hey everybody we're Eamon and Bec and for the last two years we have lived
worked and travelled out of our self converted Sprinter van needless to say
it was time for some serious upgrades so today we're gonna give you a full tour
of what our van looks like now let's go check it out
so Eamon and I actually create videos every week all about this lifestyle what
it's really like to live in a van and travel around so make sure you subscribe
and join the community welcome to our home before we jump into our own van
build it's really important to remember that the reason you do a custom build is
because you get to prioritize exactly what it is that you want in a tiny house
so for Eamon and I we love hosting people which reminds me we always begin
by offering our guests a drink this can crusher is actually a new
addition to the van we can't quite kick Eamon''s addiction to Lacroix so this
will hopefully reduce the size of our waste anyways you guys it's really
important to keep your driver happy at all times so if my buddy wants Lacroix
he's gonna get some ginger ale oh thanks babe so here we are in the captain's
chair this is a 2008 sprinter and we actually had to replace the engine
when we were in Mexico last year so with sprinters they are great vans as long as
you keep them maintained regular oil changes there's no real major
modifications up here with the exception of a little bit of extra storage so I
really wanted a nice easy place to keep our drone that's not a drone and camera
accessories and equipment so we actually keep our microphone in here this one
here their drone everything organized ready to go I can pull that out quickly
get the shot we have the pull out curtain so that's what separates the cab fully
black out and then I keep some other little things like a quick access to a
headlamp you got to have a koozie and we'll move on to the rest of the van
I'd like to say that we split the driving 50/50 but the truth is this is
where I spend most of my time in the passenger seat so I've got sunglasses
emergency tampons that kind of thing up there this is my area you can always
find water bottles flashlights and the best part about this seat is it's
actually a swivel so I can go from driving to lounging in just a quick sec
having a swivel seat really helps to open up the space as we mentioned we
love to host people so it's not only an extra chair
it really helps kind of bring this area into the van give you an extra square
foot one of the big game changers when living in a van to make it really feel
like a house is having temperature control so for that we actually
installed a while ago a Espar d2 heater and we love this thing we've done two
Canadian winters in Toronto it's been minus 30 degrees outside and we can be warm and
comfortable in here once you slide the door open it does get a little bit of
chilly you got to wait to let the heater warm the place up but it's well
insulated and it makes a big difference in feeling like a little house our
fridge is double the size we had a 55 litre Dometic fridge for two years no
longer it's now 110 liters we are so looking forward to storing much more
food and also making our own ice in the van our goal with our van was to make it
feel as at home as possible for us and that meant having a swing fridge as
opposed to the chest fridges you often see in van builds where you're digging
to the bottom to find your leftover peppers or whatever you have in there so
this makes it feel right at home for us and also when I'm driving I can easily
open up the fridge grab a drink grab some snacks so we just love the fridge
we just wanted to increase the size and that's what we've done did I show you
where the ice goes did I tell you about us making ice now? Ice Ice Baby if you're
new around here you might not know that I actually do most of the cooking
10 of out 10! Wow! so the first thing that we loved is our
nice spice magnetic spice rack we got the large jar so we don't have to
refill them as often we actually went out and did a custom jar I found this
jar I bought a hot sauce that was in it and then put a magnet in the top and
that's for our garlic because there's just not big enough for us just gonna
interject here and say that Amon is a Top Chef and he is fine-tuned his skills
since living in the van because he's got limited space and resources he's made a
plant-based cut we've made a book and we are so proud of it if you guys are
interested in quick simple and nutritious ly delicious meals the book
will be linked here and in the description below so check it out check
it out back to the tour up here we store easy access items the things that we
grab a lot olive oil plays bowls cups you'll notice we only have two of each
but that's all we need two mugs two cups two smoothie cups three bowls we lost
the ball so we have a van cise strainer this guy you just punch open get that
out of here I thought that was pretty cool we have the most amazing chai tea
unbelievable company I think it's called chai wallah you can check that out while
Eamon does most of the cooking that leaves me to clean so gotta have room
for my full-size broom this was a year and a half almost two years in the
making friends I used to sweep with a little tiny things tiny house gets messy
fast but also cleans pretty fast so I'm sweeping pretty much all the time
whoa should we talk about my new rug I didn't even think about that this
beautiful baby I've also finally convinced Eamon to have some color in
the van have to be very careful not to get any red in here so this carpet is
from an Etsy shop called rug Basel and they're based in Toronto but I think
it's a Turkish vintage rug from like the 20s or 30s and it's beautiful I think it
really adds like some color and vibrance to our space we almost forgot to share
