Wall Paneling Tips?

[ttee]

Were building our rig and want to use wall panels to speed up the process. Its not a skoolie per say and it has straight walls and a pitched but flat roof. No curves or rounded roof.

Home depot sells a 4'x8' white mdf "shiplap" wall panel that looks pretty darn good in person. We could do the whole interior for ~$300 with this, vs 1200-1800 for real shiplap. I know real shiplap would look nicer, but this is version 1.0 of the build.

The interior walls are all sheet metal with poprivets. My plan is to poprivet some furring strips and to use construction adhesive + nails to attach the wall panels.

Anyone else done this? Any tips or issues you ran into?

[musigenesis]

I don't know whether nails will stay in place in a moving vehicle thanks to the vibration. I recently installed some MDF wainscoting in my basement and I used these already-painted-white flathead screws. They look pretty good as long as you're very careful about measuring and placing them consistently. You could screw your panels directly into the sheet metal walls and skip the furring strips.

MDF is doomed if it ever gets wet so make sure you've fixed any leaks first.

[ttee]

White painted screws are a great idea.

I was thinking about attaching them directly to the wall too. I could use construction adhesive and screws right into the sheet metal. I read somewhere that it leads to thermal bridges but I'm not sure if that will be a major issue

[musigenesis]

Originally Posted by ttee

White painted screws are a great idea.

I was thinking about attaching them directly to the wall too. I could use construction adhesive and screws right into the sheet metal. I read somewhere that it leads to thermal bridges but I'm not sure if that will be a major issue

Yeah, now that I think of it (or rather now that you thought about it) this would be a really bad idea because of thermal bridging. Those screw heads will be colder than your interior and they'll collect condensation which will soak the MDF. I would still use the screws instead of nails, but screw into wood furring strips instead of directly into the sheet metal.

[Mountain Gnome]

I used some of their MDF panels in my bus and they all molded. That spread to the real wood, which molded. I had to remove the entire interior, and redo it all. By then the interior was spored, and the new stuff molded from the little bit of older wood that remained. I had to pull out the entire interior again and sprayed some with "unscented Lysol" which still smells like sick synthetic flowers over a year later (can I sue them?), and sprayed the rest with a water/pool-chlorine mix (strong on the chlorine) which all evaporated and smells fine.


Bottom line is I wouldn't use that paperboard crap in my bus, my house, or my garage.


https://www.skoolie.net/forums/f13/a...ing-32242.html

[Mountain Gnome]

I replaced the paperboard crap with "oak hardwood plywood" crap from Lowes. Much better, but still crap. Single-ply pulpwood panel (not hardwood) with a paper-thin oak laminate on either side. Try to cut it with a 7" 40-tooth (or was it 60? -the most teeth I could get) carbide tip blade for fine wood cutting, and the oak just peels away.


I had to score the oak on the top-side with a razor twice - once on each side of the saw-blade-track. Had to be perfectly measured (error < 0.01") to give a "channel" exactly the width of the saw-blade. Then I had to run the saw-blade down the center of the track.


However, even though it's better than the paperboard MDF crap, if the "oak plywood" (i.e. oak laminate paneling) gets wet, the oak again will peel off. I guess they glued it with the sap that Gilligan found on that island.

[ttee]

Originally Posted by Mountain Gnome

I replaced the paperboard crap with "oak hardwood plywood" crap from Lowes. Much better, but still crap. Single-ply pulpwood panel (not hardwood) with a paper-thin oak laminate on either side. Try to cut it with a 7" 40-tooth (or was it 60? -the most teeth I could get) carbide tip blade for fine wood cutting, and the oak just peels away.


I had to score the oak on the top-side with a razor twice - once on each side of the saw-blade-track. Had to be perfectly measured (error < 0.01") to give a "channel" exactly the width of the saw-blade. Then I had to run the saw-blade down the center of the track.


However, even though it's better than the paperboard MDF crap, if the "oak plywood" (i.e. oak laminate paneling) gets wet, the oak again will peel off. I guess they glued it with the sap that Gilligan found on that island.

Did you put a vapor barrier behind the paperboard panel? My guess is the metal walls will get condensation, which then travels to the bottom of the wall and soaks into the paperboard. Do that for a while and everything gets covered in mold.

I am leaning towards a luyan plywood or just patching any holes and painting the walls white