Cladding the living area with wood

April 11, 2022

After building the skeleton of the bathroom, I continued preparing the panels for the wall cladding.

Cutting the panels for the cladding

The temperatures were still quite low, so I took advantage of a sunny day to oil the panels.

Drying the oil in the sun

Similarly, as in the bedroom, I build a bunch of wooden stripes to hold the panels together.

Building wooden strips

The strips nicely covered the gaps between the panels and made sure they were properly aligned to each other.

Stripes covering the gaps between the wall panels

Mounting the panels

When the oil was finally dry, I put all the panels into the cabin. I only used screws to mount the panels on the doors.

Clad side door

All the other panels were just loosely attached to each other without using any screws as the furniture that I was planning to build would press the panels to the wall later on. So there was no need for any unnecessary screws going through the vapor barrier.

Lose wall panels in the living area

Installing a proper latch for the back door

The previous latch for locking the backdoor wasn’t very practical: it only closed the doors on the top which resulted in a little gap on the bottom. It also required a padlock to make sure the lock stayed closed while driving. While cladding the doors in the back, I took the chance to install a proper latch that was able to close the doors on the top and the bottom with a handy lever in the middle.

Latch for the back door

There were no more gaps when the latch was closed. Much better!

Cladding the ceiling

Once all the walls were covered with wooden panels, I continued with the ceiling of the living area. To ensure a symmetric look of the cladding, I started with a board in the center of the ceiling.

Positioning the first wooden board in the center of the ceiling

Once the board was properly installed I worked my way from the center to the sides.

Attaching the boards to the ceiling

When reaching the sidewalls I had to cut the boards to size to make sure they nicely aligned.

Cladding of the ceiling reaching all the way to the wall without any gaps

I carefully measured and cut each board to avoid large visible gaps in the corners.

Corner without any major gaps

Once all the boards were installed, I provisionally wired up the LED spotlights to checkout the result:

Final cladding of the living area

I was quite happy with the outcome. The cabin looked much more cozy. I felt like making progress!