with you one of the coolest neatest trickiest little things we bought it to
the bin this handy-dandy table it's an outdoor
table so we're still working out the kinks of the new van here but while
we're hanging out outside there are many mornings when Amon and I will set up our
outdoor chairs and just kind of hang out so this is gonna be awesome for putting
our breakfasts or coffees teas we don't really drink all the elf ki beverages
all that much but you know never say never finish a corner down a little bit
there a but I love it I freaking love our new house in our first van build we
were time and money crunched so our cabinetry kind of reflected that we
didn't spend too much time on it which is why this time I really wanted to make
it special this cabinetry was all pieced out by a man painted by me and I'm super
excited about it I think it adds a really nice rustic DIY look to the house
these two are actually fake drawers don't tell anybody this was supposed to
be a cutlery drawer it did not work out r.i.p this is the first drawer we store
all of our cooking utensils in here tea towels and our utensil drawer hopefully
when we have a better sorting and this is going to be our big momma
we've got not only pots and pans our dish rack we've got dry food storage
popcorn in here rice this is kind of where everything goes hopefully it
doesn't get too messy too fast we didn't really change the main layout because we
love having a big sink and stove and that's all we could really fit in here
but yes we still have propane so we do a two burner stove fresh water filtered
water so we have a carbon and sediment filter on the little top and a little
soap dispenser that's a nice little touch especially if you want to keep
your kitchen clean you know if the moving of soap bottle in and out let's
talk about water though really really excited about this
we added a 40 gallon water tank that's stored under the bed I'll show you guys
in a minute and then we actually have a nine gallon gray tank that's mounted
underneath the van and the coolest part about that is when we flicked this
little switch here it just automatically drains so if we're in a drain friendly
area we can just flick that ditch the gray water and we don't have to muck
around changing pipes and cleaning it up this is a space that I see a lot of
people not utilizing in their van and it makes me go why it's a like literally
probably 10% of the van is right there it's kind of our junk drawer
it looks very organized now but typically it's like if anything needs to
just get out of the way it goes up here so we start jackets more camera
equipment towels toilet paper Tupperware stuff like that one of the most
distinguishable features of our van is that this shrine we've built for our
vitamix blender we use it every day multiple times a day so having it really
easily accessible was really important to us we've also got something else
that's really important to us our pee funnel you guys know we installed the
toilet but you didn't think we'd get rid of the pee funnel did you this is our
new beautiful system for using it it's got a cute little door and the pee
funnel is there at all times it hooks right up into the line with the pee tank
from the toilet so we're good to go we've had a lot of questions and
comments about how we're going to use the toilet in the middle of the night
when we're in bed mode and the answer is the pee funnel of course we also have a
hook for our natural spray right after we use the pee funnel just give her a
one two this is also where we keep our toiletries so we've got our toothbrushes
on this little hook there which I actually really like it's a small touch
but just once again little tricks that help you keep really organized
obviously toothpaste soaps lotions stuff like that you might notice we don't have
the eye hooks anymore so these were like two bucks at Home Depot and they seemed
to have a pretty decent bite it's just got this little tongue that slides into
there I put two on here we're hoping that that will stay it does
hold it pretty nice and tight but we'll see over here in these new pop down
drawers we've got things like crackers quinoa oats anything that doesn't quite
make it into that one drawer in the kitchen area it's easily accessible
right here another major major upgrade to the van
was the electrical system so because we run big appliances like the blender and
computers and camera equipment etc etc we were finding that we are a little bit
limited so we had two AGM hundred amp power batteries and it just wasn't doing
it for us as well as I think we did bring them down below forty percent one
to many times which is really really bad but if you're in a pinch you got to do
what you got to do anyway we upgraded we now have four times the amount of power
six times the amount of power everything is stored in this little housing here so
this is easily removable this pops open we want to give a big thanks to our
friends at Go Power for getting us new batteries basically what we've done here
with the new setup is we have four six volt 225 amp power batteries so here's
two of the batteries I've just got a little rubber flap on them just extra
precaution proper fuses in between the two lines running into the central red
this is the central black and then that's going into our charge controller
and our 12-volt fuse panel this is an inverter charger so this is actually
gonna give us our 120 stuff for the blender as well as I can plug into Shore
power and juice up the battery bank if needed we've had this system for a
little over a week now and guys I have to say we have lots of power lots and
lots of power we're very excited about it two more things I don't think I
mentioned we are hooked up to our alternator so as we drive we do also
