This weekend’s project was getting the subfloor into the Delica in preparation for adding vinyl plank flooring. Once everything was out I needed to find some points where we could secure the subfloor. I found four holes that were plugged with rubber gaskets. Pulling those out, I found threaded holes that led into the under carriage. So I cut some plywood and used a forstner bit to cut deep enough so that the bolt head wouldn’t protrude past the top of the wood. Once those four pieces were in place, I started on the subfloor proper.
I took out the carpet and the existing padding underneath it. Using the carpet as a guide, I was able to cut two big pieces to make the subfloor. This required a lot of trial & error as the carpet was not a perfect 1:1 match for the shape of the floor. Often my cuts were too wide and I needed to narrow the subfloor.
After a few iterations I was able to get the subfloor settled. The rear of the van is roughly 5′ wide by 7′ deep so I ended up using two sheets of 8×4 plywood cut down to make a 5×4 and 5×3.
Day one: done! The next day it was time to cut the holes so that the bench and seats could be put back in. The carpet stencil ended up being very useful for this. The size of the holes in the carpet were pretty close to what ended up being needed. Some of the bench holes needed adjusting but not nearly as many iterations as getting the pieces in to begin with.
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The irregular, somewhat circular holes were a bit pain to get just right. The rear seats went in much more easily. All they needed was a good rectangle.
After making sure both pieces would fit the bench and seats, I screwed them to the mount points I had installed. There is not much give to the floor, just a bit of upward bend on the very back and a little give behind the driver’s seat. I couldn’t find a clean mount point there. A easy win was that the plastic near the sliding door could come out easily and when screwed back in would be the mount point for the front wood.
Some vinyl plank and a lot of patience is the next step. I need to think of a good way to make sure that we can expose the holes for the chairs and bench as needed without leaving them exposed all the time. Thinking I might be able to create a pull out trap door kind of situation with some vinyl planks.