Creating a Permanent Wall out of the Rollup Door

One of the biggest changes to my truck and main framing job was putting down the roll-up door permanently. If you're planning on doing that, here's how you do it. (or at least, how I did it.)

Of the few people that talk about their box truck conversions online; Most people seem to put their normal door through the roll-up door. In my case I'll be building a motorcycle carrier and propane storage on the back, so I put the door into the side instead.
It's actually (surprisingly) made of a compressed engineered-wood composite, not metal. Also, when the door is down it actually moves a bit when you press against it. Considering that this will not only be my kitchen wall with my sliding window, it needs to be strong enough to hold the weight of drywall, studs, etc.

Originally I was thinking of removing the whole thing, but why when I can use it to act as external plywood for my wall. If you decide to remove the whole door, or put it down permanently, you still have one safety factor to consider: The door is connected to and pulled up by two metal wires on the side that run the height on the outside, up into a coil inside the truck above the door and main header. These springs have really high tension and are very dangerous - people have been seriously hurt when they cut the strings and aren't careful. We'll get to how I did that in a minute.
I can't recommend how to remove the door entirely, but there are certainly ways people have done it online. Please do some research if you end up going that route.

Framing the door first

Before I cut the wires and keep the door down forever, I needed to re-structure it so that it didn't move back and forth. I did this by adding in a baseplate first, and then a horizontal crossbrace connected to the side walls. This left me just enough room to slide a vertical 2 x 4 between that brace and the roll-up door - forcing the door to be straight.

I put the crossbrace low enough so it would be hidden inside my kitchen cabinets. This framing was pretty odd, i'll admit - but it worked. I added in more studs so it became a 16in center wall (just with extra studs)

Fortunately, it didn't take too many 2 x 4s to make the door sturdy enough to hit without it moving or anything. (Of course, every stud was screwed into from the outside.)

 

Cutting the wires

Oh, the nervous part. Unfortunately, I didn't take photos of this part - but it's pretty straightforward. 

When the door is down, the wires have high tension so when you cut them they're going to snap up very quickly and spin around that coil on the inside.

The wires are thin enough where I figured I could stand on the side of the truck and cut the very bottom of the wire where it connects to the door, and be safe. You just don't want to be facing the wire when it whips forward and up. This worked great.

I stood on the side with my angle grinder, my arm reaching around, and cut one of the wires at an angle similar to \ , and it just did a weak "pop." - didn't whip up, anything. I was surprised, but still careful, so I walked around the truck to the other side to cut the other wire in the same fashion. As soon as I cut through the second wire, both of them shot up and whipped around on the inside, but stopped after a second or so. Make sure you're on the side.

I checked the roof on the inside afterwards, but thankfully it didn't dent anything. That was it! I was nervous, but it was finally done. 

Cutting through the door / Adding in the sliding window

 

Since the door is made of a wood composite, I had to use my circular saw to cut the hole I needed. This was a pain to say the least - I ended up using a sawzall to get the hole to the right size. There are hinges on the inside that connect the panels of the door together - since these were steel and I didn't want to send sparks flying everywhere, I positioned the hole for my window just barely around the hinges so I only had to cut the wood.

Otherwise the framing was just like a normal window! 

Now that the door was down and the window was in, I added my spray foam along the edges of the door, and my window framing.

One large can of sprayfoam filled all the gaps for the door by the way.

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Now the rollup door is finally in place, and I can work on plumbing and my kitchen.

Thank you for reading, and I hope this post helps show how to take down the door if you choose to!

Till next time,

Kelli

 

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Update: Feb 27, 2022

 

The door has worked great! I've put a lot of weight unto it and it has never been a problem. The only thing that would have been a lot easier is when I framed the small window, I wish I made the frame for it more flush. I ended up hand-chiseling the "window sill" part on the bottom off when I did the wall planks for the kitchen.

