Andrew's Van Chat: Customizing Interior Panels
Now that we had our cabinets pretty much finished, we needed to address the Vanagon’s interior panels. The original brown factory installed panels would not match our cabinets. And they definitely were not our style. We considered purchasing new factory-style panels in a different color, but we felt they would look a little dated against our sleek cabinets and stove setup.
We found a listing in the Classifieds section of a VW community website called The Samba. Werksberg Products in Arizona produces direct-replacement panels from sheets of ABS plastic and sells full set for Vanagons for a great price. Being made of plastic, they can be spray painted and designed pretty much any way you like. It all depends how creative you wanna get. This got the wheels turning in our heads about how we would design our interior.
Our first trip to Glacier National Park was of the big things that started the process of us buying a camper van. So we wanted to pay tribute to Glacier with our panels. We took the striped Glacier National Park design from the Pendleton wool blankets collection that honors America’s National Parks. We’re huge fans of Pendleton’s products, especially the simple, yet beautiful wool blankets.
To begin the process, we bought numerous cans of Ivory Krylon spray paint. I think we went through 11 or 12 cans to fully cover the black panels. We then looked at different ways to add the colored stripes to the panels: pinstriping, masking & spraying them, etc. Pinstriping tape can be very expensive, especially since we would need 4 different colors. We test painted a panel by using painter’s tape to mask off the stripes, but it looked really sloppy. Our final resolution for striping was just simple electrical tape! We bought some colored electrical tape at Home Depot, and the end result came out looking amazing. It’s been almost one year since the tape was applied, & there are no signs of it coming off.
We really love the way the panels turned out. The ivory and colored stripes look really nice against the black cabinets. We had been a bit worried about the cabinets darkening the living space, but the ivory panels really keep things nice and bright inside.
We are lucky to know someone who works at a place that recycles denim for automotive insulation. Before we installed the panels, we removed the previous owner’s foam inserts and stuffed every nook & cranny we could find with recycled denim.
On the next van blog, we’ll go into how we rid of the factory curtain system and replaced them with easy on/off window covers.