Today it's been about four months since we moved into our van, our full-time home here
in New Zealand, so today I wanted to share the best and the worst parts about our van build.
And mainly what we regret, and what we would have done again, if we did another van, which we most
likely won't do. I watched a lot of these videos before building the van so I hope this video can
be helpful to you. So let's start with the things that we regret, or would have done differently
if we built the van again. Number one is the ceiling. As it is now the roof is not completely
even because although it worked perfectly to put plywood slats at the roof instead of solid wood,
the problem was our framing. Our van is a little bit different in that it doesn't have a wood
framing underneath all this structure, instead it has a metal framing. So it was incredibly
incredibly difficult, and it took us many hours just to screw holes through the metal,
so that's why the roof didn't turn out as even as I planned, but I still love it so if you were
to do a slatted roof I definitely suggest plywood because it's cheaper and it's also a lot lighter
than solid wood. But I would definitely recommend not having a metal frame in the base of your van.
The second thing that we would do differently is for sure the water storage. We live full-time
in our van in New Zealand, which means we needed to have 25 liters of fresh water storage minimum
to be legally allowed to camp in our van. The problem with this is that it's not quite enough,
at least not enough to be convenient. We need to refill the water every three days
when we're not at a campsite, which we are now for example. So if we were to do another van
I would definitely get a second holding tank, maybe a larger water tank, but there's another
reason why we couldn't do that in this build and I'll get to that on my next point. [Music]
So it's not necessarily a part of the build, but it definitely is a part of the build in terms of
choosing what van to buy. We absolutely love our van, but it is a non-turbo van, which means going
up hills can be quite difficult. Because of this we had to make choices in terms of keeping the
van as light as possible. So the engine, having a newer, I don't know or stronger engine, of course
would make it more convenient to live in the van, especially since we travel quite far up and down
hills. Currently driving uphill we normally drive in gear 3, and that can be quite stressful when
you have trucks or impatient people behind you and there's nowhere to pull off. So that's the
main part of it, I don't really care that's going slow, but the stress when other people get angry
in traffic can be quite challenging. Number four that I would absolutely definitely remake, and
this one is quite embarrassing because I made it myself completely and I have no one else to blame
but myself, and that is our DIY window covers. I watched this fantastic video of I think a British
guy doing his own window covers, and they are impeccable. So I planned to do the same things
with our window covers, however, it was one of the last things on the build, I was extremely tired,
stressed, our budget was like non-existent so it was a very stressful time in general,
and I finished them in the middle of the night and I was not happy when I was doing it, and
you can see that in how they turned out. They're just slightly wonky, and they're not perfect and
they're not that convenient, and they just don't fit our windows perfectly apart from the front
one, that one is great. So if we had a spare $300 I would definitely just redo them, but make them
with some calm music in the background, otherwise they're great. And the last thing that we would
definitely redo if we had the time or the choice, it would be very simple fix though
so maybe we will fix it, and that is where we have our phone charger outlet. So I built our
electricity cupboard so that it was easy to access at the top part, and more difficult to access in
the bottom part. However I would have actually put my phone charger at the top. I put it at the
bottom because I thought it was so ugly, and I also thought at the time I put it in that that
was going to be connected to our fridge, but we ended up hardwiring the fridge instead of plugging
it in. Now it's actually only used for charging our phones, so it would be nicer to just have it
on the top part in our cupboard, so it would just be easier to reach, but it's not the end of the
world. But now to the things in our van that are our favorite parts that we can't live without,
and that I would put in another van build, just yes I would absolutely put it in another van
build. The first thing that is an absolute must I think after having lived with it is
a footstep. In a sense I think we're super lucky because our van came with a footstep. Neither of
us thought that was something we needed, or were gonna use but it's come super in handy. It makes
walking in and out a lot easier and it makes it feel a bit more homely as well. And it's
also a really good place to put our camping stove when we cook dinner, since we cook all our dinner
outside when we're not a camping place like this one. So that was a really useful tool,
and yeah I would highly recommend getting one installed, not sure how difficult it
is so I just feel very fortunate that our van came with it. The second thing is something
we've got a lot of comments on in our full van tour video, and that is our convertible bed.
This is one of those things we discussed over and over again, for basically the first three
months of the van build, we hadn't decide what we were going to do. But in the end we decided
that we'd rather have the space than not having to convert and make the bed every single day,
and we are so so happy we did it. Because even after four months of having to convert the bed
every single morning, and we do actually make the bed every single morning and night, it actually
is something that we look forward to. Especially living in such a small space it feels like such
a privilege and a luxury every time we make the bed back into the couch, because we regained so
much floor space. We would just not have it any other way and I'm very very happy we decided to
go with a convertible bed. The third thing in our van that I absolutely love is our solar system.
We're in New Zealand so sun isn't really an issue, and I was super nervous being completely off grid
because there are so many people on the internet, granted maybe they're all in Europe or Canada,
but that struggle or that say that you simply can't have enough solar power on your roof. But
in our case that's definitely not true, we have way more electricity than we need even
after three four days of shade or rain, so it's definitely nice to be able to feel like
we have abundant electricity. And hopefully if our budget allows I will soon upgrade our 300
watt inverter to a much bigger inverter so that we can boil water inside, because then yeah, it
couldn't get any better than that. Number four is another thing we discussed for quite a long time,
I really wanted side windows, my husband didn't, and after "many about's and but's" as we say in
Swedish, we decided to not have side windows. For me the deciding factor was for sure cost,
and also insulation, but what we found after living in it for four months is that not having
side windows is probably the best choice we made. Instead we installed a bigger skylight,
we also have windows on our back doors that have protective film out of it so people can't really
see in, and that is just so nice to be more stealth. Both when were driving but especially
when we're in the city. And the last thing that's really a part of the build that we decided a lot
about, and we got this inspiration from I'll link his channel here, but I'm not sure what
his name is, but he talked about using screws to attach things in your van instead of glue.
When we first got the van I think we spent at least 10 hours, if not 20, getting rid of old
glue. We were literally standing with a heat gun and like a scraper to get rid of glue that was
just attached to everything in the van. It was a terrible job, it made it so much more difficult,
and it was just not fun. So we decided that we didn't want anyone else having to do that in case
they wanted to change something, and also for our peace of mind in case something breaks behind the
walls, or for example we have all the electrical wiring inside of the walls and we actually did
have to change that at one point. And it was very easy because we could just unscrew our kitchen,
and then unscrew the walls and have super easy access to our wiring. So those were
our five best and worst things about our van build. I would have definitely done
those things differently but given the time and the budget and everything else,
you know, I'm very very happy with her our van turned out. You can see the full van tour here
on our channel if you haven't already. If you have any questions please leave them below,
I love answering questions about our van, and thank you so much for watching.
Remember to like and subscribe if you haven't already, and I'll see you all next week. Bye!