Flooring OSB, Insulation, and Hardwood

A lot of building steps rely on having other parts built already, at least for the ease of construction. Now that I had my door and large window in, I was ready to pull down the roll-up door permanently. Instead I thought about how the big open wall would make it much easier to get the large OSB sheets in, so I decided to do the flooring first.

As the first step I added my flooring studs directly unto the wood decking of the truck, and then covered it in my waterproof barrier.

 In this case, I faced the printed side down so any moisture from the underside decking wouldn't condense into my insulation and hardwood flooring. I had a can of clear sealant laying around, so I also sprayed the wood area behind my wheels as well under the truck as an extra seal.

I was worried about the floor creaking when you walked around, and my flooring bowing over time, so I put my flooring studs 12 inches apart on center instead of the normal 16. (Some of them are closer to 10 when they didn't run the entire width.) 

This ended up working perfectly in the end, although I wish I had added fireblocking between the studs for an easier time screwing down my OSB. Insulation was also a little tricky, but it fit in there well enough. I used a normal R13 fiberglass insulation for the floor - the same for my walls as well.

I used 15/32 PS2-10 OSB 4ft x 8ft sheathing for my flooring (pretty heavy duty). I'm glad I went with the heavier stuff - after I put it down on the studs and insulation, it didn't sound like you were walking around in a truck at all.

So after using my circular saw to cut the edge of each OSB (so I could just drop it in place), I screwed them down into the wood flooring studs and tried to make sure the osb was as level as possible.

I started screwing them in from one vertical side, and then one horizontal side at a time. My insulation padded the bottom so they stood up a bit; Once you screw in the sides, it will press down and level out. My insulation has worked great so far, but insulation board would have worked well I think.

 The trickiest part was cutting the correct size cutout of multiple OSB pieces for my bathroom. (that little square there). Other than some muscle power - the OSB was easy enough to use.

 I'm ready to add in my hardwood flooring now that i've leveled all the OSB.

Adding in the Flooring

 

At this point, my chop saw broke. Right at the exciting part!

So I ended up getting this Porter and Cable miter saw for about $90 (luckily they had them on sale at Lowes- and I had just bought a new 40 teeth blade.) I wasn't expecting that expense, but that's what happens when you get used tools I suppose. I got my use out of it though!

So to start off, I was originally planning to have two different levels in the truck so I could have floor storage in my kitchen. This design was the plan when I bought the flooring, even though the design ended up being changed. (I have had the flooring for about... 9 months or so at this point when I actually got to put it in.)

I really wanted hardwood/solid wood flooring in the truck for longevity (and style), but the price for the red wood I wanted was crazy! So I jumped unto google and looked up hardwood flooring stores in my area, and called around until I found one that keeps their inventory on site. I asked the guy if he had a "make-me-a-deal" pile of extra flooring in the back, and coincidentally they did, so I decided to drop by to see what they had.

I ended up getting beautiful hardwood for 1/3rd of the price of retail, and these clever entrepreneurs got rid of that extra inventory in the back. I walked away with about 90sqft of Caribbean Rosewood and 60 sqft of Hickory for $300. (I paid a little less than $3 a sqft, when it's somewhere around a $1300 value)

It was more than I planned to pay originally, but I'm so glad I did. The flooring is gorgeous and very versatile. So if you're willing to look around and talk to people, you might be able to luck out like I did!

 Both types of flooring are tongue and groove floating, which made the installation very easy. I started with the hickory in the kitchen, and butted it against the wall and hammered them together. Most of these towards the roll-up door are going to be underneath my cabinets, so I actually screwed these down into place so they wouldn't move when I put down the rest of them.

As you can see, I did not add underlayment underneath my floor. If I had gone with laminate I would have, but the more I talked to people and looked around it seemed underlayment was more or less just a vapor barrier with minimal padding- so I decided to go without it. I don't think it would have hurt to add it though.

Once my hickory was in, I started to put down the rosewood. I decided to switch the board direction for the different types to really differentiate the areas.

