Hey Everyone! Hope you are having a great week! Me? Pretty Good. Today's blog is an update on my van conversion. If you don't know I've purchased a Ram Promaster Cargo Van and am converting it into a Camper Van or as I call it an Max's Adventure Van or "MAV" for short.. The last update was on the floor install of the van I've already done the roof work with AC and exhaust fan install. (the scary part of the install) I have made quite a bit of progress since then and thought I would give you a update. I'm writing this blog from the van itself! I'm watching the Olympics on my iPad and am writing my blog as I will when I'm on the road with my new MacBook Pro . The weather has been very cold since we last talked about the van and finding temps that I can work in have been far and few between. The cold weather has really bothered me more this year than I can remember. Maybe it's been colder but I think it's because I'm older. At any rate it's been cold and days that I can work in have been scarce. This week it has warmed up quite a bit and I have made some significant progress. So let's talk about it.

Furniture Assembly and Prep. I purchased two above head cabinets from a van conversion company. They supply all the parts and they are computer cut so you can assemble. They are rough cut so they need lots of sanding. They are made of Baltic Birch plywood and are cut to fit the Ram Promaster that I have. Different vans manufactures have different shapes on the insides. The boxes that the furniture came in were heavy I had to have someone help me take them to the garage where I was going to do the work. They had been in the house waiting for a good day to work on them. The first order of business was to sand the different parts. Lots of parts! I did the cabinets first. Sanding took a full day. After sanding I dry fitted to make sure everything went together. Then there was the staining. I decided to put the cabinets together before staining and that might have been a mistake but that's what I did. After both cabinets were together I started the staining. The wood was pretty white and wanted to darken up bit. I went with Colonial Maple for the color . I let my wife pick out the color as my eyes don't see shades of colors well. So staining is not only the outside but the inside also. Then it was time for the galley I did the same process as the cabinets. The cabinets took one day and so did the Galley. Now it was time for polyurethane. I wanted to put at least 3 coats on the Cabinets and Galley. On the inside I opted for only one coat but the outsides and the cabinet doors got three on both sides. But the weather had turned cold again and my garage doesn't have heat so I decided to bring everything inside to put the poly on. I was using water based polyurethane so there was no smell. It took two days to do cabinets and galley. They were ready to install now I just had to wait on the weather to install them.

Installation of Furniture. Well it took a couple of weeks an Ice storm and a Snow storm and we don't really get those types of storms here in the south. So I was trying to wait patiently with not much success . I was always checking the weather and then a week away I saw a couple of days that would be warm enough for me to work in. When the days came I took the cabinets to the Van and my wife helped me with the galley to get it into the van. I was going to have someone help me with the cabinets but that didn't work out. So the first one I installed by myself. It was all I could do was to hold the cabinet in place and screw the cabinet into the van. Now there are supports like ribs that go around the van for support and I attached the cabinet with metal screws to secure the bottom part of the cabinet and on the top early on in the process I installed some supports that I could screw the cabinets into. I did have to have my wife help me on the other cabinet because I was wore out holding with one hand and using a drill with the other .  Installing the galley was a little easier  ( no lifting) but the way it sat against the wall there was a gap. So I installed a back splash board that covered up that gap. It's a 3/4 inch board that I sanded and stained and polyurethaned to match the cabinets. I Secured to a support on the back half and screwed the galley to the floor. With the galley there was also the install of the sink and water pump and water storage tanks and faucet all which were supplied with the kit. Also the original galley was made for a upright college sized fridge but I didn't want that so they gave me a cabinet door and shelves to go on the inside for storage which every van lifer knows is very important.

