hey there jenna here welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny homes and creative homes
in today's video tour we're gonna meet a solo female van dweller and take a tour of her amazing
van conversion which she calls firefly this is where i feel all cozy and at home in my little
wonderful van here once you step inside of this van you're not going to feel like you're inside
of a vehicle at all instead you're going to feel like you're inside of a mountain cabin
you'll see plenty of wooded accents and rustic features but don't worry she's
also included every amenity you could ever need for full-time off-grid life on the road
if you're watching this video you're most likely thinking about buying or building out
a van conversion yourself but what if i told you you could win your very own mercedes sprinter van
with an eighty thousand dollar eco-friendly conversion and support a great cause at the
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with a fully converted interior and your choice of adventure ready exterior upgrades best of all
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hi my name is anna and i live full time in my van firefly and i'm excited to oh mother
where i live full time with my cat inara and dog sterling stay stay it's my cat sterling and dog
and i'm excited to show you my van and full-time home firefly
i grew up around a lot of people who really lived intentionally my dad gave me the best advice ever
of you know the whole point in life is to enjoy it is to have fun and that doesn't mean you know
shirking responsibility but to just enjoy life so taking that in mind i was able to do a lot
of fun things in my 20s like raft guiding dog sled guiding traveling up to alaska traveling the world
living out of a suitcase became really exhausting after a time and i started just dreaming about
living on the road and having a little place to call my own a little place to call home i'd seen
a bunch of vans that i loved and lived on the road enough to kind of have an idea of what i really
really wanted so that's when i bought my ford transit firefly here and took about six months to
build it out into the wonderful little home that it is today i bought the van for twenty thousand
dollars i put about twenty to twenty five thousand dollars into the build so it definitely added up
firefly is a 2015 ford transit with the high roof and extended body i went with the extended
body because i need a lot of storage room with this big old butt on this thing i got a lot of
extra storage for like my raft and ore frame and mountain bike and all sorts of good stuff
in there i have about three different costume packs the main one of which travels with me
at all times because you never know when you might need a good pair of boots for example good
unicorn onesie they always come in handy so you know always have to have your costumes with you
all right come on inside and i will show you around
i built out the blueprint before doing this whole build and so i kind of had an idea of
where i wanted everything i wanted you know kitchen cabinets here a nice dresser right
by the bed a fixed bed was really important to me i know some people have the beds that
you can convert to a sofa but for me it was more important to have the storage under the bed and
still have it in a way that i could sit in bed and read or watch tv or work or whatever i want to do
so for power in the van i have a 140 amp hour lithium battery that hooks to 320 watts of solar
i have my control center for my electric system right in here everything is really nicely labeled
which is super important you know so i can see which fuses go to which appliances i have my
inverter that i can turn on and off and then you know the solar controller and battery monitor
one thing i really tried to think through was how to set the right ambiance in the van
so i have a few different lighting options i have fairy lights which that's just sort of
my design aesthetic in a in one sentence is fairy lights and mountain cabin i feel like
you put fairy lights places and it just makes it cozier and then i have lights in the back
and lights in the front they're controlled by two different switches on the dimmer switches
i use the tops of whiskey bottles that came from deer hammer distillery my favorite whiskey company
out of buena vista colorado so you know again just a nice little extra homey touch
all right so this is my bed area this is by far the place that i spend the
most time in the van i work from here you know watch tv in bed i had to hang out here
sleep here so it's really important for me to have a nice comfy bed i have a full-size bed
in here which is you know long enough for me i'm pretty short so i didn't need that much
for my dresser i needed a couple things one was hanging storage because i do have some
professional shirts you know especially for zoom calls you got to be nice at least on top
and have those calls so i have my nice shirts and dresses and things like that in the hanging
storage the other thing in this hanging closet that i really love is my jewelry storage so
i have a lot of you know necklaces and earrings and they all became tangled into a big old jumble
every time i traveled anywhere so i got this hanging jewelry storage here that i'm able to
you know just keep everything really nice and organized and then for
clothes storage i actually have these bins here i have four bins and in each bin there are these
um little bags here so you know one for pants one for shirts so that's how i keep my closet
pretty organized i have a good amount of clothes and i'm able to really know where everything is
have it quick to access quick to put away which i think is such a huge thing in van life is just
like really having a place for everything and knowing exactly how to get to things quickly
i get asked a lot of how i keep things cool in my van and basically i built in this
skylight right here which also acts as a nice way to you know star gaze at night because i
don't have windows in this part of the van so i just open this and then i get my max
air fan going and it creates a really nice like ventilating breeze through the van