I started by adding the planks against the edge of the hickory, and running them along the length of the truck, hammering them in from the side. Remember to take planks out of each box to better match the colors! (For the rosewood it didn't matter much though)

I actually got all of the rosewood in on one day - but I have since gone back and re-hammered some back into place and pre-drilled through the planks on the side to keep them in place. (they haven't moved since)

So there we are! I'm so glad I finally got the flooring in. It'll make construction on the roll-up door much easier now.

Thank you for reading - if you have any questions or concerns, feel free to leave a comment. Till next time!

Sincerely,

Kelli

Putting in the Giant odd-shaped Window

 The Angled Window

Now that I had my door in - it was finally time to put in the largest window.

I bought a normal double pane window designed for 2 x 4 framing from a recycled building materials store for about $40. (Look for a store like that near you if you can!) I was a little apprehensive at first about the vibration of the truck shattering the glass down the road, but after discovering that the wood studs absorb most of the vibration, then I decided I would still give it a shot with a normal window. Also consider that your spray-foam insulation will absorb vibration as well.
I bought a small roll of neoprene construction quality rubber stripping online that I had planned to wrap around the window framing before I put it in, but after the move I couldn't find it anywhere so I decided to go ahead anyway. 
The Neoprene was about $15, so if you're worried about the glass shattering then you should consider adding that into your framing before you put a window in. If the window was larger, I probably would have added in the rubber stripping.

The first step is to measure out exactly where you want your king studs for the window on the wall (I always tried to choose to put in the door and window next to a stud that I already had up). This window is pretty odd shaped - but I framed it like a square window - adding in an extra piece for the window frame after I put it in; I'll show ya later on. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the window on the ground, so here's a little drawing to show you the design.

In this photo you can see I removed the waterproofing barrier first before I cut the hole. That stud on the left is my first king stud. I planned for the width of the window cutout to be wide enough for the window itself to show entirely, and about half of the window framing to show from the outside. If you end up cutting it too big - no worries. You'll be filling in any of the spaces with spray foam anyway, and covering it with trim on the outside. Unless you want to add 5inch+ wide trim though, then cutting the hole to as close the size as you can get is best.
The window hole was a lot easier to cut out than the door, since it didn't take up the whole height of the wall. [I already put my flooring studs down by this point, which wasn't the best idea. It ended up being fine in the end but a bit of a pain to work around.]

In my case you can see I had to go through two metal studs, which run all the way to the ceiling header. At one point the hole was the perfect size for the window to fit, but the rest of the metal studs above the opening wouldn't allowing the framing for the window to fit, so I ran my angle grinder against the aluminum on the inside and tried to cut only the studs. This ended up working well, but was frustrating at best. 

The metal studs in the truck are a bit odd: One side of the stud is full metal butting up to the aluminum, where it's riveted to the wall. The other side is open, so the stud itself is actually hollow.

If you have to trim part of the studs like I did, and don't want to cut through the side, then you can run your grinder parallel to the wall, along the riveted edge of the stud, like in this picture.

 

Prepped and ready to throw in!

After the hole was cut and the metal grinded down, like we did for the door, I again covered the edge in ducktape and wrapped waterproofing barrier around the edge. 
Now that you have your kings studs on each side, your window baseplate (that fits right on top of those metal studs you cut), and a header, it's time to put in the window!

 

 I screwed a 2 x 4 through the metal into the king studs to help hold the window while I put it into place. 

 At this point after you level off the window with shims (between the window frame and the wall framing) I screwed the framing together to make it tight before I removed that extra piece on the outside.

I taped off the window trim edge before I put in the sprayfoam (it gets everywhere), and removed it before the foam set up completely. 

In this picture you can see that extra window framing piece I talked about earlier for the slanted edge (I added in an extra 2 x 4 to fill up some extra space from the outside as well).

