Up next in 10
Van Builder HQ is Live! Fabricating Fridge Stack (dissassembly before gluing up)
1K views
May 3, 2025
Have questions? Ask in the Chat! Don't forget to check out Odyssey Custom Vans latest build currently For Sale here: https://www.odysseycustomvans.com/ Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways we can help you: 1. If you need a vetted parts list, download our → FREE DIY Van Build Cheatsheet to help you save time and money on Van Parts and Gear: CLICK HERE: https://vanbuilderhq.com/ 2. If you want to get Done-For-You Van Build help, book a → FREE Consultation with my Calendly Link: CLICK HERE: https://calendly.com/odysseycustomvans/intro-call
View Video Transcript
0:01
[Music]
0:58
he
1:04
[Music]
1:48
all right welcome everyone to the live stream you may think something's wrong because I'm streaming at 10:30 in the
1:55
morning but everything's good we got a big list of things to do today and get
2:02
done um so I wanted to since everything is happening really quick these next
2:07
couple days this is going to be disassembled and I probably won't have that on camera so I just wanted to go
2:13
through my thoughts on first going over how I built it uh and then as I take it
2:19
apart explaining why I did a couple things that I did so if you're wondering what this is this is the microwave and
2:26
fridge stack for John and Susan's van and
2:32
uh the idea behind this was to raise the refrigerator off the ground so that when
2:39
you open it it's conveniently right here and you're not having to bend over and
2:45
get stuff out um which I think is it's a great idea um I see it in some Vans but
2:51
uh I haven't built anything like this before um and I think this is pretty cool um
3:01
teaching wise this incorporates almost anything that you could ever want to
3:07
think of when scribing wood cutting panels uh building something custom to
3:14
hold you know a defined set of things in your van so this could be a microwave it
3:19
could be hanging closet it could be uh chest of drawers um really this could be
3:27
anything it's just this form factor using it for the microwave and uh
3:33
refrigerator now there's a couple things to consider if this was a closet or drawers or something like that then um
3:40
obviously it wouldn't be uh you wouldn't really overdo the structure of this uh so this is pretty
3:47
beefy um and uh what I'm going to do is I'm
3:54
going to start from the top to the bottom as far as disassembly and then we'll kind of go over it uh the goal is
4:00
when I get done with this stream today I'll have this prepped and it'll be
4:05
ready so that I can take this face frame piece and
4:13
uh I'm still considering how I'm going to do this face frame piece um I may do
4:19
a different method so uh yeah a bunch of things have
4:25
changed in my mind as far as how I'm going to tackle this because
4:30
one this has to be fully disassembled uh painted and then reassembled in the van you can't you
4:37
can't even if it has nothing in it you can't take this and then put it in the van because it won't fit it has to be
4:43
built in place um so that's another thing I wanted to cover is how this is
4:49
going to be disassembled um it won't be in this video but this is just kind of me going through my thought process uh
4:55
also if you guys have any questions um definitely put those in the chat I've got my phone beside
5:02
me all right so what I'm using is a combination of a bunch of things um I'm
5:08
using pocket hole screws to hold the main components together and then uh
5:14
something I really enjoy is it's these uh they're called 6X 1 in uh Power
5:23
Pro and they require no pre-drilling and it's been really nice because this
5:28
Baltic Birch is really hard and to saving the time to pre-drill a hole
5:34
and then use these uh um like a normal screw kind of takes
5:40
a bunch of time anyway we're going to get right to it and the first thing uh
5:46
we're going to go and do some pocket hole screws so how I have designed this and you'll
5:53
see as I remove everything but um even with with my engineering
6:01
background and kind of pre-planning things and I talk about this a bunch on the live stream uh even though I draw
6:07
this on paper when you get into the real world and you're working with a van uh the curvature of the van where you've
6:13
set the floor the final floor height um where the adhesive has been put uh
6:18
everything kind of changes so if you build this by a drawing and put it in a van it's going to not look good it's not
6:25
it's not going to fit well so learning how to scribe um Corners Contours and
6:31
