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I bought a van. That's the van that I bought.
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June 6th, 2016 marks the day that I gave some sucker 2000 pieces of paper for
this Chevy 1994 G20 Gladiator Edition that I named Gladys, that is my home.
She came fully loaded, one might say like a baked potato, with a fully functioning
wheelchair lift and 65,000 miles. I camped around New England in practically just
a metal box with a mattress and a cooler. This is Alex. Can you see him?
There he is. He's got a bed right there. I've got my bed over here and then, yeah,
there's the lift. And then in August I took her back to Kansas and I built out
the inside. This is how that went. Today is Day One of my van build. Today the
only goal is just to strip everything out of it, get it all completely gutted.
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I'm going to need help getting the wheelchair lift out.
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My friend Lindsey's been helping me for like the past two hours and we got the wheelchair lift out!
That is all of the garbage. With the help of Waboosh *Michael Kelly *, and Lindsey, we
installed the sub floor.
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Boom. There we go. We got in the floor. Sub floor is in completely.
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I framed the walls with two-by-twos. That was confusing.
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Not perfectly square. But um, neither is the van.
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I insulated with R-13 fiberglass. We had it in the basement and so it's free.
So that's what I'm going to use on the walls.
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I then installed laminate flooring for one of the walls. I wasn't even close.
Boom. Much better.
I have to take all that off. The laminate apparently expands and contracts, and as soon as I get into cold
weather it's going to contract and pull itself off the wall, basically. And so,
instead of having to replace it in six months I should just take it down now.
Instead chose to install cedar paneling...
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We kind of insulated the ceiling and then installed a piece of plywood for the ceiling.
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I bought the wrong side swivel seat and installed it anyway. The base of
the seat is wider than the swivel. That's how I fixed it. Two straps, two holes, two
bolts, and then the same thing back there. I had to cut it off with the saw zaw in
order to be able to swivel around that. It was getting stuck on it. And I fixed it.
So, four straps, four bolts, four nuts and a lot of washers.
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I built a bed frame.
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Installed a max fan. Not to be confused with the fantastic fan because the max fan is better.
I went down to the basement and I started working on my floor.
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My solar panels just got here. Got the charge controller. I got the cables, the brackets,
the panels, the fan is installed and I got solar panels. And, in a few days, I'll have power
because I don't have the batteries yet, but these are getting instal led today.
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Got that 200 watt solar system and a 200 amp hour battery bank going on.
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I struggled to build a cabinet.
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It's not the prettiest cabinet in the world, but I made it and it's in my van.
And then I built another one that was definitely better. That is getting that put on it in and that and it's
going to go over that and that'll be my counter top.
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I made Lindsey do the staining. Thank you for doing that Lindsey.
I installed a Spalted Maple counter.
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I shredded foam for the cushions. That was fun.
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Sweet, dude. And it was done. So this is the great unveil. Dun dun dun.
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From getting to on the road was about 35 days, August 3rd to September 6th. I did not work every single day.
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So now it's been pretty close to a year since I bought Gladys. We've been on the
road. We've literally gone coast to coast and now we're headed up to Alaska.
Gladys is by no means perfect, but she is my home and I did build her and so I love
her. I have considered driving her off a cliff before, but I didn't do it. That's
what actually matters. Anyway, I'm working on adding some additions to Gladys like
something like a light bar and I also want to change the fridge situation and
since we're talking about the fridge I should probably tell you about that
situation. That's a freezer because it has more
insulation and there's a relay that runs the inverter because there's a
temperature probe inside of the freezer and that keeps it at refrigerator
temperature. Doing it this way, it's pretty efficient, but it's way cheaper
than buying a DC compressor fridge. This way is about $230 opposed to like 600
plus for a DC compressor fridge. A downside is since it's side loading every
time you open it, it cycles on because all the cold air falls out. So what I
want to do is I want to get rid of the box and possibly put like a DC
compressor fridge or at least some sort of fridge that is top loading in that
space and then where the fridge is now, I would remove that obviously and turn
that into a cabinet and then I could move all my food that is in that box into
the cabinet and that would free up all of that space and it would be
a lot nicer. That's what I want to do, but obviously I haven't done that yet. I have
one gallon of propane for cooking and that lasts me about three months and
then I can carry 7.5 gallons of water and I can go completely off grid for a
week without having to resupply. I average about 16 miles to the gallon
depending on the terrain. Under the bed is all sorts of storage. That there is my
pee bottle. I can't stand in here so I have these towels that I kneel on. I also
have two anchor points where I can set up a hammock in here and recently I've
been sleeping in the hammock and I have been enjoying it. I want to redo
the cushion situation because those are lumpy. Whenever I built this van I was
pretty tight on cash and so I did everything as cheap as possible.
Hence the lumpy cushions. I bathe whenever I can and sometimes that ends
up being in a river and toilets are actually surprisingly super easy to find.
They're everywhere. We live in a land full of toilets. Seriously though there
there's an absurd amount of toilets I think sometimes.
The build cost me about three and a half grand and almost all of that went on
credit and that's just reality, that is not advice. The van, the build, and any
mechanical fixes have cost me about seven thousand dollars. So seven grand
for a home on wheels and I don't pay rent. I think, I think that's pretty reasonable.
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I really think that this lifestyle, the van life lifestyle, is the
most attainable as far as like whatever's put on the internet and is
super attractive. I think van life is definitely the most attainable.
It's super affordable. Once you get into the van and after you have the build,
expenses are like nothing. You have no rent. But, van life is totally not for
everybody. The road can be a hard place sometimes and it can get pretty lonely,
but it's allowed me to create the life that I want to live and I know for many
others that's what it's allowed them. It allows you a freedom that you wouldn't
have living in a conventional housing unit.
There's no leases. You own the van outright. You can go where you want.
You can stay where you want. You don't have a reoccurring payment. There's just so many
benefits to living in a vehicle or just living smaller. To live in a van you
totally need like a level of resilience and a pretty high tolerance for
being uncomfortable because, I can't even stand up in my house, like that's a thing
that I have to deal with every single day. And that's not the best thing like
there are totally some downsides to living in a van, but the upsides that it
offers me personally are totally worth it. Without my van and without this
channel I have no idea what I would be doing with my life, but I don't think I
would be enjoying it as much as I do now. Be sure to follow me on Instagram and
Twitter @Dylan Magaster. I will be doing a Q&A here in the near future that
will be announced on Instagram and Twitter so if you have questions that
you would like to ask, be sure to follow me on those two platforms. Plus I'm just
trying to get the numbers up because they're pretty weak over there.
Together we've made it to over a hundred thousand subscribers, that is quite rad,
so welcome everybody. I'm Dylan Magaster, for those of you that don't know, welcome
to the family and let's let's get to a million aye! Why did I say aye? Am I Canadian?