Once you trim off the extra foam, it's time to add some trim to clean it up from the outside. I screwed through the trim into the window framing, and sealed around all of the edges with paintable window/door caulking to waterproof it all. Now it was finally time to paint the trim with my exterior paint.

So there it is! I'm so glad I went with the odd shaped window; I feel like it gave it some architectural depth it was missing. Although I wish it opened.

Thank you for reading and I hope this helps for putting in your own windows! If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Next time I'll show you how to pull down that roll-up door permanently - and what I used for my flooring. Till then!

Sincerely,

Kelli

 

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Update: April 24th, 2022

 

The window has held up perfectly the entire time - even with hammering vibrations, driving, and eventually trimming up that window sill wood on the bottom for a table.

 

Newer photo of matching the plaster edge up to the window casing

 Even with the size of this window, it doesn't seem like vibrations from driving has affected it at all. I eventually did replace the trim on the outside with treated wood, and I added extra silicone caulking as sealant. It hasn't leaked at all and works perfectly - the wood studs absorb more than enough vibration to keep the glass safe. As much as I love the shape of it, I wish it opened!

Framing The Door

There's not many people who convert box trucks who put their door in the side - which seemed odd to me. People almost always put the door on the roll-up door wall. Then it dawned on me that maybe people, like I was, were intimidated to cut through the metal and go through the pain of putting in a door with metal walls. 
Now that I've done it, I understand that it is a real frustrating part of the process, but I think much better for design in the long run. If you're choosing to put a door in on the side, then this post is for you!
The first time I cut through the metal was to cut the rough opening for my door, which ended up being close to the entire height of the wall. 

 I ended up buying a solid wood door at a building material recycling place for $75 (a total steal). I bought a solid wood door instead of metal because I knew I had to cut the door down to a smaller size so that it could fit inside the wall.

All doors are more or less designed for 8ft tall ceilings, and the inside of my truck was only 7ft. Remember you need to compensate for not only a header plate, a base plate, but also what the width of your flooring will be so that everything ends up level and plumb with each other. (the floor is the floor studs, insulation if it sticks up past the studs, OSB or plywood, and the width of your actual flooring. Remember underlayment width if you go with laminate.)
If you decide to build your own door jamb like I did, remember you will also need to compensate for the door threshold, and the water blocking/plate cover you put onto the bottom of your door. 


You also need to make sure you leave enough space on the top of the door and the sides so that it can swing freely.
To be honest this project took the most time (two-three grueling weeks because of trial and error), and I wished I had bought a pre-hung door instead. (even though you'd have to take apart the top part and cut everything down to size. It would have been much faster and easier.)

I would highly recommend looking up as much as you can about framing an external door before you cut the metal. I made sure to cut the hole large enough so that the door would move freely, but also gives you space to add shims and level the door once you get it in. The width of my door is 28 inches [I went with a smaller one - I love the width now] and I cut the hole at about 31 inches wide.

First step - prepping the metal!

 As you can see I have no waterproofing barrier where i'm cutting, and I started with a rough area cut where I wanted the door to be. The parts of the studs on the bottom i'll cut down the rest of the way when I have a hole through the wall so I can see from the outside.

In this photo I had gone through from the outside and cut through the studs so they were as flat as possible with the flooring stud below the door. You want this to be flat so you can place your base plate for the door on top of that. After I cut the studs down, I went back with a grinding blade with my angle grinder and flattened them all out level with the concrete and floor stud.
There is a metal header that runs throughout the truck, at about the height of 6ft 8inch. This is the same place where I put the headers for all my wall studs. 
I wanted the top plate for my door to be underneath that, instead of cutting through the metal header and bolting my top plate through the ceiling. I felt it would be stronger to leave the metal header - in the end this worked out well. 
Cutting the end piece of studs right below that header was awful though. Sparks flying all around, hard to get the right angles, ect. At this point is when I wore a full motorcycle helmet, pants, leather jacket, and gloves. In my last post I talked about safety gear while cutting - this is the point where you need it! (This is when you need the face guard as an extra I mean.)

