in this video we're giving you a tour of
our budget campervan conversion for the
past three years and the summers we've
been using this campervan to live in to
work and to travel it's a 2002 Ford
e-150 and we bought it originally for
$5,000 Canadian when we first got it it
was just a passenger van with a bunch of
seats in the back so we removed those
and we created on a really low budget
just a nice functional livable space
before getting to the tour we want to
say a quick thank you to Squarespace for
sponsoring this video we'll give you
more information at the end now let's go
take a look at our camper van so when
you first come in we have the kitchen
lounge and entrance over here we built a
little drop-leaf table so it just opens
up like this on this door we have some
soft storage we actually made this out
of a shoe rack and we cut it up into
several different pieces and used it
pretty much everywhere in the van this
is kind of the kitchen stuff so we got
spices some cutlery can opener those
hand sanitizer here and down here we
have our water purifier our curtains
rubbing alcohol some garbage bags over
here is our trusty cooler very low-tech
food storage
we don't actually put ice in it because
it's too complicated and annoying so we
mostly buy food that doesn't need
refrigeration but for fresh fruits and
vegetables and things like that we try
to buy them every couple days and eat
them right away for water we have a
total of five gallons of water so we
just carry two of these big jugs here
these will usually last us a few days
and that's the one thing that we got to
keep up with really is every time that
we can fill up water we
because running out really sucks for
cooking we just have a small butane
stove over here's our clothes basket
this is where Matt and I keep both of
our clothes so it gets pretty messy
pretty quickly and this is definitely
not an ideal way to store clothing it's
it drives us a little crazy trying to
keep everything organized so that's why
we put this blanket on top and then it
makes it look like it's tighter than it
really is
this is probably the weirdest thing in
our campervan I'll reveal it now we have
a toilet right in the middle of the
whole van so we just line the bucket
with a biodegradable plastic bag and we
put wood chips on top of anything that
we do in there we never pee in here
because mixing the two can make it
smelly so we use a pee bottle instead
because we made the toilets so enormous
we're able to store toilet paper and the
box of bags in there and some wood chips
as well our first summer in the van was
really really hot and we were very
uncomfortable we had this thermometer
and sometimes the needle was all the way
off the chart because it was so hot in
here
so we came up with a few different
things so that we could be a little bit
more comfortable in here first we are
always looking for shade and that helps
a lot so that the van doesn't heat up
too hot the second thing is this really
cheap sunshade that goes on the
windshield and it's the best 10 or $15
we've ever spent we put it up everywhere
we go and it just helps keep the Sun out
of the van we bought this little fan
that's a lifesaver and it runs off of
our solar power battery and it can run
all day and all night and it hardly uses
any power and then probably the most
important thing is last year we
installed this roof vent it's just a
little round one you just pop it open
that runs off of our 12-volt battery and
you can just turn it on here and so that
way when we have the side windows open
it's sucking hot air out and drawing
fresh air in and creating a lot of air
circulation and so this way the van is
probably 10 or 20 degrees cooler than it
was that first summer another thing we
did is we added a piece of foam and a
carpet to the floor to make it more
comfortable so when you're in a van
where you can't stand up you end up
being on your knees all the time looking
through the cooler
folding clothes and basically doing all
of your day-to-day living and so you can
see here we've got a area rug a little
piece of foam and then there's the
original carpet there and just having
those three layers makes it a lot more
comfortable to live in here for the bed
we built a super simple platform with a
piece of plywood four by six and then
some two by four four legs this was a
super simple construction
we're actually surprised that it's still
holding but this we've had no problems
with this whatsoever the only thing that
we did change is we added two strips at
each end just to solidify where we sit
all the time and then we also bolted it
to the frame of the van and this is
definitely our favorite feature of the
whole van is our retractable bed so it
has three positions bed for sleeping
super lounge for lounging and then work
mode which is how we set it up when we
spend a ridiculous amount of hours
sitting and working at the computer so
