Up next in 10
How to Choose the Right Fabrics for Your Van Conversion
May 2, 2025
In this livestream I teach you how to: -How to Choose Fabric -How To Measure Fabric (Linear Yards) -How To Order -Materials needed for install (Tools) How to install (https://www.youtube.com/live/L4fB3xd18hk?si=EBkfEVlGHXdowmVN) Also, check out this youtubers video (not affiliated) he has an amazing video going over 4-way stretch carpet install that is very helpful: https://youtu.be/TON7xuJkQs8?si=e_Ok1Q-zgWjtrZYI 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
0:00
[Music]
0:58
he [Music]
1:19
hey everyone welcome back to the live stream today we're going to be talking about how to choose the right fabrics
1:24
for your camper van conversion and a couple other things so I'm getting ready to place an order for these uh wall
1:31
panels for our current customers van and before I start that process I wanted to show you how I actually measure
1:38
everything out um before I order it so that I'm estimating pretty accurately
1:44
and uh just kind of thinking through my process so that when I order the fabric I'm not short um and I also don't have
1:51
too much so overcharging that type of thing so let's uh look at our drawing
1:58
pad real quick so I got some notes Here and uh the first thing that we want to
2:04
talk about are fabric choices so behind me I have a couple of fabrics I have a
2:12
regular uh like they're this is what you would get at Home
2:18
Depot um we have some Marathon fabric from perfect fit we have a different color we got some four-way stretch
2:24
fabric so we're going to go over those and then we have uh how to measure so we
2:30
actually have a slide and we are going to go through show you the math on how
2:35
to measure out your fabric so if you're not familiar with uh linear yards or the
2:41
way that fabric is measured I'm going to teach you how to do that then we're going to follow it up
2:47
with how to actually order so when you go online making sure that you're not ordering you know 12 yards versus 12
2:56
ft uh materials needed to install so we're going to go over materials such as
3:01
tools and adhesives so we've got a couple of uh tools back here in the back
3:10
um some squares uh a drywall Square you know tape measure marker piece of angled
3:17
aluminum stuff like that that might help you as well as paint and upholstery
3:25
adhesive and then we're going to finish it up with how to install which will will be a separate video so I already
3:31
have a video multiple videos on how to install upholstery something I really enjoy
3:37
doing so those videos are already on the channel um and I'll link them below here
3:43
in just a minute and uh as always if you guys are in the chat watching us live
3:49
ask away in the uh chat ask me any questions it can be upholster upholstery
3:55
related or it can be anything van related so anything that we're doing working on this van that van um any
4:02
questions on the products that I'm using kind of where to get them and uh yes so let's go ahead and
4:08
get started let's talk about fabric choices so when you're working on your van conversion um you know how do you
4:16
choose the right fabrics for your van there's all kinds of stuff that you can get for your van but what is going to be
4:21
something that you know holds up uh it works well depending on your use case so
4:27
if we look over here we've got a couple different Fabrics um this is the one I'm going to talk most about in just a second uh but
4:35
I'll kind of go low to high and I don't have that many options in the shop but
4:41
we're going to go over a couple here so the first one right here is a
4:48
one that I actually got from Home Depot so if I go over here to the Home
4:53
Depot tab uh it's called Sky gray 6 foot um
4:59
polyester ribbed texture indoor outdoor a needle punch carpet that's just a
5:05
fancy way of saying outdoor carpet so this is what it looks
5:12
like so you can see it's uh it's pretty thick um but it has those uh stations or
5:20
ribs in it and it's a very affordable carpet you can get it in different
5:27
colors um they even have a recommendation list here so they show
5:33
you a couple different outdoor carpet types and the one down here which is needle
5:39
punch you can use it for covered porches so if you have like a you know a screened in patio that's most likely
5:45
where you're going to see it um people put it in basements because you can actually you know glue it down with um a
5:52
pretty easy adhesive that you can apply um then home offices or like a room that
5:58
you're trying to convert into a home home office and it just kind of softens up whatever area that is and it's you know
6:05
it's cheap it's polyester um if I go down here let's see if we get
6:11
some details on the
6:17
stuff so it's stained resistant it is
6:22
uh low pile which is this means the thickness so 0.1 2 in as far as
6:32
high you can get into the face weight uh or how many ounces per square
6:39
yard that's really not a big thing it just tells you how you know heavy the carpet is um mainly that is going to
6:47
affect how you're working with a carpet um compatible locations indoor
6:54
outdoor now when we talk about choosing the right fabrics and indoor outdoor
7:00
