Young Professional Tries Vanlife | Custom Van Build & Tour

My name is Shawn I live in San Diego I work as a sales director for a biotechnology company. I go to school on the weekends, so I'm getting my MBA at USC in Los Angeles. I really enjoy being outside of what he directed. To you I feel like my whole life has come down to this point, no I'm just kidding, when I first moved to San Diego from New Hampshire we had always joked about it, we used to call it the van scam because you We're kind of ripping off society, so we joked about it a lot, you know, my friend James and I had always talked about it, we used to joke that the house was like the most expensive storage unit in the world and you know.

We worked from 9:00 to 5:00 on the days we came home, slept at night and then every weekend we went out, you know, on some adventure, rock climbing or surfing to Baja, shooting up to 395 in the Sierras for this. kind of epic climbs over the weekend so we were at the house literally going to bed and then I saw you for the first time in a couple of years, you had driven in shyla at the time your hatchback and you were living in the road like a bag of garbage, you just finished rafting in the Grand Canyon, you were biking all over the country and you know, with the lifestyle my friends and I were kind of weekend warriors that They worked from 9:00 to 5:00 from Monday to Friday.

Friday and we admired that lifestyle, that dirty lifestyle that we always were, you know, I wonder how he knows that. You know, it was always in the back of my mind that I would like to do something like that. And you know, a couple of things happened. I turned 30, so it was a big milestone. I hadn't done it yet so it's like I'm not getting any

young

er and the second big part was that we got a 60 day notice to move. I left our house and then what ended up happening? I'm wondering if I'm going to do this and suddenly the perfect truck appears on my bidding app.

I am in a 2014 Ram Promaster and the reason I chose this truck is because it is the widest of the trucks. I don't think you can quote me on this, but the Promaster was able to check all the boxes for me in that there is still room in it and I was also able to sleep side to side. During the long journey through the truck from the time I bought it, I had 40 days to make it livable, so I think my favorite part of

build

ing the truck so far has basically been that all my friends have been so supportive. and helping me

build

it, a lot of people came or let me go to their places where everyone pitched in and made this happen, friends who let me use their backyards while I lived in them. by giving me power sources to place tools, I have a good friend in the desert hunter, who is an architect, who helped me come up with a lot of ideas about the interior, which we have also been very careful about, so yeah, just everyone the friends I owe a THANK YOU so much for helping this come together over the last 40 days, I wouldn't have been able to do it Oh Alex, yes, of course, yes, sorry, two days, yes, yes, well, what? where are we talking about that?

So you'd be happy if we got the roof on this on a shelf today I'd be happy if we put the roof on today these are like the top four questions that everyone asks you when you tell them you're moving and it's like the The first question is where are you going to go? to the bathroom. People have this weird anxiety about where your bathrooms will be, which I think is an interesting social experiment. I guess for me living in the city of San Diego made it legal. living in your car a few, that was actually one of the things that lined up as I was thinking about van life, the city passed the law that you can live in your car.

I think the really cool thing is that I've got like you know a million dollar beachfront property every morning, if I want it, I'll just pull up in the bay or something on the side of the frontage road and you know, the Another morning I parked there, woke up and the view out my front window was the ocean, I mean people pay millions of dollars for those showers so far, that's probably been the easiest. I usually wake up around 6:00 6:30 you drive to the gym and do a quick workout after I'm done. go to the shower and get ready for my day and then on to the bathroom, which is what everyone really wants to know.

I think it's probably no secret that most people just use their favorite bottle and then number two. There are bathrooms all around us, you don't have to be ashamed to use them, it's not for everyone, I mean, you have to give up, like I've lived in a lot of different cities, like the last seven. I've lived in five different cities over the years, so it was easy for me. I didn't have a lot of furniture and everything I had I sold, we got rid of it and it was really nice and liberating to do it. I bought the truck. for twenty one thousand and a bunch of shelves and I sold all the shelves for about 1500.

So far I put in probably over 5000, so totally net like 24, welcome to my truck buddy, come on in. I think it's worth mentioning that the truck is still in the process of being built, so what you have here is not the mature product. I think it's just going to be a living project that I'm constantly adding to, which is really exciting. Why don't we start with the refrigerator? I just bought this one, it's the ARB 63 quart refrigerator, so I know they have a reputation for these, they actually use less straw than a headlamp. I think it was like 1.3 or 2 amp hours once they're running and Great, it has enough room to fit, you know, whatever I need for me for a week, which is awesome and also consumes very little power from my battery, which is also great.

I don't really enjoy cooking. and so I've seen people who have built really big kitchens, you know, counters that take up, you know both sides and for me, you know, I cook minimal, minimalist meals that I love, I drink tea every morning, etc. for me I just needed room for a sink that I have but haven't had time to cut and plumb the plumbing yet but a 12 by 12 sink that will go here and then also enough room to have one. stove with burners on this side of the van, the cabinets are made of oak wood, they open like this.

I have basically 14 gallons of water that I can store here. Eventually I will have a five gallon bucket for a large water tank. here to the left of them, so I'll have my sink that draws fresh water out of here through a small marine pump that then goes to the gray water tank that I can empty from there. Well, my favorite part of the van is having this super convenient, really easy, one burner stove that you can just pull out and put on top. You can see that it doesn't take up much counter space. You unlock all four, you unlock the fuel and you just turn it on and it's very easy to start. clean it and then just store it right underneath so that's where the Grand Tour of the kitchen is.

One thing you will learn while living in it is especially in the mornings, the less eyes looking at you the better or at night. So I built this little homemade curtain that keeps the light out, keeps people's eyes off me as much as possible and gives you a little more privacy, moving into the lounge area. I have too many. pillows in this van because I just moved from a house where we had a guest bedroom with a ton of pillows, so I said, well, let's not throw them away, I'll save them as couch cushions, this is one of my favorites. parts of the van because you have a comfortable place to sit and hang out, you can spread out like that if you want if you're working.

