjamin Moore paint it's called scx uh it's actually mitt for kids rooms
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so rooms where they're going to you know draw on the wall and stuff like
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that um so it's a extremely tough paint hence the the word
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scuff X um
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so I may to need to adjust this drawer
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okay let's go see if we can come back and adjust that drawer
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all right next up we have our silverware junk drawer if you want
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to call it that so this is uh this drawer um we'll clean this out later
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but uh it looks a little shallow here but remember you can go up about another half
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inch um so it I do have it to a standard height however for me to actually get
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this in here with the drawer slides I had to come down about a/
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inch okay and that one fits really nice
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all right last but not least this was a challenging drawer right here you'll see why um I need there's an outlet that has
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to live so this Outlet right here has to
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live up top here in this corner uh it's really the only place in
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the whole entire van that it could actually be mounted
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so uh you can you can see how complex
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this is but so this part of the drawer box so I have to build a drawer box
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right so it rides on the slides but then on this back corner we have to do this
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kind of little fancy jog here you don't want the stuff in the Box to come out of that cutout um but you need that
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structure back here because this pin or this hole is where that uh Spike from
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the drawer Glide goes in and it needs to mount that and it's part of the
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structure so you have to maintain all that um
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and yeah that was uh that took quite some time to get that dialed
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in um because as nice as these drawer slides are they they have to be perfect you
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can't so Props to all the professional cabinet makers out there
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um yeah the Precision is a big big deal for sure
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Okay so we've got all of our drawers in um now we're going to go ahead and put
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our uh the latches for the drawers
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so this first drawer
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it's dialed in really good
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so actually need to I need to figure out how
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to get these drawers
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adjusted so when I put these drawers and over there yesterday when you guys watching the live stream everything was
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really dialed in um
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today I'm trying to figure out
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why our alignment is uh different fr
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yeah so this the third drawer is
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[Music]
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perfect so what I'm dealing with is these drawers uh when we did yesterday perfectly flush the whole time as you
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guys saw the whole process so we're in the van
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and we've got on the top [Music] one this
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one the bottoms are fine the front faces
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are let's see if that
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[Music] is we'll put the latches in and see if
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uh CU we were closing them yesterday and I think maybe that
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change the way they're
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looking Y and if you guys have any questions while I'm working just let me know in
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the chat I got my phone here
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[Applause]
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[Applause]
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now
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aha okay so if the rails if you I pushed
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them out because I thought they needed to be you know wider and that that Jord
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does not like that so look at wow okay that made a huge difference it actually soft closes and
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latches okay all right we're learning here man that makes a huge difference
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that's awesome that's excellent okay so the problem is if I'm
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the problem I can fix that so there's a wheel here and the
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rails you can the rails that click into the box you can guide them on where you
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want them to go and uh I'm just got I have them way
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they're way too
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tight okay
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wow I didn't think it make that big of a difference
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okay so that is forward
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okay looking good that one's perfect this bottom one
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[Music]
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[Music]
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[Music]
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you okay we'll work on the bottom one but these top three are now completely dialed in there we go
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okay back to some more latches let's go ahead and get another
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set these are slam latches so hence the word slam you know
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they're meant to be slammed so you should install them that
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way you should expect if you're going to use it or if you're building a van for someone that
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that it's designed to to do that so make sure you make the door or
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whatever be able to a stand that and not not mess up
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[Applause] [Music]
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that's
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funny so for some
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reason I didn't install a clip on that bottom one I have to go back and do that
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and I'm actually going to have to use my piece I was trying to keep as a tester piece for myself I'm going to have to
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use it on the van cuz we are out of time to make another
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one
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all right so we need two more got one two
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so in my case these come with a like a plastic spacer ring so we don't need
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this but keep these CU they're good to trace and uh almost like a temp use it
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as like a
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template and if you are slightly off when you drill your hole uh you may have
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to open the latch up to get actually have it go into the hole the hole saw
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holes that you cut out and you're mounting the latch
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[Music]
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[Music]
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excellent that's excellent that's great
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now you can't Mount these obviously before you put the drawers
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in outside the van
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but just wanted to show you guys this install on the live stream
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[Applause]
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yeah I feel really good about the build now um this Galley was kind of stressing me out it
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uh and it it really comes from me not building these all the time uh so I
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wanted to make sure what I imagined it to be in my head was actually going to uh come out in
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real life and it did but to get there was uh was pretty challenging
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um and it had to do with with uh I did not want this to look like you know
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cabinet drawers from a house uh I I like uh the clean face as
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you guys can see um you know we got Marine latches the bamboo the clean face
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and I I just wanted this to be nice and clean um we're in a tight area and one
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thing that you don't want to have is you know knobs and stuff sticking out and that's actually something that John and Susan mentioned was they didn't want uh
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you know knobs sticking out and I'm I'm a fan of that as well so um yeah took a minute to get
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here but we're now here and uh all we got to do uh
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we'll come back and do the detail work we'll do that next week um this weekend
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is dedicated to uh getting the plumbing and the boxes
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built in the back so those have not been built um those are just simple cuz they're actually just three-sided we're
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using the sides of the vans that are upholstered as the backside and then we're just pretty much