carpet or fabric is what you want you want something that's designed to be outdoors even though it's inside your
7:05
van you're going to be tracking in you know mud dirt um there's different
7:12
temperatures uh humidity stuff like that so stuff that's rated for outdoors is usually going to work really well inside
7:19
your van [Music]
7:24
um wouldn't really worry so much about a warranty I mean you can kind of say that that makes it a pretty good quality
7:32
but uh what you really want to look for is like the UV
7:39
protection the ability to be glued down
7:44
[Music] um and then how it's actually sold
7:50
lengthwise because that is going to help you when you go to buy it so if you have
7:58
a certain p handle in your van and it's it's
8:03
uh let's just say it's 6 and 1/2 ft long you got to figure out how
8:10
wide or how long the carpet roll is so if you have a panel that's Let's uh let's go to the drawing pad be the
8:16
easiest way to explain
8:22
this so for example if your
8:28
roll if it's six feet
8:34
wide so this is how wide the roll comes off of the big rack at you know Home Depot or
8:40
whatever and the roll rolls out this way so again this is like your big roll
8:46
of fabric for example so it's going to roll out that
8:51
direction so obviously if you had a 6 and 1/2t piece of
8:57
wood you know it's going to go over the width and I'm going to break this down
9:03
very simply so if you don't know anything and this is where you're starting from don't worry I'm going to I'm going to go over that so because
9:10
there's a fixed width you know you would not orientate the wood here to measure
9:17
it and then try to make up this seam that would kind of be ridiculous so instead what you have to
9:23
do is you have to come out 6.
9:29
5 ft and then this portion of the carpet
9:36
let's just say this is uh two uh let's just say your panel is 3 feet so it say
9:42
3 feet by 6 and2 so you're going to have to go out and then this one's going to be just
9:49
wasted carpet and that's just kind of how it goes with carpet you're not going to have
9:56
you're not going to have Home Depot cut you out a piece of carpet and sell it to you like this what they're going to do
10:02
is they're going to sell you this whole 6X 6 and 1/2t section that you
10:09
need now you don't want to stop at 6 and 1/2 ft you want to make sure you give
10:15
yourself extra so let's just say this is like s to 8 feet because you're nine
10:22
times out of 10 you're going to be folding it under this panel so you over
10:28
you kind of go around the back side and that's going to help it stay taunt on the
10:34
panel so that is a rough way to look at ordering we're going to get
10:39
more specific because behind me I have the wall panels for our next
10:47
customer build so they came in and this is just perfect opportunity to do this before I actually start moving cutting
10:55
and you guys won't be able to see that as an example
11:01
so let's go back here okay so here is we're sticking to
11:09
fabric choices so here's our first choice what's nice is it's way cheap
11:14
very very cheap so easy way to get started my personal van has this carpet all
11:21
throughout the van so this is what I used on my first ever van build was this fabric right
11:27
here next we're going to look
11:33
at four-way stretch Automotive
11:38
carpet and that is right here so if you go on Amazon this right here is what it looks
11:45
like which is a terrible picture but I wanted to show you guys this uh right
11:51
here this AC
11:56
3625 Automotive charcoal carpet now I know that's completely random but it
12:02
took me a while to find the true four-way stretch fabric so you may be
12:07
asking what is four-way stretch fabric well if you think
12:12
of let's just let's just say we got this piece of fabric over
12:18
here okay this is our cheap charcoal carpet but in our van we have one of
12:25
these so this is a Ford Transit uh foam you know airbag cylinder protector
12:32
that's in the van if you guys are building a van you know that this is a pain in the butt to a pulser around
12:37
because it's got so many Contours so if you go and try to put your glue on here
12:43
and rub it around you're going to get folds and creases and it's going to look
12:48
terrible you're not going to be happy so this as far as fabric choices go this
12:55
right here this is a bad choice this is great for flat long areas uh around
13:01
boxes um this is actually used for speaker uh like subwoofer enclosures or
13:07
speaker box carpet they use this a lot so this may look familiar to you um
13:12
typically it's black instead of gray but this is more for straight flat surfaces so we're just going to
13:20
throw this over here get it out of our way not saying it's bad it's just you
13:27
know if you got simple things that you want to do that's a great place to start
13:32
again not knocking on it cuz my whole entire personal van has that fabric in it the next step up from that so I also
13:40
I also have this in my van as well this gray carpet this is the four-way stretch
13:45
carpet and there's a reason they call it four-way stretch as you can imagine it stretches
13:51
in four directions so this is what it is it's a little bit lighter it's still thick but
13:59
the Magic in this is it has these fibers that allow you to stretch and maintain a