Shelf fabrication and install. At the foot of the bed will be cabinets for clothes but at the head of the bed there will be a shelf where we can charge our phones at night and during the day we can store bedding. I saw a shelf design that I liked and decided to use it. When installing the bed rail supports early on in the process I also made a support for the shelf and it's been looking at me for a while. Now I'm not great at wood working or making things pretty. That's why I bought cabinets that had been thought out and designed by someone else but a shelf is just a piece of wood right? So I went to Lowes and got some 1/2 inch birch and made a board 43 X 10 inches. I rounded off the front corners of the shelf by using a gallon paint can as my template so at least they would match. I didn't want any sharp corners so I used a 1/4 inch router bit to round off the edge. I then stained and polyurethaned it like the cabinets and galley. I marked and drilled the mounting holes and installed to the support bracket I installed earlier in the build. I also drilled six holes prior to installing it that I will run bungee cord through. Bungee cord goes from the shelf through a carabiner that is secured to the roof of the van and then the bungee goes back to the other side of the shelf. I did this two more times to create a bungee cord system that can be used to hold bedding during the day. By bedding I mean sleeping bag or blanket. It actually turned out pretty good and even my wife liked it.

Lagun table install. You might not know what a Lagun table is but it's a table that can hook to the side of the van and can be adjusted up, down and side to side. It was made popular in marine installs and the van folks picked it up and ran with it. I have it so I can mount it to the side of the passenger seat and have a table when the chair is swiveled around facing the back of the van. It's the table I'm using now to put my computer on or to eat on. There will be one more Lagun table later on in the build for another seat. I had to get a special bracket to attach to the passenger seat pedestal. I found on on Etsy and it worked out great. I ordered the Lagun mount and bracket arms from Lagun but I still had to come up with a table top. Anything associated with van conversions is very expensive. Some would say that they put a "van tax" on anything van related. But I saw that some folks were using extra large cutting boards for table tops at a fraction of the price. I got a 20 X 14 bamboo cutting board for 30 bucks the same size built for a Lagun table top would have been 150 bucks. I will do the same thing with the other table top but a little bigger.

So now the inside of the van is starting to look like a camper van. I have installed a light under the cabinet over the galley and have installed a security system which I won't get into for obvious reasons. I still have lots to do but Its getting closer. I have also ordered bug nets that will go over the back doors and the sliding door so in spring we can have the door open without the bugs eating us up. They have magnetic openings so when you go through they automatically shut. I haven't put them up yet but will as soon as the weather warms up. They are installed with magnets so they are not permanent. This up coming week I will install the bed platform and the mattress and some of the trim around the top of the inside of the van. After that there will be the fabrication of a boot box that will be a seat with a cushion on top and a wheel well box on the passenger side with a top that lifts up for storage of camping stuff and that will be it for the big stuff. Then there will be just little things here and there. Like maybe an awning will be in the future. But we will be taking it out on test trips way before then. Well that's pretty much it for the update. Until next time Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

Hey Ya'll! Hope everyone is having a great week. We just got through a big snow storm (for us) in North Carolina with about 10 inches of snow and very cold weather. So I've been inside for almost a week. Just went out today. So I've been spending my time getting ready for presentations that I'm doing this year for our photography club and writing blogs. Really anything inside that I can do to keep me from going crazy. Last year I sold one of my cameras. You can check out the link here Paring Down My Cameras. Now I took the money that I made and just put into savings and vowed when I got my income tax return I would use it and the tax return to buy a new laptop. Well while being cooped up in the house I did my taxes as soon as I could and got my return very fast. So with all that said I'm buying a new Laptop ! Yay! I haven't bought a new laptop since 2017 when I purchased a Macbook Air which I used until about a year or so ago when I bought a 2018 MacBook Pro from one of my club members. It had better specs than the Air that I had. It was always meant to be a go between until I could get a new Laptop. Well that day has come.

The Laptop. The laptop that I chose was the Apple MacBook Pro with the M-5 Chip. It's the 14 inch model with 32 gig of memory and a 1TB SSD hard drive. My motto has always been buy the best computer you can afford. So that's what I did. I'm a retired military and I used the Apple Military discount store which saves you 10 % off of the cost of the computer. I'm not going to quote the price but it's a lot ! But I think Mac's are worth the price because they last pretty long without having to replace. They very rarely have any software or virus problems. The only reason I'm replacing the one I have now is because it struggles with editing photo's. It also won't update to the newest Lightroom or Photoshop. But if I was using it for web surfing and writing my blogs it would still be a fine laptop to have. This new laptop should be lightning fast and be able to handle anything I throw at it.