After I cut the metal, I covered the edges in ducktape so now when I re-cover the metal wall with waterproofing barrier, it won't get cut by the edges to the outside. The waterproofing barrier wraps around the edge to slightly cover the wall on the outside. [This will all eventually be covered up by your door trim.]

I used a 2 x 6 for my baseplate. Originally I used a 1 x 6 but didn't think it would compensate enough for the flooring height I needed to reach. In the end I think going with a 1 x 6 would have worked well since it's already supported beneath it.

After I screwed down my base plate, I threw up my kings studs along the sides of the metal. Where you place these is very important, so make sure you leave enough room between the king studs for:

*the door width

*the wood jamb around your door (I used 1 x 4s)

*A little extra space between the kings studs and the door jamb so you can add shims to level it off (and add spray foam in eventually.)

That might sound a little complex, but I figured out the width I needed between my king studs by framing my door on the ground outside, with my hinges I chiseled in, and then measured the whole thing. If you frame out the door on the ground, make sure to add extra space between the door itself and the wood framing so that it can move freely. This is about 1/8th of an inch

 

Because my door was pretty heavy, I framed it on the ground and chiseled out the hinges, and then attached the framing unto the king studs inside the truck. This wasn't the easiest way to frame the door, but it allowed me to really adjust the jamb framing with the king studs instead of holding the door at the same time. 

Once my jamb was set with my king studs, and I took the door in and out a couple times to check the swing and space, I screwed into the king studs from the outside a 2 x 4 to hold the door in place while I screwed it into the hinges. 

That 1 x 4 at the bottom shows there's a lot of space at the bottom of the door. I still have to put in a threshold and watercover! This ended up not being enough space for the door cover and threshold, so I had to chisel away the base plate to fit them both. A 1 x 4 would have been almost perfect I think.

 The door is swinging freely!

Time to prime and paint and throw it back up

You can see here the ducktape on the edges, the door jamb with part of the king studs, and the spray foam I added in. In this photo I had already added the threshold (low profile), door water guard, and trimmed the spray foam.

Once you get the door up and it moves freely, now it's time to add the spray foam. You absolutely have to wear gloves when using spray foam, and it expands to almost 3x the size so keep that in mind. You'll have to trim the edges flat after it sets up in a couple hours, but this will waterproof all that extra space between your door jamb and king studs. 

 

The trim you choose should be wide enough to cover all of the wood and metal, and come up flush to the edge of the inside of your door. The trim was a trial and error project for me as I cut the trim and had open spaces between the trim that couldn't be covered up with paint. I kept some of that spray foam trimmings I had left over and filled in the holes with that, then covered it in paintable caulking. This filled up larger holes perfectly, and ended up being covered with the paint really nicely. 

Before I painted the trim, I sealed all the edges of the outside trim with the same paintable waterproof external caulking, and let it set. This created a waterproof seal everywhere around the wood before I covered it with external paint. 

 

I would have bought a UV-proof caulking, but I was planning to paint around the edges of trim so this worked really well.

I bought some cheap waterproof sealing rubber trim as well, and added this to both sides of the door and the top, nailing it into the door jamb- it has worked perfect so far, even in a downpour.

 Marine Waterproof rubber strips - any waterproof rubber stripping.

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So there we go! I finally have a door in the side, so I can now pull down my roll-up door permanently and frame into it, making my kitchen wall.

If you have any extra questions, don't be afraid to ask. There was a lot of little extra steps I didn't include because hopefully you won't have those issues (operator error on my part I think). 

Anyway thank you for reading and next time I'll be talking about my large window! Till next time.

Love,

Kelli 

 

 

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Update: Feb  27, 2022

The door still stands, but the trim didn't. Make sure you use the right type of trim - if it's outside, it has to be pressure-treated wood. I like the new trim more anyway.