14:05
memory so you can take your piece of foam right here you can put it in
14:11
here and you can actually work this
14:17
around and Contour it really well to your uh the piece that you're working
14:24
with and what this will do is hopefully you guys can see that but
14:31
if I forcefully move this do you see how it it has a memory
14:37
it'll it'll stay to that shape so you can force this in certain
14:44
directions it'll actually keep this contour and then you can if you don't want that you can stretch it back
14:51
out and see it goes completely flat or let's just say um here we go this perfect example
14:59
so here we got a coffee cup so I'm going to take the coffee cup
15:04
and I'm going to pull the fabric around the coffee
15:12
cup okay now watch I'm going to lift this up and see see how the coffee cup the
15:19
whole Contour is kept in there and you can get you can get really
15:25
crazy with this stuff now be careful don't break a ceramic coffee cup like
15:32
I'm trying to do but you can get really uh aggressive and see this these
15:40
Contours actually stick so where the handle is that'll actually stay like that and you can really work with it and
15:47
then if this is not what you want you can just pull it like
15:56
this and it's going to come out just like
16:02
that so it's really cool it's great for bump outs on vans so if you have a bump
16:07
out or a bunk window area something where the Contour of the van like you have those uh those
16:14
ribs you can uh spray the adhesive and you can go
16:20
through all those little intricate spaces with this carpet so it's four-way stretch
16:25
carpet um I'm quickly going to try to find this YouTube video there is
16:34
a let's see if I can find this there's a YouTube video online that
16:40
I saw maybe three or four years ago
16:48
and where is this
16:54
video um see fabric
17:03
here it is okay this is one of the best videos
17:11
I've ever watched so I don't know this guy I just know that he made this video of doing a
17:21
it's called how to professionally line your camper van with four-way stretch carpet and I'm going to link it
17:27
here see four
17:40
way so this install video it's
17:46
awesome and I'm just going to play a real quick snippet of it so he goes
17:54
through and he shows you how to do this whole entire thing
18:00
so we got unaka get this advertisement off of
18:10
here where we at here we go so he goes through and he shows you how to Contour
18:16
this to these panels okay so look at this he's got the
18:21
fabric on there and he turns that into this so look at that see how it wraps around all the pillars in the van
18:30
and he get it's even more detailed and intricate and then when he's
18:35
finished killer so over the wheel wells so he did this in a huge bit of four-way
18:41
stretch so technically you can use this for the whole entire van if you need to
18:47
um but this video I found this video yeah probably maybe four years
18:53
well three and a half something like that it was the person perfect video to find for
19:00
what I was trying to do so that is this carpet linked to that video so I think
19:05
that'll be really helpful for you guys all right now we're moving on to
19:11
the high-end carpet um this is what I use for my
19:17
customer builds and what I recommend and that is uh Marathon Tweed
19:25
fabric so you guys have probably you're Googling fabric for your
19:32
van um Marathon Tweed fabric also known as Duramax or
19:38
interweave which I've I haven't ever seen it name that but um apparently that
19:44
is another way that they talk about it so the heather gray is this color
19:51
right here it's one of the most popular this is uh this is the material that's made out
19:58
of of the style is tweed it's kind of How It's woven
20:08
together see if there's any more info on it down here
20:15
okay so you can we're going to talk more about this this will be the main one we talk about so these are all the colors
20:22
that you can get there's all kind of different shades and colors um
20:34
out trying to find the one that we got for Thomas's van I don't think it was toast
20:42
maybe dark oatmeal so that's what we got so behind me we
20:49
have dark oatmeal which is on this panel so if you guys can kind of see
20:54
that won't be exactly that color but I wanted to so you you this as far as the the how-to video will be talking about
21:00
this and then this is a marathon fabric I mean they're both
21:05
marathon and then this is the this is the he heather gray so if you guys saw our Venture van
21:11
over here the interior that we ordered from uh Adventure wagon is the heather
21:20
gray all right so these are the fabric
21:25
choices to choose from that I would recommend the next part of this video we're going to talk about how to measure
21:33
your fabric so this can be one of
21:38
the this can be one of the hardest things to do because uh one for skill if you're on a
21:47
budget um if you have weird panels and you don't know how to actually start the
21:53
process so what I've done is I have drawn this
22:00
out and this will be our cheat sheet that we will go to to learn how
22:07
to measure the fabric so we're going to quickly go over this and then we'll go to the table
22:14
behind me for the real world example we'll just come back and forth
