VAN TOUR | Our DIY Tiny Home for Van Life | INCREDIBLE Conversion with Murphy Bed

We are rich and Kirsten and in October 2020 we decided to take the plunge and start our journey towards full time van

life

. During the freezing six months that followed, we converted our empty cargo van into a fully equipped

tiny

house with a fold-out bed. a powerful electrical system and a beautiful camper kitchen and if you are interested in the details of how we built the truck, be sure to check out our full timelapse video or the truck building playlist on our channel now that we are completely excited. in the van and with a summer in the Canadian Rockies on the horizon, we feel there is no better time than the present to finally share the fruits of our labor with a van

tour

.

The most important part of any truck build comes from the beginning and that is choosing a vehicle that meets your needs and for us that meant choosing between a Ram Promaster, a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter or what we decided to use in the end, Ford Transit. The reason we chose to purchase a ford transit is because we wanted to. an all wheel drive vehicle which the promaster does not offer, eliminating that immediately and then left us to choose between a sprinter and a transit one of those vehicles costs quite a bit more than the other this vehicle is a 2024 transit and If you also want to get yours in a All-wheel drive configuration, you will need to get at least a 2020 model year or later because it was a new introduction in 2020, which meant we had to buy our Ford Transit.

New to come back now, our vehicle is a little smaller than what you normally see on YouTube. This is the mid-roof Ford Transit with a 148-inch wheelbase, but it is not the extended length version, which means this vehicle measures 30 inches or so. two and a half feet shorter than the extended-length Transit 4 and about 10 inches shorter than the high-roof Transit 4, which meant we had to sacrifice a little interior headroom or my ability to stand perfectly upright inside the vehicle at despite the additional maneuverability. What we get out of a vehicle this size to me outweighs the sacrifice of having a larger vehicle and being able to put things like a wet bath inside the Ford Transit so you know everything we bought on Amazon for this fan build we've done. available at the link to our Amazon page in the description below if you are looking for everything we purchased for this van, down to the wood and screws we have made available, as well as a complete estimate of the

conversion

of our van into our patreon page, so feel free to join us there to get access to exclusive content only for patreon members.

Our truck came with a pretty basic entertainment system which was fine for us, however we do have a rear view camera which is not always standard but very necessary for a truck like this, the nice thing about it being a 2020 model of Ford Transit is that all the USB outlets they've given us, there's one located here in the front cupholders and another one above the driver's seat, which is awesome, especially if we want to plug in a dash cam in the future, but also be able to Connecting our devices while on the move, we decided not to install a swivel seat because our living space is in the back, so we didn't think about it.

We needed to add living space here because we have a lot in the back of the vehicle. Plus we also chose not to put a headliner shelf because Ford installed this awesome headliner shelf on top of which all your 2020 essentials are stored or is it 20 21 now so they are still essentials and of course hand sanitizer, which I feel like we should have been using this for years before. Honestly, I will never have a car where I no longer carry hand sanitizer. Here we have a shelf for everyone. of our outdoor essentials like hats, lights, gloves and mittens because sometimes it gets pretty cold in the rockies, the one feature this vehicle doesn't have that we really wanted and honestly didn't realize What I didn't have until I bought it was cruise control, no big deal, you can install it after market, we just haven't gotten around to it yet, but that doesn't make or break our love for the vehicle itself, one of the unexpected features of this Ford Transit.

It's all cup holders, there are a few here, but there are also two on each side that are huge, specifically this bottom one, which is big enough to fit our three-liter bottles. The most notable feature of our truck from the outside, at least, is this. cabinet right here that has allowed us to bring plumbing to our truck. We have a faucet with a working water pump. We don't have hot water in this van. Honestly, we just didn't feel like it was going to be totally necessary for us. We can wash dishes with cold water and that's totally fine.

We chose a very simple basic plumbing system because we are not plumbing experts and that means there are fewer things that can go wrong in our van. Also, we don't have a To start with a wet bath or shower which helps simplify our plumbing system, so our plumbing system consists of two tanks underneath, both are removable, they are dependent water containers and each has 26 liters. We are planning to store an additional fresh water jug, but have not purchased it at this time. We have a third of those Reliance Aquatainers, but we haven't been able to find a way to make it fit properly in our van in a way that we are happy with and in order to access the Reliance aquatainers, you can simply remove the face of the cabinet that it fits into.