i really you know love to cook and love to be able to eat healthy while out on
the road so having a three burner stove and an oven was very important to me
when you're cooking for one sometimes you can get a little lazy and just having something
you can throw in the oven and kind of forget about has been just wonderful
i did put bumpers on the sides of my spice bottles here because i just like the feeling of
glass spice bottles so they don't you know knock against each other too much with those little
rubber bumpers so i have a solenoid that turns on and off the propane so that it's not just on
all the time or i don't have to go into the back every time i want to start cooking fumble around
find the propane to turn it on or off then i have a heater also hooked into my propane system
i got the propex heater which is a dry propane system unlike a like a mister buddy that uses
propane and causes condensation and makes you have to vent out your van
this you don't actually have to leave a window open or anything so moving to my sink area the
reason i put this sink on this side of the van was so that i could take this nice faucet switch it
around and have a little shower head for outside for you know when my dog's really dirty or i have
like dirty mountain biking gear really sweaty and just want like a quick rinse another important
thing to me was to have a deep sink a lot of rv sinks are really shallow and it drives me crazy
because if you just want to make like a quick meal on the side of the road throw the dishes in and
go then there's nowhere to put them so i have a really nice deep sink and then the cutting board
on top is the same piece of really nice black walnuts that i found for a screamin deal
like i said this is black walnut it has an epoxy finish on there which was not easy to do in a van
build because you really want it to be clean you have to be completely level at first i wanted to
have live edge on the side like i had seen in some van belts however um you know if i got got out of
bed and had some loose clothing like i didn't want to scrape up against live edge right here
so i still wanted the aesthetic of it so i put it on the back instead kept some bark on and had that
nice rustic look that i was going for one thing that was incredibly important to me living in a
van was to have a good fridge and i really wanted a freezer as well so i have this fridge freezer
it's the winter c5 quart fridge both sides of these can be set to whatever temperature you want
the big side could be the freezer the small side could be the fridge they could both be a freezer
both via fridge and it's a little bit less of a price point than the more expensive like dometics
most of the underbed storage i get into by opening the back doors of my
van but i also wanted some storage that i could reach from the inside
so under here i have a projector screen and projector to watch movies
so welcome to my living room area i wanted this to be in the part of the van where i
could open up my sliding door and work or eat or whatever else i needed to do
inside i have these nice custom made cushions here for my bench i have my desk which is
mounted on a lagoon table leg which means i can take it off and store it or i can move it
around however i want sometimes i like to work from here and sometimes from the swivel seat
i was also able to find another piece of live edge to kind of tie the pieces together here
i found this actually at a thrift store for you know 25 bucks which was awesome find but adds you
know just to that cabin ambiance i was going for i also have this awesome painting here which was
done by my friend ian i led a group of 16 people down the grand canyon a couple years ago on a
white water rafting trip and so this just gives me those great memories every time i look at it
so in this front compartment of the van i have a scratching post for nara here a nice little
cactus so it kind of still fit in the theme of things the vinyl floor was really great it was
just one big sheet that we cut down to size and it's really amazing because no water gets under it
i also did kind of the stone pattern so that even when it gets a little dirty which it does i have
two animals plus me then you can't really see the dirt on there so i really really love the
floor the other thing in this compartment here is going to be the composting toilet i have the
nature's head composting toilet the back part is the composting part and then there's a urine jug
right up front this is a great system because it doesn't really like smell at all there's a vent
that just vents it right out the floor you know i've traveled in a lot of different vehicles my
rv had a black tank my old vehicle had a cassette toilet this is head and shoulders
above either one of those things just as far as the smell the maintenance it's so easy
i really really love this thing and it was important for me to have something on the road
um you know to just make things easy in that department
a lot of people are like do you feel safe as a woman on the road and i've actually
felt my power grow um and taking you know control of my life and driving
around in this van and going where i wanted to go it has really helped my mental health
i'm not very good at just like walking up to people at campsites and being like
hi i'm anna like my social anxiety would be like going out of the room in that situation
family gatherings have been awesome for me i've met some really beautiful people
and i sit down with somebody who lives on the road all of a sudden we're like talking about
our past traumas we're talking about what like we truly want in life we're talking
about these beautiful experiences that we've had and we connect really quickly
you know you are capable you can do the things that you want you can make a dream happen
and it may not look like this you can still start living an intentional life go from i wish to i can
thanks for watching this week's video make sure to like share and subscribe and visit omaze.com
backslash tiny house giant journey for your chance to win your very own sprinter van conversion