I have a bunch of outlets lined up here twelve volt USB C and then USB chargers, as well as several light switches that will control different lighting areas of the van, but probably the most interesting part of this bench is the storage options I get, so I haven't even filled it all out yet. room to go, but if you look down here, you have room for the three different soft bags here, a little bit more space here that I haven't really decided what I'm going to do with, I guarantee I'll find something. To put it out there, I haven't fully loaded this with all my gear yet.

I have access to all my electricity back here. I'm not an electrician, so don't judge my work, but I basically run the electricity for this fuse box. here, which then goes down to my battery and the battery is connected to a 30 or 40 amp hour MPPT controller from Renergie the Rover. That's been amazing, that's been great to see. I have 200 watt panels on the roof so I know it's just a great power source and then I also have a battery isolator connected to my primary battery that runs off my second secondary battery so any excess charge that comes out from the alternator to my main battery it goes back to the secondary battery but there is a you know it's a smart isolator so when the truck is off this battery can't pull out the main battery and drain it so it's a neat part of the storage underneath, but the best part about this bench is what happens behind it.

You know, I work in a

professional

environment. I sell to doctors. You know, day in and day out I have to wear suits and shirts and work for the man, which obviously isn't ideal, but it pays the bills, so I needed a place to. we put all of that away, so what we did was we ended up building a closet space behind the bench, which has been really amazing. We have a place to hang all the

professional

clothing here, some extra storage for sweaters and some winter clothes, extra towels which these are huge if you live in a van.

I have two of them and I have this one hanging on magnets. I think magnets are also huge if you live in the van, but you know, these dry out quickly. Know the micro, any towel you know, it doesn't take a lot of time to dry, it doesn't create much odor, you can use them forever and they don't smell which is amazing and they absorb water. alright, that's something I would recommend to everyone and then this piece here is actually held on by 25 pound magnets so basically you just lift it up and put it in place and that's it and then my pride and joy.

I've actually never seen this done before, but I put the bed on a sliding rail that's secured from the back, so I'd have to crawl over the bed and do it, which we don't have to do now, so I'm not going to be the one. place where all the fun happens, but essentially I have a more permanent solution in the mail right now, but for now I hook a piece of rope to a carabiner here that's hooked to a little loop on the bed. that's like locking it in place, but we can remove it and then what we do is we just push it forward and you have access to all your equipment on the back of your hand, it's something I dreamed of, I was trying to think. one night on how to get to the equipment in the back without having to go outside and it would be under the bed so I had to figure out what to do to move the bed and basically came up with sliding tracks on ball bearings. pieces that are on some ball bearings and this thing just shoots up and down.

This is a recommendation from our own Alex. The fan here has probably been the best thing I've ever installed. First of all, everything works with a remote control. It controls blowing air in and out at various speeds, has temperature settings, and also creates the perfect white noise when you blow air out for sleeping at night. It's just this really lovely little hump and I swoon over it, which is amazing. So the fans have been amazing. Greetings to the others. The other thing that's great about the sleeping area is that I can sleep, you know, on my side in the man's suite.

Yes, this is the bed area, obviously, where I sleep. The bed was built. of a 3/4 inch ply and it sits on some aluminum that runs sideways across the truck and is embedded in those beams, so it kind of secures the bed, the mattress. I couldn't use a conventional mattress because I ended up using it. I wanted something a little smaller than a full size mattress and ended up being very lucky. I went to Home Depot and they had 3 inch foam that was cut to a little over six feet by 12 inches so I bought two feet 24 inches so I bought two vans which is the exact size of my bed so that my bed is 73 or 74 inches on the platform by 48 inches wide, which is a standard piece of plywood, and it worked very, very well and then what I did was I bought a two-inch memory foam protector to put on on top of the stiffer foam, which makes it really very comfortable and you don't even notice that there are two pieces of foam out of six.

I am exactly 6 feet tall and I can really hear it easily lying in bed without you knowing it. I have a lot of room for my feet and my head, so I always had the idea of ​​putting a light under the bed as a kind of reading light, so what we did was on this. piece of wood here, this beam crosses, we use the sawtable to make a nice cut to embed LED lighting strips, which was really cool, but then while I was visiting my friend who is an architect in Joshua Tree, my hunter friend had this really good idea is to use someone who's Keurig he helped with plastic, this plastic cardboard that he had used in the structure of a workshop that he built there and that glowed very well at night thanks to the lights inside, so we ended up taking the same LED track lighting. and running it through the plastic helped by Keurig and I ended up putting that on a dimmer so you can see during the night, you can adjust it to whatever you want, if you want a nice soft light you can turn it all the way down, but if you really want to illuminate. the place where you can, you can do that too, the hardest part, I think just for me, it's been the best part too, but just dreaming how it's all going to fit together, I spent countless hours up at night brainstorming, you know , for the activities I like to do and the lifestyle I live, how am I going to put together this giant, complicated piece of a puzzle to fit all of that?

I've spent many sleepless nights lying there, you know, thinking about this daunting task, but I think that's also the most exciting part because then you get to see the dream come true as you're putting it together, that's the question of the million. A couple of guys in my MBA class, one of them works in the casino business, put together a group betting on how I'm going to make it, but man, I don't want to put a number on it, but if you twisted my arm, I'd say one, two years, easy, it's been a lot easier than I thought it would be if like the lights on a camping van are very simple, you know, it's kind of a combination of, you know, a half-decade dream with, you know , just some things in my life, you know, kind of shake things up and push me in that direction, so I think the ideal thing that's going to happen is that I'll have more freedom and more mobility to have more time to do the things that I want to do.

I love to do.