It is magnetized. We also have two drawers that we have integrated into this cabinet. We have one that opens this way for our toiletries, for example we have deodorants, toothbrushes, toothpaste, body lotion. name it, it'll probably be here and we also have a drawer at the bottom for random cleaning supplies and our trash, some trash bags with paper towels, anything you can think of needing for household cleaning that would probably go under the sink of your house is under rsync also now there is an important hidden feature about this setup that we have not shown or talked about anywhere in our truck building series and that is that this faucet has a swivel head which means that if we ever need wash our hair or shower no problem we have a solar shower in the back if we want to have a slightly more intensive shower but in the short term this is a pretty decent way to wash our hair our sure flow water pump is on the cabinet here is also on, which means we can just turn it on and off.

This makes

life

quite easy. The most important thing to me when we were building this van, besides the bed, was the kitchen, but before we go there I just wanted to quickly show you this nifty shoe storage we have, honestly this could be a completely wasted space, but we have a support area under our cabinets that allows us to store shoes under our cabinets and also under here to make good use of the space. We have also placed these fantastic coir mats here at the front entrance and also at the back, which we have attached with velcro, which means we can easily take them out to clean without them bringing any more dirt into the van that we also have . here, as you can notice, some white rugs that, if you're my mom, you think are very risky, however, they cost two dollars from ikea, so if they get dirty, they will bleach them.

My future problem is inside the entire truck, edge to edge. We chose luxury vinyl plank flooring. The brand we chose is durable because it is durable, closes with a click, and is also waterproof, which was very important to us when we were out handling things all the time. We seal the edges with vinyl or vinyl stair edging. Stair nosing depending on where you are from and it turned out pretty good, we would say it would be nice to have hardwood but in a van it's just not practical, we almost made the mistake of buying stick on vinyl planks which would be a big mistake. because it won't get stuck in the various climates we plan to take our van through, so clicking and locking was essential to making sure we kept this up as long as possible.

Having a kitchen in a van was a big deal for us, if you had followed us since last year you would know that we lived in a minivan for two months where we did not have the ability to cook inside, we could only cook outside, meaning we were constantly subject to whether it was raining or windy. It's just not always fun, at least here we can close the door, protect ourselves from the wind and cook in peace. We made, I would say a pretty large kitchen, all things considered, it's about 44 inches long, this countertop and it does a really effective job.

To maintain all the kitchen essentials we need, we have chosen a combination of propane and induction for cooking. Our main one is our induction hob. Here we chose not to sink it so we could have more counter space. Maybe I could work here. if you wanted to have a standing desk or if we just wanted to have space to lie down or cook a meal that doesn't need to be cooked, it was really nice because we also brought with us an msr pocket rocket, this one is mainly for camping in our backcountry, but it is great for making coffee because it's a small stove that just plugs into propane and it fits really well here or even here so we don't need a big design to be able to cook.

So up here, right in our cooking space, is our carbon monoxide monitor, which is very important when you live in a van. We also designed this open shelf which is perfect for storing any fruits, vegetables and bread. Right now we don't have any, which is a little sad because Richard eats a banana a day in this upper cabinet here. I haven't checked it since we stopped driving. Anything could work. Oh no, we're fine up here. We keep our coffee, so normally our teapot will stay here. We also keep our pour over tons of coffee, this is two pounds of coffee, we even have real wine glasses, which I'm really excited about, and they're even real glass, although I think they might be pyrex, although I'd rather we just sip. mugs instead of wine glasses because I just don't want that breakable glass in our pan.

Future problem. We also keep some Tupperware containers here for leftovers. All our dishes, which are cheap from IKEA. A hand grinder. We could use an electric one, but. this one's actually not that bad, we have a lot of dry food here, salt, pepper, uh, maple syrup because we're from Canada, of course, and this one makes me a little embarrassed, we have a giant container of Nescafé instant coffee, this is really great for those quick mornings when you need a quick drink of coffee and you don't have time to prepare the whole thing so I'm embarrassed to say it but this is actually pretty good.

We keep everything secure with these magnets we found on Amazon, these hold up to about 25 pounds, they are pretty strong, we also used Blum compact hinges and pistons to keep the cabinet face up, we didn't have much drawer space but I really wanted a pantry removable. and I bought it, the top shelf is full of all our herbs and spices, yes there are a lot of them, 15 to be exact, plus a tex-mex mix. We also keep all the essentials like different curry powders, flour gnocchi, of course different teas. pasta and rice, as well as sugar, oil, and crackers because we are absolutely obsessed with crackers, so this drawer houses all of our pots and pans and a large cutting board.

