Building the Dinette/Bed

The Ceiling is in.  It's quarter-inch birch plywood, with a nicely finished side.  I'm going to use a light Danish oil on it.  We wondered if the plywood would sag, but because the roof of the van is slightly curved, and the plywood is bowed upward, and screwed to the metal cross-supports of the van roof, we think it would take a catastrophic even to cause it to sag--something like a freeway bridge collapsing on top of it.

Howard built the frames for the two 24"x60" boxes which will become the seats for our dinette, and the head and foot of our cross-ways oriented bed.  The boxes are framed with 1"x2" and faced with quarter-inch ply.  This seems to achieve both our goals--light-weight, and strong.

The seat tops have piano hinges running the length of them, so the lids open for storage below.  The box on the the left has a petition dividing it into two storage units, fore and aft.  The box on the right is not petitioned and can be accessed from the top, or through a door at the back, so we can stow long things, like sun chairs, the awning, etc. and where we can put dirty things like shovels, auto tools without dragging them through the rest of the van.  We are going to put trunk liner material on the floor of both boxes to deaden the sound of stuff bouncing around in there, and to minimize stuff slipping around.

The best price on trunk liner that I've found is from AutoTrim.  It's about $5 a yard, for 54" wide fabric that is similar to felt.

I've been debating what to use for a mattress on the bed, and finally decided on medium density foam with a latex foam topper from The Foam Factory.   Foam Factory offers free shipping on orders more than $75.  Just so happens that FREE is my favorite price.   I ordered a queen-sized piece of both the HD36-R 4" foam, and the one-inch latex topper.  Hopefully that will give us durability for the seats, the  and the sleeping-on-a-cloud softness our old bones crave for sleeping.