stuff like that you know be handy with the jigsaw that is what's going to make the this look seamless in a van uh make
6:39
it look very professional so to do that uh now this is just my take on it but you have to
6:45
have a different approach to a building method and so what I do is this base
6:50
down here is a drawer and that's pretty simple we're using 2x4 construction so we can hold the weight of all this um
6:59
but when you get to the bottom of the fridge and now you start to come up um in my experience there's a lot of things
7:05
that I have ran into that uh I didn't anticipate so I kind of came from a
7:11
world of you know if we just measured it perfectly you know the bearing goes in this this hole then it gets press fitted
7:18
you know those type of tolerances but here if I measure this perfectly uh the human aspect comes in
7:26
to where how do I when I'm holding this and I'm trying to shove it into this hole I need I need some additional
7:32
clearance and some wiggle room uh as you say to get this into its uh final
7:40
position so to get that wiggle room what I'm doing is the offcuts of my half-inch uh Baltic
7:48
Birch I'm taking and I'm actually stacking on different parts of the build so that when I have a cross piece like
7:57
this 2x4 for example I have it raised and um this does not have to be specific
8:03
this is just giving you a gap so that when you can you can fit the fridge in um and not bind up uh because remember
8:11
you're going to be in a very tight space so we're in the shop right now and if we take this fridge out we've got
8:17
tons of room to move it in and out but imagine this fridge messed up and it's
8:24
in your van and you need to unbolt it and take it out in your van um if you
8:30
built it very tight it would be almost impossible to uh tilt this and get it to
8:36
come out of your van and I've learned that through experience from the uh
8:41
other Adventure van that I built um where I had to catch myself between
8:47
putting two cabinets too close because I I wouldn't be able to move the fridge out and do some wiring and then move the
8:52
fridge back in so I had to make sure I had enough room so I just kind of copied and pasted that uh
9:00
mindset over here so this is the fridge um this crossmember is the first piece
9:07
so I put the fridge in put my spacer put the
9:13
2x4 and then the next thing I needed to do was figure out where this uh fridge
9:19
is now um I'm not talking bad or down about
9:25
any RV fridges but I mean sorry microwaves but microwaves in general um
9:31
it's a lot of stamp sheet metal it's a lot of thin metal in general it tends to
9:38
bend and uh you know it just sits awkwardly um it's not that it's not a
9:43
good product and you can't have a uh good-look finish but uh the honest truth
9:49
is there's places where you put the microwave in it's going to scent kind of wonky and it might lean backwards and
9:56
you got to have to figure out how are you going to deal with that so that when you're done this it looks like a a
10:03
professional did it so um when I came to this point and I put a
10:11
piece that's where things got a little interesting so um we're going to come back to that
10:18
in just a second uh I need to screw two holes in here and I'm going jump around
10:24
just a minute just cuz uh before I did the live stream I I was
10:29
in the middle of finishing this up so if I don't finish what I was working on
10:34
then uh I'll mess up
10:41
[Applause] here okay so I'm only putting two pocket
10:46
hole screws in here because um this is just a
10:55
placeholder okay and so these
11:01
so these are just for alignment purposes so for example when I go to take this out in just a second and I glue
11:07
everything up when I go to put back in this screw is going to find itself and get exactly in the same position I've
11:13
also taken a [Music] pin or a pencil and I've marked the top
11:22
it's just visual reference um so let's go ahead and now
11:27
that this is uh you can see I'm using clamps at the base and as I go up um it's extremely
11:37
important uh so actually to be honest here this
11:42
panel I preit this panel in the van I contoured the top to the curved ceiling
11:49
and then down here I had some type of weird the base was sitting weird it it's
11:55
kind of off like an eighth of an inch um at the bot like it was perfect at the bottom and it came up was off a little
12:02
bit and uh I just kind of go with it because sometimes in a van things are
12:08
off and it's going to look great in the end but I'm still back and forth
12:15