22:20
um and start going over this all right so whenever you see this
22:27
uh purple here here this is where where I'm pointing to and talking
22:32
about so the first thing you need to find out is how is the fabric sold so
22:38
when you go to buy it online how are they selling it to you if
22:44
we go back on the computer Home Depot is selling this six feet wide
22:50
rolls and it is so let's just do a little bit of math
22:56
here
23:05
so that's going to give us a 72 in wide roll or the roll is 72 in wide on the
23:13
rack that they pull it off from at Home Depot so kind of get that
23:18
visualized if we go to Marathon fabric the width is 54
23:26
in so again it's important to understand how they're selling it to you because
23:33
that's going to determine how you need to on paper kind of sketch out your
23:39
layout of your plans because the worst thing you can have happen is if you come
23:44
over here and you have your roll of fabric and then this is a good example
23:50
you roll it out but you have your material hanging off over here and you can't orientate this in a way to cover
23:57
your pain panel um so that's why I'm making this video so that you don't make an
24:02
expensive mistake and you can order the right
24:10
material so find out how they're selling it to you so for an exam for our example today
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this is being we are doing
24:26
Marathon
24:35
so we are doing Marathon Fabric and it's sold as a 54 in
24:41
wide roll so the 54 in is the
24:48
width and then we're going to go back over
24:54
here and we're going to scroll down the bottom and it says units
24:59
how big can I get this no that's a big okay units are linear
25:09
yard so if we go into Google because it's okay to not know
25:15
things we're going to type in linear yards to feet some people may know three feet are
25:23
in one yard but if you don't that's okay a yard is three feet so when they say linear yard that means
25:32
for every linear yard they're going to sell you 3 feet so when you do one quantity of one
25:39
over here that what you're going to get is you're going to
25:44
get a 54 in
25:50
wide by one yard one yard or 3 feet long
26:00
roll I mean not roll but cut out that's what they're going to cut out they're going to ship
26:10
you so that's how to figure that out so when you type in here and you're going to go oh I want 12 I want 12 feet that's
26:18
not 12 feet that's 36 feet
26:24
by 54 inches so
26:34
all right so that is our our first okay that's our first part so the second part is so here's
26:42
here's that example 54 in by wait let get my cursor down here 54 in by 3
26:53
feet now this green thing down here so make sure you guys read that I know my
26:59
handwriting is terrible but don't forget odd areas like airbag
27:07
covers it's like this don't forget weird things like this that you need to cover and estimate
27:14
for and then also don't forget about electrical covers and mess ups so if you screw
27:22
something up and you wasted all that fabric and you need to redo it you need to account for some more
27:28
fabric cuz I sometimes I mess up uh just order some
27:35
extra another reason you're going to want to order extra is because of shipping cost so because this roll
27:44
is um the length of it is 54
27:49
in uh and the weight of it may be pretty hefty depending I don't know how much is
27:55
left this is some stuff I have from a different different build um and the weight is there UPS and FedEx they're
28:03
it's really expensive right now to ship uh a roll of anything and uh I shipped
28:10
something I think it was like 10 pounds or something like that but it was you
28:16
know 6 ft long and it was like5 bucks to ship it um it didn't
28:22
weigh anything but it takes up space in their van and that is really expensive it doesn't matter really how much it
28:28
weighs so when you order this you know keep in
28:34
mind that you need to get this right the first time so you're not wasting money because if you need to order some more
28:40
fabric it's going to be the same exact shipping charge for Not For Less
28:47
fabric um yeah so think about
28:53
those over here on our right this is the little formula that we're going to use in just a second to map out or calculate
29:01
what we need to order for this van purchase so let's go um here and let's
29:09
get started these numbers will make sense uh these numbers will make sense in just a
29:15
second but let's go ahead and show you what we're
29:22
doing so let's clean our table well actually I need this for the example
29:30
um before I get take this away if you are doing upholstery take into account
29:35
are you doing one side or do you need to actually do both sides for example this
29:41
is a pan that I uh panel that I redid in Marine 1 uh van conversion that we did
29:47
and this panel that I redid it's viewable from both sides so I needed to
29:52
upholster both sides and so you're using double the material but it's for one
29:59
piece so take into account are you doing double or are you just doing one
30:09
side all right now we're going to get into fun stuff so how to measure so as you can
30:15
see here this is our 54 in wide roll and on our table we
30:22
