Pile of aluminum extrusions starts to take shape

I am building the back bench/counter and murphy bed parts out of T-slot alumunim extrusions. I am trying to minimize the total weight we add to the van so when with 1" bars, hopefully after all the bracing has been installed it will be stiff enough. I designed in Fusion and ordered all the parts pre-cut and pre-counterbored on tnutz.com. There have been some lessons learned, but for the most part everything is coming together well. I am still waiting for some of the corner brackets that will really help with stiffening the structure, they should arrive by this Wednesday. I wish I would have ordered more spare parts, but the brackets are almost more expensive than the bars. I am happy how the assembled parts fit within the van, I still need to do a lot more research about how to attach the parts to the van to make them secure in a crash.

Clifford (CLFFRD) has arrived

When our daughter saw the van for the first time in real life she said it looked like "Clifford the Big Red Dog" from the kids books. We checked and were happy to find out that we could get a personalized plate that worked.