between if I want to use that I think what I'm going to do since the uh since
12:21
I have such a thin pieces of reveal here is I'm probably going
12:28
to do a different construction method so um probably the way that normal
12:36
Carpenters do a face frame so we'll do some type of
12:42
uh uh to say lattice I forgot what the word is
12:49
anyway I'll do probably do something different today but I got do this today
12:54
paint it and paint the um transition the uh divider wall so
13:01
that's what's on the list all right let's start taking this apart um
13:07
so where I left off making sure that this is perfect is this up here needs to be
13:15
24 uh and an eighth and we've got I'm sorry this needs to
13:21
be let's see what our base was down here yeah 24 and E then we come here
13:29
24 and the 8th and we got here I'm sorry 24 and the
13:35
16th that be too early for me already 24 and a 16th so
13:40
24 and 116th of an inch is so this is
13:45
perfectly true from the bottom to the top it's perfect and these 2x4 pieces
13:53
have as long as those are cut perfect then everything else will be perfect
14:00
um these are just these clamps are here because this is going to be actually these uh pieces right here are going to
14:08
be this is pieces of popler so extremely rigid and strong um a very very dense
14:15
wood and I want that because normally I drill and bolt this
14:22
into 8020 or some type of aluminum um but this is going to be going into
14:29
wood so I didn't want it to go into plywood or 2x4 I wanted to go into something hard so this is a this
14:36
hardwood is uh this is what's going to hold this
14:41
into place so and it's going to be wood glued
14:47
which is very very strong
14:53
um now let me explain the top here what if I I can twist this
15:01
around there's a lot of stuff I want to tell show you guys because this is
15:12
uh I might just have to I'm going have to show you photos I took photos of the back
15:18
uh and so forgive me but this is going to be scatter brain because I just got a lot of ideas going on so one of the most
15:25
important things about this Frid track is not just the strength and that looks good uh it's ventilation so the back
15:32
side of this is all open so the where this sits on the piece of wood it's cut
15:39
all the way back to where only what is necessary to hold this is what's holding this the back is completely open same
15:46
thing here there's a big old uh side piece that goes around the back a lot of
15:53
air flow um so let's go ahead and keep going
15:59
all right oh yeah so
16:05
this right here you see there's a notch cutout so this really nice curved
16:12
Notch that is to allow for uh air heat to come out the Top If I
16:19
use this panel that is uh to be determined
16:26
today let's start taking this apart and I'll stop talking because you guys will
16:32
kind of see what I'm talking [Applause]
16:57
about
17:49
[Music]
18:06
okay so we have this uh frame bolted on here right now uh I'm going try to slowly take it
18:12
past the camera and see if you guys can see the
18:17
frame uh technically you want to take the frame off and then take the microwave
18:22
out but I um I need to re re refit this a couple times but as I pull this
18:31
out you see there's a stamped pan on the bottom and it's not really supported in
18:36
the middle and that is what's kind of
18:42
a a pain because it keeps flexing and you can't
18:47
really get an accurate lay of how it's going to sit in here so the good news is that pan is not
18:56
really like that curve that you saw that's not a big deal as long as the sides are right um
19:04
really an RV microwave is really kind of held in by that face frame that bolts
19:09
into it not mine but the manufacturers
19:17
um all right next you guys will get to [Music] see so see this is the
19:27
back I'm just kind of labeling this stuff so
19:33
I can actually put it back
19:39
together so this is the Shelf back here it's notched out you'll see that in just a second and then up here is the rear
19:52
support actually I'm going to leave that
20:01
I will temporarily take out this shelf here just so you guys can
20:10
see what I'm talking about so I've notched it here so this is notched for
20:16
the uh popular sides and then the microwave
20:22
this is the profile the back of the microwave so that back here we've got a lot of uh good air
20:31
flow but I'm going to put this back in okay maybe you can
20:37
see back here we have another brace I know it's hard to see but um and let's leave this
20:47
out okay um next we have the fridge so I'm just going to go through
20:53
here and make sure don't got anything
21:08
