Over 18 months we converted a used carpet fitters van into our dream home
The first day – Van came fitted with a raised floor & rough ply lining which all needed to be stripped out.
Getting stuck in removing the raised floor
Ready with our blank canvas – now the real work can start!
Letting some light in – we cut two holes in the roof for the windows.
Prep work before the insulation went in.
Seemingly never-ending insulation…
Insulating from top to bottom with a full vapour barrier.
First things first – we needed somewhere to sleep.
Testing out our future bathroom facilities…
Starting to take shape, the bathroom walls went up.
Sealing everything off in the bathroom.
Dreaming of no longer cooking on a camping stove.
Building the kitchen framework.
Getting our first taste of pallet wood love.
Starting to feel more like home.
We needed a place to put our stuff…
More pallet wood!
The joy of working with vans quirky shapes…
Ready for the first coat of paint.
Several coats later…
Our first night enjoying the finished van at Stonehenge.
Sorry if this has been answered here, I just found your site from vandogtraveller.
How many hours a week were you working on this, roughly. I desperately want to do this but I can’t do it over 18 months, 6 tops.
I was also thinking about getting the basics in (insulation, flooring, kitchen, maybe bathroom) and then adding to it later after i had been on the road. Do you think this would be practical? -it’s just me and i don’t mind roughing it a bit.
Thanks. Also sorry about the spelling etc I’m on a mobile.
Hi Stuart,
Its hard to put a number of hours on it, we probs put in 10-20 hours a week for 12 months. When we had solid blocks of time to work on the van things progressed really quickly.
We custom made all the parts of our fit-out which added hours / days / weeks to the build. You could certainly do a much quicker build if you stripped out a caravan, but this wasn’t the look we wanted.
With regards to living in your van whilst still working on the build, but for us it dramatically slowed down the build. That being said, if we could do it again we would have moved into the van sooner and started saving our rent money. Check out our post How to live in a van whilst working full-time
That sounds exactly like the kind of adventure I want to have. 🙂