Hey there, welcome to my channel where I
take you on tours of tiny and alternative homes.
Today we're gonna meet a young couple with a fantastic
adventurous spirit, and take a tour of their
cleverly designed van conversion, which includes
a super cool hidden shower, that I think
is gonna make your jaw drop.
But before we get started, make sure that
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Hi I'm Nate.
I'm Maud.
Welcome to our home, Jetty.
I decided to go to Thailand, so I booked
a one way ticket to Thailand.
I arrived in Ko Pha Ngan and there was a full moon party.
I was dancing and filming around me and
I was looking around and suddenly I have
this guy in my frame, and I was like,
"I love his energy!"
We started hanging out, we started travelling together,
and after ten days we pretty much said we'd fallen in love,
I booked a trip to Holland for ninety days,
as long as my Visa would allow, and came over to visit her.
After ninety days we had a very sad goodbye,
he went back to America, and
seven weeks later I had my ticket to America,
for a two weeks vacation,
and the Covid happened.
Two weeks turned into four weeks, and then six weeks,
and then three months, and then
we had to call a lawyer because that was her Visa max.
He's like, "You guys have two options:
You can either go home, and probably will never see each other again,
or you can get married." And we were just like,
"Huh!"
Right after we got married, we decided to
travel around in the back of my Toyota Tundra.
We met so many people living on the road,
in vans, in trucks, and seeing how they
are living, we were like, "We want to have a van one day!"
First van we saw, is the van we are sitting in right now.
We moved back to my childhood home,
built this van in the driveway, and
I mean, it was quite an experience to say the least.
We did it in three months.
It was the most challenging thing I think I have ever done,
but so fun. It comes with ups and downs for sure.
We definitely enjoy building.
Welcome to the outside of Jetty. This is our
2018 Ford Transit cargo van.
She has a 148 inch wheel base, 23 feet long,
high roof extended 350, with a 3.5 liter
turbo boost engine. I definitely recommend
if you're looking at a transit this is the way to go.
You get way more pickup, the torque is way better,
it's rear wheel drive, so it's got better traction,
especially in bad weather conditions. It's great for
pretty much any season and any terrain.
So we went with a dualie, we thought this would be great
because we knew we were gonna be carrying a lot of weight all the time.
I will say it's great for having a little bit of extra traction.
Some of the things we didn't think about though, was
if you're trying to change your tire, it's definitely harder with a dualie.
If we did it again, we'd go with the standard four tire van.
All our friends seem to have that and it works out great on the all-terrain.
Up on the roof we have three 175 watt
solar panels for a total of 525 watts of power.
Outside we've got two slider windows, they're right in the back.
Right at our bed level, so it's amazing. You'd be surprised,
people ask us about air conditioning all the time,
you don't even need it. You open these two up,
you get this great cross breeze, and you turn on your max air fan,
and it just sucks air through the entire van,
the entire time. It's like having an air conditioner right on your face.
Welcome to the garage part of the van.
This is where all of the systems live,
it's where the heart of the van is,
where we get everything done and where we store all of our toys.
One of the things you'll definitely notice is we've tried to
make use of as much of the space as possible.
The doors have become our shoe storage,
little pockets for everything that we would need.
Super convenient to have everything stored on the doors there.
On the inside we've tried to prioritize everything
based on how far we can reach into the garage
and grab stuff that we need.
This box here, we've got propane inside the van
we've also got 300 amp hours of electrical
lithium ion batteries,
as well as a 30 gallon fresh water tank.
All of that stuff is stored on the left and right sides.
We also have a door on the inside, so we can grab stuff
things like our laptop bags or stuff we want
to pack away really quick.
One of the big improvements we made to our garage,
after we finished our build was
we decided we would strap a lot of stuff to the
bottom of the bed, it gave us a ton more access
to everything on the ground floor.
We made great use of this with just
elastic bands and hooks. It's a super easy add,
and it's great to have everything organized.
Hello! Welcome. Come check out the inside.
Welcome to the inside of Jetty.
Our main goal for our van was for it to be open and white.
I love white and it gives me a really
homey feeling. This house feels peaceful for me.
The white, and the wood colors, and the light blue accents.
For the kitchen we wanted to have a big countertop,
so we have enough space to cook and clean,
and cut our vegetables and stuff. Also we have a very deep sink.
So before we had a glass stovetop, and we did a lot of off-roading,
and because of the vibrations it was in a million pieces of glass.
We needed to change and now we have transitioned
to a two-burner stove top.
This is our spice rack, and we love this because it's
just a magnet we had to install. In all the lids
there's a magnet, so it just connects to it
and we never have to take it off when we are driving.
It's super convenient to cook and have all your spices here.
When people come in our van we get a lot of compliments about this.
It's a cool addition to our kitchen.
We have a Dometic fridge and it fits a lot of food in there.
One of my favorite things about this is that
we have a freezer compartment
and ice on the road is a delicacy.
This is our shower. It's hidden in our countertop.
We chose to do a foldable shower because
we were thinking we only shower five minutes a day,
and for us it doesn't make sense to give up
twenty percent of your space.
So you fold this open, then here is our bathroom too.
If you're showering we pull out the toilet,
and we hang up our shower curtain on those hooks
we installed.
The shower head goes here, and we can shower!
Overall this takes up about five minutes of my time,
and after a long hike we just jump right in
and get a hot shower.
The only thing is you do still give up
a lot of storage space, but worth it.
This lagun table we built ourselves.
It's a great move because we love to have it
go to the swivel seat, have it here, or even go outside.
So it's very functional.
We love to sit here, have dinner together,
it's great for two persons.
This bench is great next to the sliding door,
We can sit here and work. Nate sits here all day
and works, and has his laptop here, and his iPad on the clip.
I still work in finance. I manage a hedge fund,
we manage crypto currencies, so it keeps me busy 24 hours a day.
It's super nice that I get to work remote.
We both work side by side in the van for eight hours,
and the time flies by.
I am doing content creation for our brand, Vanning Wilder.
It took some time to build the brand out,
but I love to do it.
I did it first for festivals, but I do it now for ourselves.
We love to have a lot of storage.
One thing we would do differently is to make these
cabinets smaller because we feel a little bit cramped with this size.
One of my favorite things about this van is the ceiling.
We installed tongue and groove
and I made a whitewash for it, so I think it's kind of special.
It turned out great. I had two cups of paint,
one cup of water, mixed that, painted it with a brush.
Installing this ceiling was actually I think
one of the hardest things we did in the van because
the Ford Transit roof is slanted,
and curved, and it's very hard to get them all clicked together.
It took us hours. Way longer than we expected it to be.
One of the things we had to think about when building this was that
we can't sleep side to side because we both
are over five ten.
So we had to sleep long ways.
The bed is great because we can just lay here,
and watch out of the windows, watch outside,
and have the backdoors open, and it feels always really great.
When we are reading our books here
we love to also turn on these lights.
It has also a USB port, so we can charge our phones.
We will not stop anytime soon, we would love to do this for years.
We want to spend time in Europe and America,
so we can be near both of our families.
Having a van in both of those places eventually is part of our plan.
So, figure it all out again in the metric system.
To do what you love is obviously the biggest
gift you can give yourself, and
we always feel very fortunate to live this life on the road.
It's just so magical.
We'll always have a van in our life now.
Thanks for watching this week's video,
please make sure to like, share, and subscribe,
and I will see you soon with another tiny or alternative home.