okay so we got our spacer back here so it's going to make the fridge kind of tight for a second coming
21:15
out so again there's our 1/ in Baltic bur Birch spacer and we want that
21:22
because there's a uh down here we've got about a half an inch of room
21:29
so we got about half an inch over there but over here we've only got a quarter of an inch or a little bit
21:35
less and that's goes right here's where the hinge is now after I paint this
21:40
today after I've installed and painted it um before I put this fridge back in I'll need to reverse the door and it's
21:47
really easy to do there's three screws here you just take this door comes out
21:54
you put the you screw the bracket bracket it over here and then down here at the bottom you've got these tabs that you'll just
22:01
take these two door tabs and you just flipflop the bottom um one pro tip is
22:07
this door there's this protective there's this stainless steel protective uh little sticker on
22:14
here uh when you take the door off that's the time to actually take it off on this back side because um for
22:23
whatever reason this is not only wrapped on the side it's wrapped from the side and the back here here a little bit so
22:29
it's impossible to get the paper off I mean this protective coating off if you just take it off in this
22:38
method okay um so we're going to nice and easy
22:43
take this fridge
22:54
out now I'm going to make this look easy but this fridge is uh
22:59
it's pretty
23:18
awkward okay now we're getting closer to pretty much the where I wanted to get
23:24
to today okay so this is the structure itself so it's extremely rigid and it's
23:31
not even glued yet um all these sides will be
23:36
glued into place uh so it's going to be nice and rigid so
23:42
I'm going to spin this around and then right here we have our
23:49
ceiling contour and then we have our there we go we got our ceiling
23:56
Contour side profile file the van our Notch out here for our Riv nut uh bolts
24:04
that go into the van and then from here down is that partition which will be all
24:10
bolted um and glue together as we come around the back
24:19
side um you can kind of see some more of our structural pieces now back here
24:24
there's going to be a
24:31
uh for like cabinets some people call it like a nailer board uh for us we're
24:37
going to this is what's going to sheet met screw into the van but back
24:44
here we've got this piece and then what we have is uh right
24:51
here is where the Ford Transit window would be we don't have one on the driver's side but this is where the top
24:57
part of it would be and this is where the bottom would be so this section is the transition between the top of the
25:04
window where it rolls back in so you've got the sheet metal of the van and then
25:09
this is the top high roof section so right here is a structural member and
25:16
we're going to um glue and bracket this piece in and
25:23
then we're going to drill into this so we'll have a rivnut bolt up top for side
25:28
to side movement this will be bolted into the back of the van the bottom will be bolted into the
25:34
floor and then we'll have some uh additional brackets probably over there so that's
25:40
how this is going to be built into the van now the reason that everything has
25:46
to be taken apart is because these panels have to be leaned into position
25:52
so the really the only thing that I'm going to be gluing is that piece of uh
25:57
pop board that's going to be glued and screwed to the side for the front
26:03
structure and then when we get into the van we'll take out we'll reinstall all
26:09
of these uh 2x4 pieces
26:22
um so this side this is where our ecoflow controller is and our Webasto
26:28
controller are going to be drilled and cut [Applause]
26:36
out and we're going to be using two products to do our fill our holes and
26:44
Imperfections um the first is going to be for the
26:49
small stuff so that is any type of uh these little biscuits that got it cut
26:55
out into it it's a really fine finish but I've already tested tested this so this is going to take care of hiding um
27:01
all of these and then for the screw holes are a
27:07
little bit more
27:14
aggressive see if I can find what we
27:27
got okay I think it's out in the van anyway
27:33
it's a it's like a plastic filler plastic wood
27:39
filler um so it contains wood fibers and it's really strong does a really good job covering it up um so that'll be like
27:47
the stuff on the outside that we needed to uh drill holes just to get started
27:53
and then we're going to fill in later but I've already tested that on a test