We also kept a four cup measure for our mixing bowl. It's cool because it has a lid so you can put it back on, set it aside and forget about it, although it doesn't fit in the refrigerator, we also have these little propane bottles that we use for our msr pocket rocket, they come in larger bottles, but we don't use enough propane and this fits very well in the tent for us, so in this drawer here are all of our cutlery and utensils and our little cutting board that we use most often. We bought a cutlery organizer for this originally just to find out that I actually took the measurements of this drawer when I bought it so it was too big for this so now we only have one for now, it works.

We also have this really stylish electric lighter. These are really cool. one of these simply, instead of running out of fuel, simply refills it, soIt's also a little more eco-friendly and then of course the most important part of our refrigerator - we chose the Dometic CRX 65 Liter Refrigerator which is the perfect size. for us for preserving food for five to seven days and yeah, I'm totally embarrassed by what we have in our refrigerator right now, all we have is canned garlic with jam and it's kind of stuck right now and pesto, which means that it is definitely time to do it. some shopping, but the nice thing about this refrigerator is that it has storage on the side that fits a two liter milk jug, as well as a mini freezer, which is not good for my ice cream addiction, but now we can have too ice and frozen peas.

For emergencies all of our drawers have soft close slides, they cost more but also help keep everything in because you have to pull them a little to open them for our countertop. We chose an IKEA Carl B countertop. It is composite on the inside which may seem like a stupid decision, however it is a very lightweight material that is great for a truck when trying to save some weight and is easy to work with and affordable. We decided to make real mosaics. in our truck for all of our backsplashes, a lot of people are skeptical about doing this, but we've seen a lot of people use this same white subway tile and we have absolutely no problem with them, we just make sure to use extra mortar Strong when applied and grouted very well, it adds that extra touch that makes it feel like a real kitchen.

Here we chose to mount our lighting under the kitchen which is great for illuminating the space you are working in and it is on. a separate switch from the rest of the van lights in this van, we have installed a deluxe Max Air fan just above the kitchen space, allowing us to exhaust the kitchen fumes just to create a safer environment, but also to help minimize kitchen odors. I'm not going to delve too deeply into the electrical stuff. installation on our van because we already have two full videos on our channel dedicated to this topic, one of them is about how to wire your camper van and the other is about our entire electrical setup, so if you are looking for more information on a camper van electrical setup 12 volts for your truck.

I recommend that you watch those two videos first. Our vehicle runs on a lithium iron phosphate battery that we bought at linac. We've put it to the test, we've tested it and to the best of our knowledge. I can tell from the viktron app that the battery is actually as advertised, it is advertised as a 200 amp hour battery, it actually has 240 amp hours of capacity but the 200 amp hours is what is considered the usable capacity . We decided to make a rather controversial decision and not use solar power on our van and we did so for a couple of main reasons: we are Canadian, we spend a lot of time in the woods and we believe that when September and October roll around there won't be much natural light available to us.

We harness energy from the sun, so what we did was, instead of putting solar power on our truck, we bought a bigger battery. The only way we can charge this battery from inside the truck is with a 40 amp DC to DC charger that we purchased from Renegy. He's hooked. to our vehicle's starter battery which is under the driver's seat, so it was a really easy install and so far it works exactly as advertised. We chose to insulate our van. We use a combination of foam board and sheep's wool to maintain the climate of our van. controlled but ultimately the most important thing in a truck is to have active heating and cooling and since we plan to use this vehicle predominantly in the mountains the most important thing for climate control for us will be an active heating element.

We bought a wabosto airtop stc2000. This is a two kilowatt heater from Obasto and so far it works very well. This is the only thing we didn't install ourselves on this truck because I didn't really want to mess with the fuel lines. We didn't want to drop the fuel tank, this heater is connected directly to our fuel tank, we decided to mount the control panel right next to our bed so that when we wake up and it's a little cold outside we can press the start button and get the van up to temperature as for the active cooling well, unfortunately air conditioners are very energy intensive and we simply don't have the capacity to power a unit like that.

We have installed a vent on the roof that will help us circulate air in the vehicle. and we also bought a fan that has an exhaust option and an air intake option to give us more flexibility for the type of air circulation and active cooling we are looking for, living in a small space and having dedicated storage for things is really important , we keep all our clothes up here, we do a good job of sharing the space, we each have one full closet and then we share this one in the middle. I'm a little more organized than Richard.

