Refrigeration Area

"Refrigeration area" is just a fancy way of saying that this is the area where my 12 volt cooler will live. The cooler is pretty big, and takes up much (but not all) of this space. Because it is a "cooler" and not a "refrigerator", I will need to leave room over the cooler to open up the lid on top of the cooler. The little areas adjacent to the cooler will eventually be turned into sliding drawers next winter. And, there will be a nice big countertop area above the cooler, plus my overhead storage cabinets above the countertop. Step 1, however, was to cover up the insulation on the van wall.

Most of the insulation is now covered.  However, you can see that there is still a lot of steel van structure showing. Another job for next winter will be to remove most of the plywood in this picture and cover up as much of that exposed van steel structure as possible. Any exposed van structure is going to turn the inside of my van into an ice cube on a cold day.

Throughout the van, I have chosen to bolt aluminum angle to the floors and walls, and then bolt the plywood to the aluminum angle. I don't think this is common in van builds, but it's the way I decided to do mine.

This was as much "refrigeration area" as I had time to do initially. The cooler sat on the floor inside this plywood area. Those 2 triangular pieces of wood were both temporary, placed there to give the countertop some rigidity.

The following winter I raised the cooler roughly 12 inches off the floor. There was enough spare room to the left of the cooler to add a box for trash and a few sliding drawers.

Additional sliding drawers were added beneath the cooler.

A little varnished teak trim looked pretty good.

After a meal, a piece of plywood over the cooler creates a countertop area.