28:02
panel so this is the test panel right there and this
28:07
color I mean it is so awesome but yeah this test panel everything is you know
28:14
any imperfection any drill hole everything is hidden um so it came out
28:19
really good the Finish is great this is stuff called uh scuff so I can I'm
28:25
literally taking my nails here and and there's no scratches
28:30
whatsoever so it's really good really good
28:36
stuff okay let me know if you guys have any questions um it's an early stream
28:42
today but it's going to be short because I got to get back to it but just wanted
28:47
to see if anybody was uh on this early in the
28:54
morning okay so I'm going to put this piece back in
29:04
so let's see if we can if we have our lines we can go
29:27
through
29:34
and see the screw is just going to find its you know home that it had
29:46
[Music] earlier all right nice okay so now what we have to do
29:55
is now we're going to build our face frame off of
30:00
this so that will be our next
30:10
step so I'm going to use this first because I've I've
30:16
already traced out everything that I want to cut out of this
30:22
um but
30:30
the reason I didn't like this one earlier was
30:37
because for some reason the
30:44
uh well I take that back it's actually not not
30:50
bad
30:56
huh that's why I like using uh like 8020 and stuff like that is
31:04
uh wood can be a fun thing to work with but
31:13
sometimes the accuracy of the 8020 is
31:18
nice but again everything's everything's got pros and cons 820 is very expensive
31:26
so all right that is not okay
31:32
so for some reason eth inch that I was off I thought it was going to be our 16th in was off was going to be a little
31:40
too noticeable but um yeah I can definitely sand and prep the edges and
31:45
it's going to I'm going to be happy with the finish all right that's very good news
31:51
so that that makes this even faster to assemble today um
31:58
and let me show you this top part so let's see if this top part is in focus
32:04
of the camera there we go so you see that dip
32:12
at the top so imagine that you have
32:20
your so let's grab a piece of
32:26
cedar and so you can see the cedar ceiling is bent like that and so what
32:33
this is you're going to have your microwave but this is necessary
32:38
um I see a lot of builds where everything is just very tight and there's no circulation whatsoever for
32:44
any of the appliances and that's a big no no uh number one your van is completely shut during the daytime gets
32:51
really hot inside and uh even if you're in the van and and
32:58
have ventilation the applian has got to they've got to breathe so what I have here is this
33:06
is um basically I took a like I have a bottle of vitamins and
33:15
all you got to do is you just take the cap off and if you take the cap and you put it up here and you trace around the
33:21
cap um that's how I get my radiuses if you're wondering it's a little little hack but this is in
33:28
um using that cap and just visually this is an inch and a quarter so that inch
33:34
and a quarter it looked it looked like something you would you would see you know style-wise just a nice
33:42
cutout um and so that is going to allow this to to breathe so in the very back
33:50
the bottom leftand side in the garage there's going to be another one of these
33:56
um so it's going to be very subtle it's going to be right behind the battery you'll barely see it but that allows the
34:03
convection uh the air to conve so it goes from the bottom that cool air in
34:09
the garage area um will come come straight up through all the appliances and then exit
34:14
out here and then back here we've got our max van so like you'll never know that this is
34:20
happening during the day but that air will be kind of coming up through here because the Heat's going
34:26
to rise and and it's going to be able to breathe and that that's what you want especially if you have a microwave and a
34:32
fridge in the same space
34:39
um yeah so I'm just going to if you guys are just going to hang out with me I'm going
34:44
to put some additional clamps on here
34:51
um so that I can square this up and then I'm going to start the process of
34:56
actually going through and
35:07
tracing tracing what I need to trace to get this
35:13
uh nice and
35:18
square and
35:26
so
35:46
I'm laughing because uh I mean sometimes sometimes I surprise myself
35:51
because the other day when I cut this I used it the track saw cuz uh
35:58
the van the Shop's kind of cramped right now um as you can see the van their Vans right here but I needed to just take off
