A Ceiling Over Our Heads

    It has been a couple of very busy  weeks since my last post. The family and I have had a really great holiday season.  Santa got word of my travel plans for this Summer and brought me a bunch of camper and road trip related goodies, and we  logged a lot of miles  enjoying good times with family and friends.  Busy as it was, the time off from work did allow me to make some headway on the trailer.  In this episode, we will be working on the ceiling for the sleeping cabin.  One thing that I can say right from the start about this particular piece of the project, and that I will likely not be able to say in the future about about subsequent pieces, is that it was virtually free.  About two years ago, we dismantled a kitchen that my boss had installed in a customer's home 28 years earlier in preparation for the installation of the new one we were to build.  I saved some of the larger boards from the dumpster and they have stood, twisted and riddled with nails in the corner of my shop ever since.  I have often considered using them for one thing or another, but invariably,  they would be just too gnarly to bother with.  For the ceiling of the camper I needed relatively short boards thin enough to bend.  Maple is actually a terrible choice for a bending wood, but I figured if I bring it down to about an 1/8", I could make it work.  Besides, the maple will match the rest of the interior.

These are the boards salvaged from a customer's previous kitchen.  There was a fair amount of waste to get around all the defects and nail holes, but it was free.

Here is the same pile of wood, flattened, re-sawn, and ready to plane.

The panels have been planed to 1/8" thick and laid out almost (the middle two are reversed) as they will be arranged on the ceiling.  The grain patterns mirroring each other is a result of splitting the boards along their length (re-sawing), and is called a bookmatch because you open the board like a book.

    

One lucky side effect of using wood that had the benefit of 30 years worth of New England seasonal climate fluctuations is that it had firmly settled into whatever shape it was going to take.  Often when you remove material from recently harvested wood, you alter the balance of stresses within the board, and it will bow, twist, or bend.  A common problem with re-sawing, is that you have to re-flatten two severely cupped halves after you split them apart.  This was not the case with this wood. Once I flattened and split them, they stayed dead flat.

     The next bit of luck came with a delivery of plywood at work a few weeks ago.  Cover sheets are usually either cardboard or uselessly ugly and unsound sheets of junky plywood.  What came on the truck that day were 4 sheets of 1/8" thick (perfect for bending) plywood with a clear and clean birch veneer.  While the quality would not be good enough for a finished surface,  it would do nicely as the backer for my ceiling panels.

  The picture above shows the finished backer panel with lines drawn on it to guide my glueing and stapling so that i won't end up with glue squeezing out or staples peeking out between my panels.   Shown below is the framing for the ceiling (notice the frame in the center for the ventilation fan), the backer panel glued and stapled into place, and a view of both after the ceiling had been trimmed flush to the vent fan frame.

      At this point the cabin has taken on a much more sheltered feel.  Not that you'd want to park the thing in a downpour and take a nap, but you can sort of get the feeling of what it will be like to go camping.  My mother would hate it.  If you are at all claustrophobic, this is not the bedroom for you.  I am not terribly claustrophobic and I do sort of like it, but all those staples and pencil lines do offend my delicate sensibilities, so I think it's time for a little sophistication up in this "beotch" (that's an emphatically pronounced "bitch" for those of you who are not sufficiently hooked on phonics).  Commence ceiling pizzaz. 

A 2x10 scrap bridges the fore and aft cabin cabinets.  Padded scrap wood is wedged against the ceiling to press the panels tight to the backer while the glue dries for at least 24 hours. 

The bridge is moved to the driver's side and three more panels are clamped in place.

Passenger side: lather, rinse, repeat.

Finally, the two edge strips are trimmed to fit and glued in, this time spring sticks are cut to wedge against the floor of the cabin.

All the ceiling panels are in.

     At this point the ceiling is looking much fancier than it did with all those pesky pencil lines and staples, but it is still missing something.  Every respectable bedroom needs a bit of crown molding... not really, but this one does.  The molding will serve two purposes.  It will hide the clumsy junction between the cabinet faces and ceiling panels, and it will provide a mechanical reinforcement to the glue at the steepest parts of the bend.

These are the moldings that will cap the ends of the ceiling panels with angles cut to match the pitch of the ceiling.

Because the roof is still open and the back of the cabinet face frames still accessible, I was able to screw these moldings in from the back which means that they would be pulled up tight to the ceiling and that there would be no nail holes.

The final touch to the ceiling installation was the dome light.

BOOM! Ceiling in,  Lights shining.

     It may not be a  roof just yet, but it is good to have a ceiling over our heads.  You can sit in this little box and feel... comfortable.  While it is small, it is beginning to take on a certain welcoming warmth and offering something like security.  One thing has become clear to me as I have talked to friends and family about this project and about the trip we are planning.  I have committed us.  As one family member put it in response to my raising the possibility that we may not be ready, "Oh you're going."  It was a simple statement that carried real weight.  Mostly because someone had given voice to an idea that had been rattling around in my head for some time; there is no backing out.  I feel like I've dangled the idea of this little adventure in front of my girls enough that it would be nothing short of child abuse not to deliver.  I still think I can get it done, but if this little trailer is not ready for the road by mid June, we'll just have to find another way.