hey there welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny and creative homes
before we get started with this week's video i'd like to thank our sponsor simply safe
if you'd like to learn more you can check out simplysafe.com backslash tiny house giant journey
so i'm really excited for this week's video because it features some of my team members
i am not able to be everywhere at once so i do not film all the tours for this channel anymore
i have had to hire out and when i do that i like to hire people living the lifestyle
i first heard about kelson j back when they were living in a schooly and of course we filmed a
tour of that after publishing their tour we kept in touch and i became really impressed
with the content they were producing on their own youtube channel so of course i hired them
to film for me now kelson j have downsized yet again and this time it's into a beautiful
self-converted van and kelson j aren't the only nomadic videographers that i've hired on this
channel so stay tuned because i might be featuring another one soon and don't forget to subscribe
and hit that notification bell so that you're alerted every single time i publish a new video
hi i'm kels and i'm jay and this is our van vessy
so before going tiny we actually had pretty normal lives i worked a sales job
a nine to five and i was in construction so before the van we actually lived in a bus and
the bus took us about eight months to build and we lived in the bus itself for almost two years
i think the reason why we started with a bus rather than a van is because of me i wasn't
ready to downsize and i didn't think i'd be able to live in a van but i quickly realized
when we were living in the bus that i really didn't need as much space to live as i thought
so after nearly two years of living in our bus bessie we made the hard decision to sell it we
were pretty depressed for about four days or so i felt like we lost the kid yeah we saw the
bus it was really hard but sometimes you have to say bye to good things for better things to come
and that's kind of what we had to do with our boss so now we're living and traveling
in our van vessy and we downsized again from the bus to the van just for the ease of getting around
so in the bus i got real stressed out driving it like round cities having to figure out if we
can even make it through a parking lot or not or like go down a dirt road and maybe we can't make
a three-point turn so for us the van was a great option because we can we can tasting anywhere
fits in one parking space we can adventure down some dirt roads knowing that we can turn around
if we need to that was the main turning point that took us from a bus to a van
so the van we built ourselves and it took us about two months and in total it cost us just
over 14 000 in materials it would have been one month but jay broke his collarbone so it set us
back a little bit but this man's a machine he can build like nothing i've ever seen before so
filming for tiny house giant journey the channel you are watching right now we get to film all over
the country so it works out really well for us we can kind of plan our routes around different
tiny houses working for jenna has definitely kind of helped us improve our editing our own filming
so it kind of goes hand in hand we just love filming editing and and anything with videography
when you walk in here over on the left hand side i know it doesn't look like much you guys but
we have a really functioning kitchen here that i'm obsessed
with so first things first we have our kitchen countertop both of these
go up underneath we have our sink hiding and our stove with an oven which i had to fight hard to
get this it was hard to figure out a way to make it work with a lack of storage but we figured out
a way we also have this pop-up countertop here which is great for extra space when i'm cooking
and then we have this hidden spice rack if you're a cook like me
not that i'm a cook but i enjoy cooking we also have this sang right here if not now when those
are words that we definitely live by so we wanted to have it front and center right when you walk
in it's the first thing you see up here we have these upper cabinets again push to open
lots of storage lots of room to put a lot of food in there
back to the brim of course down here we have all of our drawers and another thing that's really
nice is all these drawers are pushed to open so when we actually get up to drive we don't have
to latch anything they're just ready to go and that was one thing we kind of learned from our
bus conversion that we did not want to have to deal with again can't forget about pippa's joy so
here we have pippa's joy with all of her little cans of food beans that's a really
good game and some little cards as well but yeah this this drawer is dedicated to pitbull
then moving right along here right under this oven we have uh this little area for pipa
you'll see we have cat ears she goes right in there and her litter tray is under there a huge
recommendation i have for litter if you have a cat and you're in a small vehicle are these pellets
litter pellets you can get them on amazon or at walmart these don't smell like there's literally
never an odor there they're really easy to clean up they're a little bit more expensive but it's
totally worth it to not have that cat litter like the sand everywhere and that that odor so yeah
this is definitely highly recommended pippa enjoys it as well you also may have noticed this tea
towel it's more for decoration this was probably my most favorite gift that we've ever received we
were just with someone helping them with their bus build and this is what they gave us when we left
and it's just perfect you'll notice that almost everything in this van is related
to pippa and we designed it specifically for her people looks so cute so pretty work it girl
yes over here above the driver's seat you'll see we have a shelf we added this in so we have a lot
of extra storage here for things like our camera gear our wi-fi and this is our simply safe it's
a security system which we absolutely love so this van is not just our home it's also a vehicle
it's also our workplace and it has absolutely everything in it that we care about including
pipa and it's just really nice whenever we leave to have that peace of mind and know
that everything is safe whether you live in a van or a house simply safe makes it really simple to
protect your home so it takes less than an hour to install and starts with the base station
in our van we also have an indoor camera outdoor camera glass break sensor water sensor
panic button which will silently alert simply safe's 24 7 professional monitoring when pressed
and a motion sensor which can actually tell the difference between a cat and a human
which i think is pretty cool one of the sensors we rely on a lot is the temperature sensor
it'll actually alert us if the van gets too hot for pitbull while we're out because
as you guys know pippa is the most important thing in our lives and here's the keypad which we just
clicked to away whenever we leave the van please exit now i personally think the system's the best
because it's connected wirelessly to an app on our phones where we can check on the van so whether
we're out on a hike or out filming it'll alert us if anything's going on in the van while we're away
i feel like living this lifestyle living a nomadic lifestyle whenever you're in a new place it's just
nice to have that peace of mind feel safe and secure and simply safe really does that for us
so if you guys are also interested in simply safe you can actually get 20 off when you sign up for
the interactive monitoring plan and you also get your first month free just head to simplysafe.com
tiny house giant journey to learn more or you can also click the link below so opposite the kitchen
we have this chair now it was really important for us to have like an open feel for this van but
we also wanted to have seating so that's why we made this chair so this chair actually folds out
latches down
and then this cushion goes here so you can have extra seating if you want it you can
sit on this side enjoy your beautiful view underneath this chair we have all of my shoes
and then we have just little bits and bobs in this drawer kind of like a junk drawer i guess
and then we have another drawer over here for things like toothbrushes ibuprofen all
that good stuff then you can also sit down here enjoy this epoxy table that we made
so yeah everything in this van like you'll notice has like more than one function and that's really
important in a small space this epoxy table is really special to me it's not the prettiest
looking but we put a lot of our memories from the bus build and the bus our adventures traveling
in the bus in this table so it's really nice to look at it maybe i'm enjoying my morning coffee
can look at it and can reminisce on all the wonderful times that we had in our bus busy
down here we have our dometic fridge i call him dom he is amazing i know it's weird to name my
fridge and call it he but it just just feels right and yeah highly recommended 10 out of 10.
