Features: Entire campervan floor installation from cutting sheet material to shape, installing vinyl flooring and insulating the bare van floor.
This is Gleann (pronounced “Glen”), he’s a Nissan NV200 and before he came to us, spent his life working as an Engineer’s van. I’ll be writing more posts about how we came to acquire Gleann and all the work we’ve done to him, but for now, I’m going to show you how I insulated the floor, and made and installed a lovely wood-effect floor.
Here’s how Gleann was looking before I started the flooring project, completely stripped back and ready to be transformed into a tiny home on wheels. This floor was going to do wonders as a sound barrier, as well as keeping heat in and cold out.
There are some affiliate links in this post, meaning I get a small commission if you purchase through them, at no cost to you. It helps me to keep bringing these projects to you!
Tools and materials
Step 1: Cutting the plywood floor to shape
Gleann came with a rubber floor installed which we removed as part of the stripping out process. I held onto it for this exact project, so I could use it as a template. However, when it actually came to it, it didn’t work well at all. The rubber floor was flexible so it wasn’t letting me draw accurately around it onto the plywood for a cut guide, plus it was curved up at the edges.
With this failed attempt under my belt, I moved on to Plan B β templating with kraft paper. I really love kraft paper for templating and ALWAYS have a roll on hand for things just like this.
I taped the paper together so that it fit the length and width of the van floor.
I carefully went round the paper with a sharp knife, cutting out any areas that I didn’t want to include in the plywood flooring.
Then I took the paper template back out of the van, laid it on top of the plywood sheet and secured it down using masking tape.
It was then time to get to work with my jigsaw, and cut all the way around the paper template.
Top tip for cutting large sheets of material like this: Sit the sheet on top of some styrofoam. This will elevate it off the ground so that you can put a blade through the plywood without hitting the ground (make sure the styrofoam is high enough to accommodate the length of your blade!)
Using styrofoam, rather than a solid material, means that you can cut straight through it, too. You can see here how I’m cutting right through the blue styro to get a curved edge on the plywood.
And just like that, the plywood was cut to shape for the van floor!
But will it fit…?!
YES! It was a perfect fit! But we weren’t done with cutting just yet…
On Gleann’s floor, there’s a couple of D-ring fitted for attached things like bungee cords. We find these really useful so I wanted to cut some holes in the plywood floor so we could reach them when needed.
A Forstner bit works great for cutting holes like this.
Pleased with this progress, I then needed to add a couple of little ‘winged’ pieces to the sides of the plywood to fill a gap behind the van’s wheel arches.
I couldn’t account for this in the initial cutting process because the van floor is just slightly wider than the manufactured size of a ply sheet. This actually worked out well because I could fold the little ‘wings’ when it came to fitting the finished floor, which made it a less cumbersome process.
Step 2: Fitting the vinyl flooring
I started off by rolling out the vinyl on top of the cut-to-shape floor.
To make sure the pattern was lined up straight, I used my hands to feel along the edges of the plywood and used the lines of the faux wood print to act as a visual guide.
Happy with how the vinyl was lined up, I carefully rolled it back on itself and grabbed my spray adhesive to start attaching it to the plywood. I worked in sections for this, spraying a section of adhesive along the width of the plywood and unrolling a section of vinyl on top.
Bear in mind that, depending on the type of adhesive you’re using, you might have to wait a few minutes for the glue to go tacky before fixing the vinyl on top.
When the adhesive had dried, I carefully flipped the plywood over so that it was vinyl-side down (with the help of my partner so that I didn’t drop it!)
I then trimmed away excess vinyl, with plenty left over to fold over the plywood.
Then I started the process of carefully cutting sections of the vinyl, spraying on adhesive, folding it over and holding in place with some spring clamps.
I won’t lie, this turned out to be a stressful process for me β I’m absolutely terrible at wrapping presents so this was about 100 times worse!
I did get there in the end though and although it was messy, at least it was on the underside of the floor so it would never be seen!
Tip: Finish off all the edges with Gorilla duct tape for to make it look neat and stop moisture from getting underneath the vinyl.
Step 3: Insulating the van floor
For this next part, I cut down thin batons that I ended up not needing. However, I’ll show you what I did them anyway, in case it helps you.
I cut down strips of plywood to fit in the grooves of the van floor, as you can see in the photo.
I glued them down with liquid nails and sat bricks on top, just to weigh them down while it dried.
I had intended to screw the finished plywood floor into these batons to hold it in place, but I ended up not needing to do that because it was such a snug fit β it doesn’t move an inch!
With the batons in place, it was time to move onto insulating the floor.
As with the vinyl flooring, I worked in sections, unrolling the insulation as I went and cutting it with a sharp knife.
It’s important to overlap the strips of insulation during the fitting process, I made sure there was about 10cm overlap with every section.
Insulating the wheel arches was a bit more tricky than the floor, but still completely manageable. I just worked in sections, adding a front piece first and then a long strip along the top of the wheel arch. Then it was just a case of trimming away any excess.
The last step in the process was to tape down all exposed edges of the insulation using the aluminium foil tape.
This stuff can be quite bizarre to work with at first, but once you get the hang of it, it can hide all manners of sins!
And without hesitation, it was time to place the vinyled floor in the van! Here’s how it looked, I was so pleased with the outcome.
I didn’t have to secure the floor in any way because it’s a really snug fit, so it won’t be going anywhere. If you want to secure yours, you can do so by screwing it down into the batons I showed you how to install earlier.
Alternatively, you could use some heavy duty Velcro.
Thanks so much for reading!