basically this is a really simple system
that we've developed there's two sets of
sticks two different heights
this is workaholic mode with the tall
sticks so we just remove these two stick
we can then put the shorter ones in and
as you can see it's really strong we
glued and screwed a piece of wood here
and all the weight is onto that piece of
wood so it's really strong and then we
just remove all the sticks to go into
full sleeping mode and just to show you
how it works we glued and screwed
another strip of plywood here put some
pretty heavy-duty door hinges and then
it's just another piece of plywood like
this that's on the hinges and because we
have a pretty thick futon we don't feel
this bump at all
another thing we love about this van is
all the windows so sometimes when we're
apart by a lake or by some mountains we
just get a beautiful panoramic view and
then we also sometimes get an amazing
view of a Walmart parking lot there's
more soft storage like I showed you
earlier with
that shoe rack we put some here which
have our little piece of soft storage on
the side of our bed and then we also
have more soft storage back here we
store most of our stuff under the bed so
we have these long plastic bins that we
can pull out like this this one has warm
clothing for the shoulders seasons and
flannel sheets and over here we have our
tool box and in this other plastic bin
we have extra parts and other tools that
we might need to fix the bin so we tried
to find a storage spot for every item
but the reality is that this is a tiny
space and that wasn't quite possible so
we just end up shuffling things around
so at night we might put some of our
bags in the front seats some stuff might
go back here and yeah that's just the
reality for power we installed 300 watts
of solar panels on the roof and we have
a 155 amp hour battery stored right here
underneath this table this is our charge
controller our inverter is down here and
then we plugged in a power bar so we can
plug in our laptops and it's a little
bit easier like this and we love it
we've been using it a ton it's provided
a lot more power than we thought it
would we can both use laptops all day
and one thing that we would like to add
is a small 12-volt fridge and I'm pretty
sure the system could totally handle
that side note we got the flexible solar
panels but if we were to do it again I
don't think we would get the flexible
solar panels they don't seem to last as
long and as you can see on the roof here
they seem to be a little bit damaged
after three years and I just don't think
it's as good of an investment as the
rigid solar panels another modification
we did last year is this fabric that we
added to the ceiling so we just took an
old bedsheet and then we took some old
pieces of wood to finish it and mount it
onto the top for privacy all the windows
are tinted there's also some blinds that
came with the van we added some curtains
and then we also added just a metal
string across here and some homemade
curtains to cut off the cockpit from the
to the van down here we have a carbon
monoxide detector and then up there we
have a smoke detector as you can see we
kept this can't prevent conversion
really simple and low-tech we didn't
want to install any really complicated
systems probably the most complicated
and expensive thing we put in was the
solar power system which we love and
we've used every single day that we've
been in the van but a cheaper way to get
the same amount of power would have been
to just install one house battery and
have it hooked up to our alternator
since we do so much driving we love this
camper van it feels just like home in
here we spent three amazing summers
living and working and traveling in this
van we did buy a van that has turned out
to need a lot of repairs every summer so
that can definitely get expensive and
annoying when we're on the road and we
need to stop constantly to get things
fixed and often we're in a rush because
we're working and we can't necessarily
stop to learn how to fix things
ourselves so we have considered buying a
newer van that would maybe need fewer
repairs and we've also noticed that when
we're spending long days editing in the
van it can start to feel a little long
just being in this seated position all
day long and so we do want to look into
getting a high-top van that we could
stand up in but that luxury does have a
pretty hefty price tag so we're kind of
at the point where we're looking at
alternatives and we haven't quite
decided what we're gonna do yet one
thing that has saved us a lot of money
with this van is the fact that it's
pretty stealthy it's not the stealthiest
van out there but we've never been
kicked out of any place where we've
stealth camped and so we have been able
to save a lot of money by not staying in
so many campgrounds again we want to say
big thank you to Squarespace for
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