Ceiling the deal, part two

In some areas, the VHB did not hold as well as I'd hoped. So, I used some gorilla glue and brads to further reinforce things. Now the ceiling is staying well attached. There was a bit of rattling, which I tracked down to the lamp wires rattling against the panel. I got that to shut up with Great stuff foam.
 
We installed the rear panel and all the ceiling lamps. Same techniques as with the center panel.
The panel was also cut for the Maxxair fan trim piece.

 

 

The joint between the panels will be covered by a trim piece. Same will go for the front panel.

So now we get started on that front panel.
The panel's front edge will be covered by the driver compartment's headliner. But it needs some way to hold it in place.
I cut a length of wood to match the ceiling (with insulation) curve and glued that to the B-pillar's roof rib. The rib is about 1.5" forward of the headliner edge. The beadboard panel will be sandwiched between the liner and wood piece, and gorilla-glued to the wood.

 

This is a complex curve, so I wanted some support in the middle of the panel. So I added the steel length you can also see above. It is bolted and glued to the sidewalls, and a strip of wood is attached with glue and screws.

 

 

One complication is fitting around those ugly Styrofoam airbag covers. We made up a template, and after a few iterations and tweaks, got a fairly good fit. 

 

Then proceeded to attach the panel at the front, rear, and middle support with glue, screws and brads.

Holding it up while the glue sets:

 

It's up and stable.

Added in the john's ceiling light, and the center panels are done.

As you can see above, there is about 7" between the center panels and each of the side walls. In part three of this thrilling saga, we'll install those panels.

Ceiling the deal, part one

Wherein we start installing the ceiling beadboard.
I had previously installed some of the rafters before I started running the wiring that runs overhead.

 

This was to help support the wire runs, and partly to be sure that the rafter design was stable.

The plan is to mount sheets of 1/4" birch beadboard to the rafters, attached primarily with VHB tape and perimeter screws. There will be three 4-foot wide center panels, from front to rear, and then side panels to bring us to the walls.

Started by creating a mounting system at the rear, around the MAXXfan. Because of the wire run and rear door framing, the heights were all wrong to attach a rafter (like in the picture above).

However, the rear support for the fan could be built up to the right height, and some aluminum strips could work to support the rearmost section of the rear ceiling panel. (I rear-ly hope this is making sense.)

 The aluminum strips are attached to the sidewalls at some conveniently aligned holes, and VHB'd to the fan support.

Then added VHB to the top of the aluminum strip,

stuck a crosswise rafter to the VHB, and added the remainder of the rear beadboad panel's supports.

 

Now we were ready to mount the first panel. This is the middle panel of the 3 center panels. We had previously figured out where the ceiling lights would go, so I had already drilled the holes for the wires, and cut the panel down to the right length (88"). We chose that length because the panel ends end up halfway across Annies's structural roof members. You can sort of see that in the picture above.

Then applied VHB to the rafters, and a few temporary guides to make sure the panel would be centered.

Hint: I found that the VHB adhesion can be really improved if I first sprayed the rafters and beadboard back with 3M 90.

Mucho VHB:

One of the temporary guides hard at work:

With the invaluable assistance of the aesthetics committee, we got the panel up. This would have been a real tough job for just one person.

For some reasons, one of the VHB'd rafters on the driver's side isn't holding as well as the others. We decided to push it up tight with some temporary supports, raise the temperature, and see how it holds tomorrow.

The aesthtics committee consult on the poorly adhering section.

 

The discussion gets intense:

Nevertheless, I'm not too concerned.The rest of the panel seems to be holding real well, and this area will also be supported from below by the bath/fridge/closet walls.

A sense of what the end result will look like (brought to you courtesy of wide angle lenses):

 

Tomorrow, assuming that this panel hasn't fallen down, I'll install the ceiling lamps we picked (because I will be removing the OEM lamps), and beginning to build and install the rear panel.

Buttoning up the lower walls

After installing the fresh water service port, we thinsulated the passenger side like the driver side.
Well, almost...the passenger side has the sliding door, which needed a bit more fiddly cutting so insulation didn't hit the latch mechanisms.

Also removed the back doors plastic panels and thinsulated as far as I could reach. Then re-attached the panels.

Got that done, and re-installed the wall coroplast. Of course we needed to cut it to match all the junk we've added.

Not much more to say, except here are a few pictures.

Since the thinsulate is glued to Annie's outer wall, there is an air gap. That means Reflectix  should actually work here. Glued it to the coroplast panels.

Cut the panels down in height to accommodate our 2" raised floor

I also cut a hole in the panel facing the MS2012 exhaust fan, to make sure the panel wouldn't block ventilation.

Tomorrow, we start figuring out ceiling lighting...how many lamps, spacing, and deciding if they should be on a dimmer.