I tend to quite like storage containers. a lot, so here I have all my main clothing, like my dresses, pants, t-shirts and a lot of sweaters and then in the middle we share space for all our socks, underwear and swimsuits at this point in the build of the truck. You're probably wondering where our bathroom is. We didn't want to build a dedicated shower stall because it would take away some of the sight lines and opening of the van, so we came up with a solution now if you've been following our trip. When building this van you would know that we originally intended for our toilet to be in the sink cabinet, unfortunately when it arrived it was a half inch too big because the measurements online were wrong, that's fine so we had to find a new one.

home

for the toilet here, so we kept our Tetford 135 on the bench here, it's not the convenient slide-out toilet we thought we were going to have, but it's much more luxurious than what we had in the minivan, which wasn't a toilet .

As you can see, we haven't had to use it yet because it's still covered in plastic wrap and all the pieces are still wrapped up here, but it's your standard porta potty. You add liquids to the bottom. You can drain it. It has a Honestly, I haven't even read the instruction manual and I don't know where it is, so we may never end up using the toilet, but it's a convenient feature that makes it easier for midnight peas from the supermarket. Here we also keep a few extra tools, our laundry bag, a spare Agm battery in case we need to jump start our vehicle, and surprisingly, we also store a tent.

We look for a backcountry campsite from time to time and we also like to have a tent in case we need to reserve a spot at a first-come, first-served campground, like our favorite, Wilcox, which is in Jasper National Park, We can also access the storage under our bench by folding down this nifty little cabinet here, which can also double as a nice country kitchen table if needed. We also have our two-burner Coleman stove for added cooking capacity. We have some containers including a shower container and a tool container. Our sleeping bags and our camping equipment in the field.

It's necessary that one of the most important things for us when we were in the planning stages of building our van was to maximize our space because we are not dealing with the typical size van that you see on YouTube, so what we have done here is I created two distinct and completely different living spaces, so our first setup is our living room setup complete with our bench, we reused four inch thick foam to keep our butts well padded and it's just a living room Nice, warm and welcoming, but here's the real deal, my personal favorite.

As an element of the entire van, our bedroom, we built a folding bed that allows us to simply store our bed during the day and fold it up for the night. This is a full size double bed, check it out, and we slept so well we bought a six bed. inch thick memory foam mattress and I really feel like the space has been completely transformed. It really makes me feel like this truck is much bigger than it is. If there's one thing we've learned so far from living in a vehicle, it's that having a really comfortable, really spacious bed is just as valuable as having a good kitchen is one thing, but getting a good night's sleep is very important in a van.

I can't stress this enough because of the way the ceiling is arched, we had to have the folding beds sit a little bit away from the wall which meant we were going to have space behind the walls so we made sure to take advantage. well the space by putting in some cabinets and some shelves, which add a totally different aesthetic than what you normally see in a van right now houses some plastic plants because I can't keep the real ones alive some of our favorite memories and then during the day we keep all our bedding here on the shelves and we also keep our cushions like these on the shelves also in this closet here we have all our extra bedding like pillowcases and towels and in this one here we keep some books, an extra fan and a large mirror that is perfect for getting ready in the morning.

Also mention that there are some additional features here on the rear of the vehicle. We put hooks on this side that are perfect for all of our jackets. We also have blackout curtains that we have both in the front of the vehicle and in the back. vehicle that we have connected using magnetic hooks, it does not come off very easily from Amazon. They are hundred pound magnetic hooks, so they stay up. Bye, the best part about building your own truck is that you can do it completely your own way. If you want to include all the features you want in a truck to make it as comfortable as possible for you, this may not be everything you're looking for in a truck, but it's certainly everything we wanted in our truck and honestly, I'm very glad we did it ourselves and took the time to learn all the skills necessary to be able to build this truck.

If you have any questions about anything you saw in this video, feel free to leave us a comment below if there are any questions. Anything you haven't seen on our truck that you can put on yours, we suggest purchasing a truck and converting it yourself because the project is as rewarding as it is difficult. A special thank you to our sponsors for making videos like this possible. You're looking for behind-the-scenes content and early access to all of our releases in the coming months. We'd love for you to join us on Patreon. Let's take the path we have moved to.

They've been going for almost a month now and we haven't been able to get out, but the tide is finally turning and we're about to start the van and head to the west coast of Canada to move and live our van life, so hit the subscribe button . to make sure you don't miss any of our adventures and we'll see you on the west coast of the country next week.