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uh capping it off with a uh like a three-sided box essentially um
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it's a little bit uh more involved on the water side cuz
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we need to make sure the water tank is safely held up against the wall um the power side not too
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bad uh I wanted to show you guys this I'm trying to figure out how to get the camera to show you this fridge stack
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because it's really awesome um it has the let's see if I can move the
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camera hold on now it has a protective plastic on it
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so it doesn't look as good as it can but I I'm not taking that off until
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uh they take delivery I do not want to scratch that
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stainless whatsoever so let me move the let me adjust the
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camera and then we also change this light
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yeah so down here this Trina box that's what I'm building today now that I have the kitchen Galley structure done but uh
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down here in the bottom let me move the
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light so down here in the bottom we got a really cool drawer
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so this one big drawer for for
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storage and same thing this one is lowered on the side so that when you pick it up we can actually lift it up
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and take it out um so this is also slam latch and soft
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close so this is the just a big extra ex storage
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drawer and then we have our isotherm fridge so this
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one uh we have it bolted here in the front these are number 10 stainless
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screws going into uh solid popler reinforcements on the
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side but in Nick Fashion I went ahead and and tied in
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this bottom section uh it's a uh 2 and 1 half in screw going
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straight into the side so that's the backup um so that ties in the fridge
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these are completely fine but I just wanted something a little bit
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extra um change the the door so the door opens this way and so this was also a
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Time killer this Frame I had to rework the whole entire frame because um when I
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switch the doors to the other side uh this is stamped stainless and
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sometimes whoever installs it in the factory uh it it's sometimes it's not
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perfect um so I had to take it apart reinstall it and get it to work so it it
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works now and you can see here we've got enough room to fully open the fridge that's
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another thing you need to keep in mind is is this space so what is this space here going to look like when you're
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actually done with the whole entire van so that's our fridge
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um up here we've got our convection
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microwave and this one forgot how many watts it is but so this is mounted up
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here and we got a little bit of a touch-up paint we got to do in this section um we got our vent right here so
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this is really just to help us uh vent off the heat coming from this whole
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entire unit which is not a lot but you need to plan ahead of time to make sure
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that that happens uh so I'll move the camera up so you guys can see the fridge
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and then up here we we have our control
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panel for our ecoflow system and then we got our Webasto heater control over
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there uh so those things are going to also be tied in as well and that's pretty much it it's it's
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very simple it's also extremely strong is how it how it's read
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reinforced but yeah it's coming together um the ceiling is fully complete as
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opposed uh I just got to uh put that shroud back over the max
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fan um the bed systems in so next we need to do is uh work on
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[Music] the kitchen countertop which is just a
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rectangle with some holes cut out so that'll be pretty quick um I do need to cut out two holes
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on the side of the kitchen Galley uh so we have two
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switches um whenever you're in a van as fancy as you can have with Bluetooth and wireless and stuff like
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that uh it's important to uh have some type of manual
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switch so I'll probably install this as well today um I need to find my I have
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enough clearance with my sink but I just want to figure out where I want to set this so we've got two of these and these
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are these are two switches
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uh now I know these are just the plain basic RV style switch and there's a
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reason I went with these um you can go with some fancy touchless
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dimming this is just dead simple so it's an easy you know fat switch so if it's
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dark you can come in and just hit it with your hand you know where it is you don't have to be specific with these
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touch points or um you know pess it the right way so it's just simple
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um I kind of hated on these for a little bit but then as much as I understand the RV World you know you need something
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that can be a little bit more uh just easy to easey of use this is
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perfect ease of use has a little uh dimmer here so you can set it where you
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want it and it has you know it'll stay there but this is when simple is usually
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the is the best solution so these will be bolted uh I'll cut this out today put
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these in and these will be wired up so we got a bank in the back lights and
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then we'll have a bank in the front um
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also I waited until the fridge deack and kitchen galy got in because I wanted to make sure
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that uh when I come up here I'll show you let me show you the bottom I just want to show you how clean this came out
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so pretty proud of this down here
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but this we have complete flatness here and then we have this little e inch step
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up for the trim and it just came out perfect very very
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perfect uh yeah it make sure you got tape over everything so you don't scratch it up before delivery
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day um also that side panel came out very good I spent a ton of time that's
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probably got five or six coats of paint um it's something you're going to be seeing all the time and so you really
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wanted to give good attention to detail on that um and then when we come up here you're going to
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see two three pieces of tape and uh those are will the that's
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where the next three lights are going to go it's possible I might put a fourth
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one up in there it just depends on how much light it is when I turn it on and look at it
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um but those will go in and I wanted to wait until the galley and the kitchen uh
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stack were in because I just want to make sure the position of the lighting is going to be appropriate to this
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uh setup um I'm going to leave the camera right here and what I'm going to do
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is uh I need to work on the trino enclosure so
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I've already got the materials I'm going to do that today and then we'll get into
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doing a little bit of the uh hole cutting for the plumbing and
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wiring for the kitchen Galley and yeah we'll just keep on keep on trucking
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so uh now that the kitchen Galley is off the list I'm I'm relieved I can move on
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to the next parts of this build and uh yeah that's pretty much it
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so um join me next time on the live stream make sure you guys are subscribed turn that
42:40
notification Bell so you don't miss uh when I'm doing um other live stream episodes and
42:46
check out van hq.com uh on the website I have a free DIY cheat sheet so it's the
42:54
last 3 years of my Amazon purchases to the shop it's over 250 items they're organized
43:00
it's in Excel sheet um it's completely free to download and it's just there to help you uh with your van build it's
43:08
just stuff that I've used in the shop over the years um so if I bought it it's come to the shop uh we'll be updating
43:14
that pretty soon but the link is in the description below it's a DIY van build
43:20
cheat sheet I think it'll really help me out uh as normal um if you guys have any questions put
43:26
those in the comments comments below and uh join us for another live stream where if you have any questions just put them
43:32
in the chat and I'll answer them but I'm going to get back to work I'll see you guys in the next live
43:45
[Music]
43:56
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