have a set of wall panels here and then we have a set of wall panels here so we
30:28
have two sets of wall panels I've done that
30:33
because you see how I have 80 in * 6 80 in * 6 I have two of these
30:41
because my length see so I can't order carpet carpet and
30:47
do it like that that'd be insane so this is how I'm going to have to do it so
30:53
imagine I'm I'm rolling out a roll of carpet for every panel so 1 2 3 4 5 six
31:00
cuz I got six stacked up here I'm coming over here I'm rolling my carpet to cover
31:06
six uh layers of panels here and that's my quick way to start
31:15
measuring so now how do we measure this so the first thing we want to do
31:21
is this is a wall panel kit that I got from uh ABC rig so it's
31:29
not sponsored but I chose to go with them
31:35
um based on what I needed to have upholstered and covered in the van uh
31:40
it's prec CNC cutout so it's going to help me do this conversion a little bit
31:46
quicker so it saves us on time and uh
31:52
I'm going to modify it in some places so you know it's just all in all it's good way to approach this
32:00
uh much much uh it's definitely not as expensive as a
32:05
venture wagon not even close but the money that you save in the panels will
32:11
kind of go into the labor that it takes to wrap the panels prep them for
32:16
install all right so we have two sections one here one over here I'm going bring my phone so in case you guys
32:22
have any questions I can check it out um
32:29
perfect so the first thing we need is a piece of tape measure or piece we need a tape
32:35
measure all right because these are CNC panels and the way that plywood is made
32:42
it's usually typically a 4x8 sheet of plywood 4T by 8 ft and so that is where
32:47
they're going to lay down on a CNC and they are going to cut this out so right
32:54
off the bat that's usually what type of material you're working with so 4T 48 in
33:01
wide would be the maximum width on any of these panels which helps us out
33:06
because we have a maximum width of 54 so
33:12
54 on our width with a 48 in wide panel is going to be very safe for us that's
33:19
enough material to wrap it around the sides and all we have to do since we know the width is fixed on all of these
33:26
there's no pain panel here that can be wider than uh 48
33:33
in so that's what we want to keep in
33:41
mind so the first thing we're going to do is measure this panel uh this is one of our longest
33:47
panels I add 4 in to the top for being
33:52
able to wrap it around and just a little bit of extra in case I you know mess something up so we got 4 in at the top
33:59
we got 4 in at the bottom and we're going to call that 80 in on this one over here we've got these long ones
34:07
we've got another 80 in so we're pretty happy with
34:13
that so we got 80 in over here 80 in over here so you guys can see if we go
34:19
back to our drawing this is uh these are the two numbers that we're
34:24
working with that's where the 80 in here comes from all right next we have six so where
34:31
did I get six from well I've got one 2 3 4
34:41
five panels the six panel is in the van right now um I just need it to to size
34:48
it up but it's exact same as this top one it's just a inverted uh side so I
34:55
got six so on my table I say I have six panels 80 in
35:02
long so come back over here to our calculator so we got six panels 8 in
35:09
long six panels 8 in
35:14
Long now over here I have a different uh challenge so I have this one piece right
35:22
here but look at this I've got these long skinny panels and I have these
35:30
short wider panels so what I need to do is I need to
35:36
measure these panels and I
35:43
have 52 in wide and but remember I told you I
35:51
need let's see here let squeeze these
35:59
together so here I have 51 in wide and I was telling you that I needed
36:05
4 in of wiggle room so the P the carpet's only 54
36:13
in but that's going to give me 2
36:18
in about an inch on each side and I'm actually for these panels
36:25
an inch on each side side is uh enough for me now that might be cutting it close for you
36:32
but if I don't take that closeness in
36:39
then it's going to be uh too much fabric CU you you can see
36:47
here how if there is sometimes that you need to be very precise or you're going to have to order way more than you
36:54
need so I'm okay with that if you you are not comfortable with that you want to you'll want to double for a situation
37:01
like this so here I have six layers I have five layers here actually
37:08
and so 1 two 3 four five but this one I can't make holes so I need to add this
37:14
one on the top as if it was its own big sheet so that's how I get number six so
37:21
I got five skinny long ones and I got one big wide one that makes it six
37:30
all right so here we
37:35
go so we've got 80 in by six pieces so this is six
37:44
pieces um so 80 * 6 gives us 480 in 480 in we're going to add 480 plus
37:53
480 that's going to give us 960 we're going to take the
37:59
960 divid by 12 to get
38:05
our feet and that gives us 80 that gives us
38:12
80 ft and then our 80 ft we need to convert
38:18
that to yards and so we divide the 80
38:24
ft by three and we get
38:35
26.66% yards and we round up just a little bit
38:41
for obvious reasons uh so 27 yards and that is what
38:47