charge our battery bank and we've also got a wee boost here it's not connected
right now obviously but this thing's amazing it boosts cell signal and we
actually upload all of our YouTube videos off of cellular data when we're
travelling so if we're in the van and we've only
got like one bar we can flick this thing on and get four bars LTE so shout out we
boost as Amon mentioned temperature control is very important we did spend
the entire winter in Baja Mexico so this fantastic fan came in handy we've
installed it on the roof and it sucks air in as well as out so if you're
cooking it can really help as well if you have the door open it can create a
really nice cross breeze in here and it's actually kept us fairly cool
another thing I really wanted to add to the van this time was a mirror so your
girl got herself a mirror two years than the maken if you've seen our first van
tour you would know about the pullout drawer under the bed we actually
redesign the entire space to fit the poop bucket
I'm just any poop bucket our friends at nature's head hooked us up with a
composting toilet so this right here my friends is where you go number two
and number one really really great design you basically poop into peat moss
or coconut shreds and then it's got a little spinner here which you can spin
up and turn everything and actually compost it's all vented sealed doesn't
smell actually we haven't used it yet but apparently it is super super
exciting stuff to be able to poop in your house lots of people were concerned
about our not having a privacy wall do you want to just touch on that really
fast baby yeah there's no success there's no
secrets in our relation we also talked to our propane tank under there and
we've got another little DC fuse panel for some of the left side of the van
appliances being able to host people is so important to us so we stayed with our
couch bed design this allows us to have multiple people around the dinner table
so we've got a new location for our trusty thingamabob thingamabob goes into
the holy magic and then Gate latch down we've got ourselves a
beautiful dining room table it also doubles as our office as we're always
working from the road whether it's making these YouTube videos or emailing
for our tea company also very very excited to have a few throw pillows Amon
is loosening up in his old age so I've got three you guys before I couldn't
even have one you had one I had one tiny one now I have three big
ones when you're out shooting and making content as much as we do organization is
so clutch so we have a lot of gear but we keep it kind of strategically
organized so right here is kind of our quick grab items so we have two slots
for our laptops we're sitting on a nice piece of foam so we can drive and get
quickly put stuff away this is like quick access to batteries and cables and
then we have a little latch for our actual camera bag just in the back right
here also this is where we keep our Bluetooth speaker so we've got surround
sound funny story about this guy is it was actually our first shared purchase
back in Thailand and we actually had a discussion of well what's gonna happen
if we break up it's like 50 bucks so it's nice to have it removable on velcro
so you can bring the party outside as well there's a part in the van tour
where we're just gonna take a little break have a snack because I think I'm
getting hungry
before we started filming I said to Eamon are you hungry because I don't
have to stop Midway if you get all hangry well here we are in a little
10-minute time out TV timeout excuse me excuse me carrots make me burp we've
also installed this beautiful shelf we're calling it our book this bookshelf
we currently have no books in here but it's also for things like my essential
oils because pre this shelf they were littered throughout the van
any time we took a right turn boom they were went in an essential oil we
actually had a lavender spill one day and I think that's why buddy agreed to
build this with me gotta look out for those lavender spells yes these hooks
are also awesome if we've been out swimming for the day we need a place to
dry our bathing suits or our towels that we've used so these back hooks will come
in handy our window coverings are amazing they're custom made by a
wonderful van couple and they'll be linked below for you cuz I can't
remember right now but they're awesome they roll down they're magnetized all
the way around so they completely block out the light and the heat game-changer
these were a huge game changer before Aimie and I just had reflectix cut out
we found ourselves never wanting to take them down or move them around cuz they
were just too much of a hassle so we super super love our window coverings
and we have a big one on the side door as well the other of these new drawers
is used for miscellaneous I'd say big sweaters we can't fit elsewhere and also
our bug screen so when we're parked up somewhere really nice and the only thing
that's bothering us is the mosquitoes we'll just put that up it's attached to
velcro along the side door up top you got to watch your head room but this is
where we keep our clothes and his-and-hers closets and we've got them
on a little net here so nothing comes spilling out we definitely need to cycle
in and out of seasons and we've actually got even more storage up top which I'll
show you in a second so we like to keep these fairly organized because it does
end up getting jammed full of clothes so just reorganizing your clothes every
time you need you know different sweaters and stuff then you're typically
pretty good and that was advice with a mood make
sure you have a sweater now we're gonna show you guys how we convert from Coach
mode to bed mode hold on a minute folks let me explain exactly how we did that
