7. Extreme Van Makeover

The ShwGrl is getting her extreme makeover over Easter weekend. The weather is beautiful and this makeover is long overdue!

First thing was the flooring. After deciding that all the rear seats needed to go, there was no reason to keep the bulky seat anchors, or the carpet, which was completely impractical for a dog van.

I decided to instead use Linoleum (cushion) flooring, and bought a remnant roll of 6x8 "wood" from Home Depot. Most of the finishing edges snap right off, so it was fairly easy to get a finished "installed" look instead of just laying the floor down and having the edges roll up.

I also bought 3 new crates for use in the back, I went with wire Precision crates for airflow and ease of building, so much easier to build around square crates! I decided on (2) 24x18x19 wire crates and (1) 19x12x15 wire crate, which span the entire back of the van with about 2" to spare. 2 cresteds can comfortably fit in one of the larger crates, so if things get crazy, I can carry 5 dogs without changing the setup at all (note: dogs have to be used to living together before you lock them in a crate together!)

I decided to build the storage/bed unit lengthwise of the van this time, width-wise worked last time, but it was a bit cramped. The unit has two separate storage areas, and one part that overhangs one of the crates in the back.

Once the initial build was done, more support was added to make sure the whole thing wouldn't collapse while I'm sleeping or driving!

The final major problem to solve was that of shifting crates. The crate to the far right wouldn't move due to the shelving unit surrounding it, but the other two could easily slide on the linoleum floor the length of the van. Here's where we added eye-hooks and piano wire, attached to the van and the shelving unit. It's nearly invisible in the van, which is great, and it ensures great airflow to the back of the vehicle.

The eye-hooks are the only real modification made to the van itself - the flooring was placed over the existing carpet, so the van can be returned to "normal" if I ever get tired of it. The only remains of the remodel would be the tiny little holes left by the eye-hooks.

Once all the support beams were painted black, the task came of securing the large storage area. The smaller one is enclosed on 3 sides and was designed to be a bit smaller than my sleeping bag/pillow, so those two items can just squish in there and don't really need to be secured. I came across the divider panels that came with the larger crates, the dividers are made of the same crate material and intended to make the crate smaller if you are using it with a growing puppy, you can make the interior room of the crate larger as the puppy grows. These dividers were essentially useless to me as my crates are used with fully grown dogs, but they did make a great gate for the storage area! Here you can see the storage area packed, with some cases of cookies, bags of dog food, and the windshield sun block (and a bunch of other essentials accessed through the passenger-side sliding door).

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