we're going to order so we'll order 27 yards of
38:55
fabric okay so I hope that made sense next what we're going to do is we're going to go
39:07
to let's start let's check our list off here so we went and we talked about fabric
39:13
choices uh we just went over how to measure fabric let's talk about how to
39:19
order I think we already talked about that briefly but what we're going to do is we're going to come down here let's
39:26
say we want 27 yards
39:31
of heather gray or gray Heather fabric we're going to add that to
39:38
cart so this is our
39:43
cost and then we come on down and we're going to do uh I'm not going to do this
39:49
one but we're going to do you'll go and do estimated shipping
39:55
cost but but you have 27 linear yards at
40:01
$16.8 now look up here at top so you see if you do
40:08
one plus yard between one and 19 yards
40:13
you're going to get this price 20 yards you're going to get this price and if you order 50 yards you're going to get
40:19
this price so you do get a discount As you move up in
40:25
price uh so that's how to order it so let's check that off the list now let's talk
40:31
about materials needed to install so what tools do you need to do this well
40:37
first up you need a tape measure uh I like the Stanley fat Max because it it's
40:42
very rigid tape it doesn't can go very far distances um the numbers are nice and
40:49
big so a good tape measure permanent marker that's the first two things you
40:55
need so you just saw us going through and doing that on these two
41:03
pieces the next thing is the most important is an extremely
41:10
sharp pair of uh razor blades um this is
41:17
olfa and I get this from Lowe's they are Japanese uh steel blades they're super
41:23
super sharp and you get like a little tube of replacement blades and they they're great you just
41:30
want something super super sharp when you're cutting Upholstery and then as you're cutting
41:36
the best tool to get if you can get one or you already have one is this so this
41:41
is a drywall Square so this is actually my grandfather's drywall Square um but
41:48
you can buy one just like this and the reason the dry ball square is so nice is
41:54
that you have this uh long straight away to
42:00
cut and if you needed to cut uh it's just it's just nice because you can use
42:06
this for other parts of your van build squaring up you know making cabinets um
42:12
boxes around your power system or water system you know this is a tool a tool for your van building that I would have
42:19
in my tool tool kit then you'll need some something
42:25
smaller so this is actually something I got from Michaels's uh it's a drawing
42:31
ruler and it's extremely rigid very very rigid which is good for cutting with a
42:38
razor you want anything floppy that's dangerous um or you can just get this
42:44
big piece of aluminum angle and you can use this
42:51
to do big long big long cuts on and help help guide you through your
43:07
cuts um then finally you have two things one I have a gallon of paint here
43:15
so this is Storm coat it's an exterior paint and the reason I use an exterior
43:21
paint is for two reasons one it has a mold resistant coating so the wood or
43:28
whatever you're using underneath uh is will be less susceptible to mold and then two when you go to a
43:36
holster and put down your adhesive this is a the adhesive I recommend do not get
43:42
the green super 90 can that is not for
43:47
upholstery the super 77 is what you
43:55
need um yeah so super 77 is what you're going to need now with this there's uh two
44:03
recommendations I have the reason that I use this
44:08
paint uh and I just do it really quick nothing fancy the reason I use the paint is
44:14
because the wood is porous and you can just you can upholster a panel that's
44:22
just bare wood with this but you're going to two things are going to happen you're going to use way more of this and
44:30
because the wood is going to absorb the
44:35
adhesive believe it or not so you'll spray it on there and it'll actually kind of go into the wood and it won't be
44:41
as T tacky or give you the adhesion uh that you need um well I guess that's the only
44:49
thing there's not two reasons anyway so when you paint it you have uh
44:55
two benefits one one is you're sealing the wood up so it's not going to uh you
45:00
know warp over time it's going to keep it mild do resistant because of what is in that paint and if you have already
45:08
paint at your house that you want to use the like Sher Williams they will sell uh paint additives so like if you're doing
45:15
exterior paint and you want to have a bug repellent they have something called believe it or not it's called bug juice and they put that in there gives a it's
45:22
a bug repellent they have uh like mold uh repellant and stuff like that that
45:29
they can add to the paint when you get it mixed up so if you didn't know about that now you know so you can get a piece
45:37
some paint that you have at home and have some mold inhibitor that you want to put into
45:42
it uh or mildew for that fact um you
45:48
don't want to go too crazy because then you start to have uh you know boc's off gassing and stuff like that um so you
45:56
don't want to go too wild so for example kills uh I would not use that for inside
46:02
