DIY Wood Floors In A VAN | Luxury Van Build |(How To)

Welcome back to another vlog guys. If you don't already know, my name is Lucas Revisa and today I'm going to be showing you how I just take ordinary walnut board one inch thick and create this flooring behind me. It is a Chevron floor and I'm custom making every piece and adding the tongue and groove. The first thing we're going to be doing is moving over to the table saw so that I can take this one inch board and cut a quarter inch off to save on wood. So that I can use it for my slats above my bed instead of wasting all of this wood through the planer. So I got my table saw blade all the way up. I got the Craig feather board and this slides right into the miter gauge slot and that's to keep the board against the blade so that I can make a nice cut. All right, so I'm just finishing up here. As you can see, I got this side done and then I flipped it to get this side. I leave this little bit left over. This is important because if it were to go all the way through, this board might fall on the blade and shoot back. So I leave this little bit left and since I don't have a band saw to cut that out, I'm going to rip this through the table saw and then I'll only waste about three eighths of an inch of wood right here. So I ran this through the table saw flat and you can see I get two pieces. This is a quarter inch and then we got just about half an inch on the bottom. I'm going to cut this into smaller pieces on the miter saw and then we're going to move over to the joiner and make sure these edges are nice and flat. All right, so after the table saw we ended up with two and three quarter inches wide and I'm going to be cutting 15 inch length pieces on the miter saw right now. Now that I got all of my pieces cut to 15 inches length, we're going to move over to the joiner. This tool is also very important for making sure that all of my floor pieces are going to sit perfectly flat. So I'm going to run the width side through first. Then I will put that against the fence to get a straight edge here. Then I will be running that through the table saw, flat end on the saw, straight edge on the fence, cut that to my width. We will then move over to the planer to take this half inch down to three eighths of an inch. The side that I ran through the joiner is going to be sitting face down as I feed it through the planer so that it could take material off of the top in relation to the bottom. So I planed each of these pieces about four times and we have 40 total pieces here and I got both routers set up. It's time to cut the tongue and groove. So since this bit is meant for three quarters or bigger, the bearing is too high for this piece to hit. So technically if I were to do this, it would just go straight through indefinitely. Um, so I have the fence here to stop this piece from continuing through the bit. So in order to get the fence in the right location, I took a piece that was big enough to hit the bearing, as you can see, and I pushed it until it hit the bearing, brought it to the middle, turned off the router, pushed the wood into the router all the way to the bearing, measured from the edge of the board on either end until it was square. And then I pulled this fence against that board, tightened it, and then ran a test piece with this. And that is how I made sure this bit was perfectly centered with the fence to make sure this piece doesn't continue through the bit. This is the tongue, the router behind me here is the groove. And I did the same exact thing on that side to find the center of the bit. So you can see here, it cut a nice tongue and I have a little sample piece to show you guys the groove that we're also going to cut. And that sits nicely right in there. Perfectly seamless. All right, we have moved over to the groove side and I have some test pieces here to show you. So I cut a 45 degree on the left and the right sides. The only difference being at the 45 degree, the left side has a tongue and the right side has a groove. And that's going to be your only difference between these two pieces. So these are going to go together just like that. And these are both cut at 45 and all I have to do now is replicate both of these pieces all the way up and that is how you get your Chevron design. All of the left pieces are ready to get tongues at the 45 degree angle that we cut. One thing I do recommend is to use a miter gauge set to 45 degrees just so you can hold that against the fence perfectly as you cut that tongue. This is going to be the center of the floor and you want to make sure that the two pieces connect seamlessly. We're back on the tongue side and I have all my right pieces cut at 45 and now I'm going to be adding the tongue on the 45s of the right side. All right, we're back at the miter saw. We're just making our final 45 degree cuts on either end. Here we have the left side, here we have the right side and just make sure to make the angle the same direction as we made earlier. So today we're going to be gluing the floor down. All you're going to have to do is find the center line of your floor and trace that all the way through. That is where your 45 degree angle is going to sit. I'll show you guys right here. You can see I got the center line going all the way through and then I'm mounting my first two pieces right here. I got some scrap wood, hold that in place so that I can build up smaller pieces all the way to the edge of this floor. I'm starting at the front because I want two full length pieces ending right at the front. And yeah, so once I get those pieces in, then we'll start gluing and working our way back here. I stacked three pieces up, drew my line across and I'm just going to be cutting that section off. Use the scrap over here to connect this last piece. And then from there we'll be able to work our way back and start gluing this floor down. I'm leaving a little bit here. A trim piece is going to go over. This is for expansion and contraction of the floor. You want to leave a little space here. I'll also be leaving space on the ends of each side as well. So I got the end pieces here and we're most worried about this being perfectly center. The line right there. Over here it can hang off a little bit because we're going to be laying a track saw and cutting either end perfectly straight after this floor is set. With the front section done, it is time to start gluing. I'm working with Eco 977 flooring adhesive and we're going to be using flooring adhesive for two main reasons. And one is for heavy traffic and making sure that pieces don't move around. And the second and most important is because of expansion and contraction and especially in a van with hardwood. This is really going to expand width wise with the heat and the cold. So I want to make sure I can mitigate any of that expansion that is going to help. And when working with this stuff, it is very important to have the correct PPE. So here I have 6003 cartridges on this 3M mask and 6001, the black sticker works as well, but definitely don't work with this stuff without the proper mask. And also make sure to wear gloves. I'm going to be applying this with a quarter inch trowel V-notch and sometimes I use this. Sometimes I use a bigger one like this. So with that being said, it is time to start gluing this floor down. All right, that is it for the center of this floor. You can see here, I'll take the circular saw and cut that off when it dries. All right. I was able to cut the ends off the back of my floor here and I have my track saw set up to clean the sides of this Chevron. And then we're onto the gold strip and the side flank. I thought the gold profile was a 90 degree angle, but with my protractor, I found out it is 85 degrees. So I have to angle the track saw at five degrees to cut that angle so that this can sit right against the floor. All right. This was cut perfectly straight at five degrees and now this profile sits perfectly flush against the Chevron. And right now I'm going to be sanding the whole flooring, starting with 80 grit and working my way up to 220 just to make sure all the pieces sit flush and getting it ready for the floor finish. So I'm going to get these sides glued down and then we're going to cut to adding the floor finish. The rear three coats of floor finish in the front as well. That is a wrap on the floors between the front and the back section. I have a total of 60 hours on these floors and they're not entirely done yet. I still want to sand it down and do one more finish. And I honestly can't believe how these turned out. It's definitely my favorite part of the van. If you guys have any questions, leave a comment below. I would be happy to help anyone attempt this on their own. And if not, I am offering this flooring in white Oak or walnut, and you can either send me custom dimensions or I could just send boxes and you can cut those down on your own. Thank you guys for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe. I'll leave you guys with this nice view. The grass is coming out.