our bed lies on a slat system so from couch mode we pull the slots across and
the mattress just kind of swings along with it to utilize the wheel well of the
van we actually store all of our bedding right in here people often ask us if we
prefer to have a fixed bed in the van and while for some that's great you have
an extra garage lots of storage we like having the option to do both
honestly it only takes like 10 seconds to make the bed each and every night and
morning and you shake out the sheets you kind of get to start fresh you made your
bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day
now that you've seen the bedroom let's head to the basement although we had to
fit a 40 gallon water tank in here we've actually organized it so well that we
have even more space so the garage is now where we keep all of our toys we've
got everything from a stand-up paddleboard right down to kiteboard gear
we've got our workout bag easily accessible this has everything we do we
need to work out including our so work up and jumper oh you know all
those things that Beck makes me do you've also got easy access to our yoga
mats and our electric skateboards very important our Electric skateboards yes
ma'am in case we go off grid or camping we have our large cooler so this is nice
as a extra refrigerator with a bag of ice we've got our camping chairs on
elastic so those are easily accessible as well here we've got our freshwater
tank so the water tank is fixed obviously and we've got a water spigot
on the side so you can fill it up from a hose on the door just beside the
basement we have easy access to our shovel this is saved our but a number of
times getting stuck in the sand but also you can use it for a pouf travel in case
enjoy the nature a little bit better and we have the tripod mount so that's a
cool little storage space there's a little bit of gap here once again you
got to use every single inch within your tiny little band that's the basement but
we still have some more space while we were in San Diego we actually upgraded
to the aluminous bumpers and this has really helped take our storage to the
next level so I mounted the max tracks onto the side of the bumper this helps
keep them kind of out of the way so it's got a proper home in this bumper here
we've got kind of our hardware storage so all the tools it's important if you
wrote your houses on the road you have tools and you know how to fix things
extra running shoe storage so we don't have to have stinky shoes in the van
jumper cables toque cable and then in the other one we've got our latest
prized possession put one wheel with things unreal and then some water sports
toys so Beck and I both love to dive so we have our snorkel mask bins this is
our pump for the kiteboard waterproof bag there's actually another cooler in
there so lots of lots of storage and it feels good to have it all organized
next let's head up to the roof and I'll show you what we got on there it's also
the aluminous ladder we got them to throw this on there as well I really
like having it on the side we actually hang a hammock off of it sometimes and
super super solid design and that brings us up to the top patio pentose what are
we calling it the roof the solar panel here takes up most of the real estate
it's three hundred and twenty watts and for what we do and filling up our new
battery bank it's more than enough so really really happy we also have the
weboost antenna mounted here that I think BEC will explain the rest while in
Mexico we met Pedro who built us this custom roof rack so we're able to store
two inflatable stand-up paddleboards and we've also just been gifted this big
tule bag so perhaps extra winter storage clothing things that we don't need all
the time but we'd like access to so oh and my shower basically this is just a
black pipe full of cold water that we filled up a few days ago and as it sits
in the Sun essentially it gets hot so should be pretty warm buddy built this
for me I use it in warm climates only so not here in Canada very often and I
actually had really hot showers out of this thing we have a compressor which
gives it really beautiful pressure no complaints here the last little
exterior mod that I'm really excited about is our light bar so this is a 500
watt LED light bar and the reason why I mounted it so low is I actually found
especially in Mexico driving at night it was really difficult to navigate big
potholes and craters and stuff in the road so it's nice to have some extra
light and mainly for safety right back I don't know I think you just think it
looks cool or something obviously well guys we really enjoyed bringing you
around and showing you our updates it's a big deal for us even when you change
one thing about your host we've been living in this for two years so things
like double the size fridge and triple almost triple the size water tank is
gonna make a big difference in our lives as you guys can see from the tour we're
still getting used to all of these upgrades and changes and we can't wait
to take this van on our next adventure so please subscribe and join the
adventure and you can come along too if you're going to subscribe also hit the
bell that way you'll never miss a video we're heading to Europe in like two
weeks it's gonna be alright goodbye that meant having a swing door
as opposed to a Chesterfield fridge where you're always dizzy when we first
moved into the van there was when we were first building out our in our first
van built we had it's got all of our cooking utensils not tablecloths what
are these called claws dishrags dish wash dish what's the word why are you
helping me to coffee I also just wanted to mention our wonderful what are these
calls our window coverings no that's good
hey do you know what you're saying
you