my van um just stick with a standard flat
46:08
paint all right so paint that on your panel it's going to make it much easier for this adhesive to stick and
46:16
bond and your cylinder panel up uh that is it for tools that's pretty
46:23
that's pretty much it uh if you want to have you know nice table if you can to lay out this so this is my
46:29
table where I do a lot of upholstery so it's easy to roll the fabric out do my panels
46:36
quickly and makes it really really easy so that is the materials needed to
46:45
install so we're going to check that off now let me go and I'm going to find the
46:51
link to the video that I have of the upholstery video so I actually need to go through and
47:01
create a playlist for you
47:10
guys so let's see here where is the
47:24
playlist
47:30
let's see does it under
47:38
fabric so I'll have you guys look with me here so maybe it's on a live stream
47:46
because I'm doing a lot of
47:53
these so these acrylic panel for the power system that is some
48:00
upholstery let me try to find there's a main video that I
48:08
did there it is so right here we have uh van
48:14
upholstery in the shop so let me grab this
48:24
link yeah so in this video I'm going through
48:30
and upholstering this panel so I start fresh now this panel what I did is this
48:39
is the panel I redid for Thomas so I didn't paint both sides I did one side that is facing the E the rear of the van
48:46
where the doors open and that is it's inside the van but you know if it was a really bad storm uh
48:54
it could get a some rain on this if he had the doors open and couldn't close them fast enough so this side I want to
49:00
have protected um not really necessary on the other side but I used less adhesive on
49:07
this side than I did the other side because it's painted doesn't matter what color you paint it I just had black paint in the
49:15
in the shop at this time but this panel this uh video is going to show you how to go through uh sprayer panels I also
49:23
have black um Nitro gloves on believe it or not the
49:29
adhesive doesn't stick to it your those gloves and you can just rub the adhesive right off so I use those just to keep my
49:35
hands nice and clean as I'm doing the work so this one goes through I show you
49:43
how to do the edges so come through here and get the edges nice and
49:48
clean and this one's a more challenging one because I'm having to uh I'll show you how to do a double-sided install so
49:56
making sure that you have enough material and you're thinking ahead as how you mount uh wrap this panel so that
50:04
you have the final outcome is is what you
50:09
want so that's what looks like all
50:22
done all right so if you uh see I'm put this in the link how to
50:37
up camper van
50:47
panel so how tooler a camper van panel
50:54
okay all right so I'll put that link in the chat so if you guys want to uh check out
51:01
that link that's going to show you how to do that on the channel
51:08
um so next up uh let's what we got left
51:14
there we go how to install Perfect so if you guys have any
51:19
questions on fabric choices how to measure fabric how to order materials
51:24
needed to ins install or how to install check out the links in the
51:31
description for this video as well as uh asking me any questions um in the
51:37
comments after this live has finished so happy to answer that in a future live
51:45
stream yeah so we covered all those topics and the next thing we're going to talk about is our DIY van build cheat
51:53
sheet so if you guys do not know about the DIY van build cheat sheet this cheat sheet is an Excel document that I
51:59
created over the last three years of all of my Amazon purchases for the shop so
52:05
it's got over 250 curated items on this list and the best part is it's
52:10
completely free all you got to do is put your name email address on this page the
52:15
link it in the description below it's going to be sent right to your inbox and I'm going to show you a sneak peek of
52:21
what you're going to get so this is the form it's categorized on the left by
52:26
cargo storage electrical Fasteners Hardware insulation
52:33
onboard Air Roofing solar uh the links for the Amazon are over here on the right hand
52:41
side and the tools section is one of my favorites so all the tools kind of the
52:47
weird tools that I use in the shop like the rivet nut gun um which is for the
52:52
riv nuts so compressing them using a a drill uh we have
52:58
uh the adapter over here for the drill we've got whole
53:04
saws uh soldering station uh the Milwaukee propex uh expansion toolkit
53:12
that's really expensive but this is something that will really uh take your
53:18
van Bill to the next level it's going to make Plumbing very easy for you um so
53:25
there's different ways you can go if you actually hover over some of these uh links you're going to see a little
53:30
photo but yeah tools is one of the best parts about this list it's the stuff I use in the shop I've bought on Amazon
53:38
it's delivered to the shop it's what I use so this helps a lot of people get jump started on their van build because
53:43
it's kind of hard to find parts out there or even know where to get started and this is a great place to get started
53:50
so if you're interested in this list it's an Ever growing list we add to it all the time