Why I need it? I need it for mobile photography editing and backing up. I have been using a iPad pro with a M-1 chip in it and it works well but my eyes aren't as good as they used to be and I need the bigger screen. My main computing when not on the road is still my MacMini that has the M-2 chip in it and I have a 27 inch screen on it. If you've been following my blogs you know that I'm building an "Adventure Van" that I will take trips on and I need a laptop that I can depend on to edit and do research with while on the road.  This will be a perfect matchup with my Starlink mobile satellite dish. I'll be able to watch movies , do research on trips and edit and backup files while on the road. It has a battery life of up to 24 hours according to the Apple site. At any rate it will last a long time without charging and power management is important when traveling on the road. 

Well I'm writing this section about a week after the last paragraph and my computer has come in. Yay! I have migrated all of my stuff off of my old MacBook Pro and it went without any problems. I have wiped clean the older laptop and am donating it to a family member. My new laptop is set up and I'm using it right now to finish this blog. I've got most of it set up that I can and it's working great! Nice and fast and responsive like I expect it to do. I did get a Silver one although I loved the grey one that my older MacBook was but that color wasn't offered only black and silver and I didn't want a black one it reminded me of a work computer and I don't work anymore. The new computer does lots of neat stuff that I haven't even figured out yet but I will let you know how it works out. Well that's enough for this week. Until next week, Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link

Hey y'all! Hope you're having a great week! Me? Okay all things considered . It's been unseasonably cold here in the south this year. We've had an Ice Storm and a pretty good Snow Storm along with frigid temps. This current weather pattern has lasted over a month keeping most folks trapped inside. Photography outside has been limited because of the weather. Well at least for me it has. So I've been stuck inside trying to stay warm and listening to my heating system run non stop for over a month trying to keep up. My camera club "GAPC" (Goldsboro Area Photography Club) had to reschedule a meeting due to weather and then the date that we had rescheduled to had bad weather also so we had to have our meeting via Zoom. That kind of sucked because I was giving a presentation and I would much rather do that in person than over the internet. We had a workshop planned that we also had to reschedule and then on the reschedule date the roads on the wildlife preserve we were going to were closed due to bad weather. I was recently talking to one of our members and he was telling me about his "cabin fever" and really I thought it was just me but it wasn't it was him too and he had talked to another member with the same conclusion all this bad cold grey weather has gotten to us. So what can we do? Well there are some indoor photography things you can do to keep you from going crazy. Here is a link to a blog I did on some stuff to do also that you can check out Photography when you can't get out

Indoor Photography: Doing indoor "Table Top" photography is where I really started my digital IMG_1118 photography journey. Finding stuff to shoot in your house can be very fun and interesting. Learning to use lights on smaller subjects will help you in lighting people for portraits. Which you can also do indoors. What about food photography. When it's cold nothing better than a nice bowl of chili. You could photograph that or whatever you're cooking to keep you nice and warm. What about digitizing all of those old photo's that you have stored in shoe boxes? That is a great project also to do. 

Education: Learning more about your camera. Dive into the menus and learn how to operate your camera will help you when you can get out and shoot. You won't have to fumble around looking for the setting to use. You can do it while you're on the couch watching TV with the camera in your hand going through settings and menus. There are all kinds of online education from Free on YouTube to paid services like Kelby One. Educating yourself will not only make good use of your time but will also make you a better photographer.

Plan for the upcoming year: Planning photography outings and trips are a great way to use the time you have in the house. Where do you want to go what do you want to see. How will I get there. Using the internet is a great thing to help research future trips. I've just started using a AI "Chat GPT" to help with itineraries and where to stay. And I must say it works out great. I plan on some trips this year with "MAV" (Max's Adventure Van) this year and already have a couple of trips planned. But first I have to finish converting it from a  cargo van to a Camper Van. Stupid weather is holding me back on this front.  But every day I get some good weather I work on it.

So as you can see there are lots of photography related stuff you can do while you are cooped up because of bad weather. Don't let the cabin fever get you down use the down time as an opportunity to get some stuff done. Well that's it for this week. If you can, Get out and Shoot! And have a great week.

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link