36:06
a certain amount of this panel but the van was in the way so I had to use my track saww instead of the
36:13
uh table saw or the cabinet saw and
36:19
uh I thought this was not going to be as accurate as I wanted it to
36:26
be
36:34
but if you're able to do stuff outside of the van um it is preferable
36:41
because you know working in the van that's a tight spot
36:48
okay so bonus here is we verified that everything all of
36:55
our appliances fit in here perfect uh we know how everything is
37:02
going to be laid out so um we're pretty
37:09
we're pretty much good to
37:23
go and so what I'm doing now is I'm just uh
37:31
tracing out where everything is going so I can cut this panel out I'm going to decide
37:37
to cut this panel out now that it is as accurate as I wanted it to be so pretty excited about
37:53
[Applause] that
38:36
and so what I did I'm just tracing the I guess I could turn this
38:56
around
39:16
okay so it doesn't matter if it's out of alignment now because I've already got my lines done this is more for you
39:26
guys okay excellent so now you can see this
39:33
is the structure of the whole uh cabinet fridge stack
39:40
itself so we'll use a tracka we'll cut out
39:46
these rectangles uh the drawer the fridge and the microwave we'll leave the
39:51
top because that's going to be um just the way it is and then what I'm going to do is I'm going
39:58
to uh glue everything together and
40:04
then um we're going to begin painting the panels and I'm going to prepaint and
40:12
then we'll do any finish touch-ups inside the van um I used to paint for a very long time uh before I did the
40:19
handyman stuff so um pretty good with doing stuff uh
40:25
inside the van as far as touch-ups um if you use a roller be really careful you
40:30
can get a really excellent finish just taking your time um it's all it's what
40:36
everybody says it's all in the prep so we're doing a base coat to let that dry
40:41
and then we'll start working on anything on the wood so for example this is
40:46
really smooth but it does have these little repair uh inserts so you need to
40:52
paint it first to seal it and then sometimes the grain is is going to raise
40:57
in certain areas and then that's when you do your first sanding um then we'll do some filler we'll do a second
41:04
coat um then we'll do a little bit more filler we'll sand it and then we'll do a final coat should be
41:11
perfect even if you have to do four coats this stuff uh that we
41:18
got this is what it's called it's called scuff effect Benjamin Moore and
41:26
uh yeah you can recat after two to three hours so I can easily put three coats on
41:35
in a day um so that's uh that's the next
41:45
steps all right I'm going to take this front panel off and then I'm going to
41:51
cut that off camera and then we'll see you guys in a followup with a painted
41:56
cabinet installed in the van so excited to show you that make sure you guys are subscribe like this video and turn on
42:03
that notification Bell I go live randomly throughout the week don't want you guys to miss out anything that's happening in the shop also check out van
42:10
Builder hq.com for all the blog posts also the DIY V build cheat sheet it is a
42:15
free cheat sheet that I made for you it is the last three years of all my Amazon purchases organized into an Excel sheet
42:23
that is free to download it's got over 250 curated items so if it's something that bought off Amazon and it's came to
42:28
the shop it's on that list so go ahead and check that out um and then if you
42:34
guys do want a custom build built by me that is with Odyssey custom vans so this
42:39
van that we're doing is John and Susan's this is part of their van and uh that's
42:45
Odyssey customs.com there's a link to schedule a consultation with me if you're interested in me becoming your
42:51
professional van Builder uh love to have you on the schedule so give me a reach
42:57
out at that link um it's the bottom of the page it's a cly link so you just click it uh go to the calendar pick a
43:04
date and a time and it'll pop right on my calendar and uh we'll chat about your custom van conversion all right guys
43:10
that's it for this morning we will catch up later on this project and um as usual
43:17
if you have any questions put those in the comments below be happy to answer them in a future video and that's all we
43:22
got right now we'll see you guys in the next live stream
43:36
[Music]
43:45
for
#Cabinetry
#Campers & RVs
#Home Furnishings
#Home Improvement
#Home Storage & Shelving
#Kitchen & Dining Furniture
#Living Room Furniture