moving across the van is our wet bath so this shower door this is probably one
of my favorite features of the van we were looking at those like retractable
doors that most people have in their showers in a van or a bus and it's just it's such a big focal
point of the van that we didn't want to have to do that so instead we have this plywood door we
kind of ripped it down put on marine vinyl fabric that's waterproof antibacteria on the back moving
in to the shower we have ceramic tile and then on the other walls we have laminate sheets so yeah
it's it's not the biggest obviously made me live in a van we wanted to have a separate area for it
and we have our composting toilet in there and it just kind of gets the job done
moving into the back of the van i know it looks like it's just a bed but there's a
lot going on back here so we have a huge monitor so this swivels back and forth we can watch it
from anywhere in the van we also have this classic lagoon table that swivels back and
forth it actually swivels all the way back so we can be back in bed if we're having an
extra lazy work day and do work from there we also have the ability to work here so if we wanted to
have our laptop here this is like a gaming chair we can go back here
do some work here enjoy this huge monitor see a lot of time is spent here jay and i
both work on the road we edit a lot we had it for jenna we had our own video so this is where
we spend a lot of our time and then when we don't want to use the chair it just folds back out like
that we can store it away hide it over here you'll see pippa at one of our favorite spots of the van
she just loves anything with a window loves to look out see where we are and enjoy the view
up above here we have our max air fan we use this a lot
even when it's not hot outside it's just a great way to kind of circulate air get some
flow in here when we're cooking get that air out over here we have three cabinets and
these three and all these shelves are where all jay and i's clothes are so when we downsized from
a bus to a van it was a little difficult for me i had to get rid of like half of my clothes but
i honestly don't miss them and i'm able to store quite a bit in here we have these little baggies
where we can put a lot of our clothes and jay was nice to me he gave me an extra one
so he just has that one for all of his clothes i have these two and then these three shelves so
we make it work you know you got to make some sacrifices to be able to live this lifestyle
all right so now we're on the outside of the van the van itself is a ford transit long wheelbase
extended it's the longest one you can get in the ford model i think the sprinter van is a
little bit longer but for us we chose the ford because it's got the highest headroom inside
so i'm six foot four so i needed as much space inside as i could so what you might have noticed
from the inside is how high up the bed is and that was simply in order to fit our two bikes
under the bed from this side and to get them out it's pretty simple you just flick the levers on
the two drawer slides then the whole tray comes pulling out they come off with these fork mounts
so on this tray we just have more box storage pretty much i've got two
boxes of tools and then extra clothes shoes all that kind of stuff
and then on the left side is all of our plumbing so we do have a recirculating shower inside so
there's a lot of filters back here right next to our 35 gallon fresh water tank
and then on the right side is where our electrical is all our batteries
all our solar components and speaking of solar on the roof we have just under 600 watts of solar we
use the flexible panels they're really easy to install you can stick them right onto the
roof they're a little bit less efficient than the rigid panels but for us they work great
the one thing about living dramatically that really
appeals to us is just being able to see all that america has to offer
i think it's been amazing as well all the different people that we've gotten to meet
along the way it's just really nice meeting a group of people all over the country who kind
of have the same vision and lifestyle as you do we've been actually enjoying helping other
people with their bus builds it's been really fun to sort of help make other people's dreams
come true kind of see their eyes come alive when jay does something for them that they've been
struggling with whether it's building or plumbing or electrical we've just really been enjoying that
the traditional home is just not who we are it's never who we've been
we're kind of just quirky we like our own thing we like to kind of pave our own path and live a
life that we want to live and a 9 to 5 is just not that i think it was also good to have a 95
that i didn't necessarily love because it gives me more motivation to try to make it on our own and
not have to go back to living that way ever you think you'd go back no i'm doing it
you