53:55
go to vuer hq.com or click on the link in the description below put your name and email address it'll come right to
54:02
your inbox and finally let's talk about Odyssey custom vans that is my van
54:09
conversion business so the van that we're working on right back there that
54:15
is the one that is currently for sale that is this one right here that you see took a couple of pictures outside with
54:23
it and we also did a walkth through video we took this van to Adventure van Expo in chattanoga Tennessee this year
54:29
to show it off and this video will give you a quick walk through and show you what features are in the van uh and also
54:36
what the interior looks like so we had a lot of people they love the interior you know the bamboo the cabinets uh the
54:43
adventure wagon conversion and a lot of other details for
54:49
example this is a Ford Transit 148 inch high roof it's the
54:57
V6 EcoBoost which is the turbocharged V6 uh and it's all-wheel drive which is
55:03
perfect for overlanding adventure van even has a limited slip rear
55:12
differential down here we have the 600 amp hour off-grid power system that we
55:18
put together we have a lot of videos showing how we built the the frame the cage uh for the system um installing the
55:25
inverters and batteries so check out the channel to look at those videos and I actually probably need to link it in
55:32
here so that would be a good idea um as far as Creature Comforts inside we have
55:38
dedic RTX 2012 volt air conditioning unit which is extremely efficient the
55:44
Webasto airtop Evo 40 if you guys know the air toop Evo 40 is Altitude
55:51
adjusting automatically so if you guys are going up into to Colorado high mountains that is the one that you know
55:58
you want and just for convenience we have the Webasto smart temp 3.0
56:03
Bluetooth controller for the Webasto so that's the Webasto app so in the morning
56:08
you want to get out of bed you can turn the heat on before you do that get the van all nice and warmed up before you
56:14
make your cup of coffee uh a lot of other components so
56:19
we have um you know max air fan on top we have ru sink and we also have the
56:27
isotherm Cruise 130 which is one of the biggest fridges 12vt fridges you can put in the van so we have that one in there
56:34
and then we have tons of water supply and uh storage for waste water so for
56:41
example we have 40 gallons of fresh water 4 gallons of hot water a 7 gallon
56:49
gray tank under the sink and then we have a separate 16 gallon for the hidden
56:55
shower pan Which is a tetran hidden shower pan fan pan in the
57:02
floor got a bunch of photos here to show you guys all those features for example there's the hidden
57:08
shower pan we have a pullout D tray and uh most
57:13
of these components are Flatline vanco so the overhead cabinets are Flatline vanco we've got a flatline van code that
57:19
we modified for the refrigerator we have their 41 in Galley kitchen Galley all
57:27
bamboo all powdercoated
57:32
aluminum Lagoon table mounts rigid Industries out exterior light and then we actually even have
57:40
a uh plat line vanco roof rack 420 watts
57:46
of solar with a fiama f45s manual awning and this is what the van looks
57:53
like at night time just all ready to go we chose an amber light it's a lot more
57:58
comfortable than the white light in my personal opinion and then we change the lower fog
58:04
lights to a yellow bulb um just to get a really cool look and help you in the
58:09
foggy conditions the German Shepherd is not included but if you guys are wanting
58:14
to get in touch with me and you're interested in purchasing this van contact me sales at Odyssey customs.com
58:21
that's my phone number you can also cck click to schedule a call that's the best
58:26
way to schedule a call with me is to click on the calendar select a time that's convenient
58:34
for you and I'll tell you all about the other details of the van and don't forget to check out the channel because
58:39
the channel has a lot of videos on us working on the van if you want to see the interior uh kind of behind the scenes if
58:47
you're not interested in purchasing this van but you want to have your own custom build done by Odyssey custom vans the
58:53
left side over here is going to walk you through how to hop on a phone call uh get prepared for that phone call and
59:00
what we're going to go over during that phone call if you're interested in us doing a custom build for you as we're
59:06
doing for our next customer that is in this van right beside me so the same
59:11
thing find a date that works click on a time and it'll go right on my calendar
59:16
and we can hop on a call all right guys I hope this video helped you learn how to choose the right
59:23
fabric fabrics for your camper conversion as well as some other details that we went through on this video make
59:29
sure you guys are subscribed like this video If you enjoyed it share to anybody that's doing uh pulsy in their van or
59:35
camper van conversion I think it'll really help them out if you have any questions put those in the comments below and until next time we'll see you
59:42
guys on the next live
59:53
stream [Music]
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