Van Build Series: Why do it?

A rear view of the finished conversion

This past June, my girlfriend and I decided to convert a van into a camper. We were on our way back from a trip to the beach. It was a few months into the pandemic lockdown and the beach was...a little depressing. Masks were required on all the boardwalks and highly recommended on the beach itself. It was crowded, you could hardly see the sand between the hundreds of blue umbrellas. Between the masses of faceless people, the patrolling cops, and the fight for territory on the sand, it felt less like relaxing at the beach and more like sheltering at an evacuation zone. In a way, it was an evacuation zone. We and countless others were trying to escape from the day to day reality of living in a pandemic by getting away from home and staying outdoors. Unfortunately, this beach wasn't big enough for all of us.

H mentioned how cool a roadtrip in a camper would be. I perked up. We could travel comfortably across the U.S. If one place is crowded, move on to the next. We were both working remotely...what if we could travel while we worked? There might not be many opportunities in life to do something like this.

The idea of living and working in a small, mobile space appealed to me. It is a commitment to the bare essentials. By packing light, you could travel free. H did not share my enthusiasm about the minimalism. But we agreed that the adventure would be worth the cost.

It's worth mentioning here that we had only a hazy idea of the total costs, both time and financial. However, we did have a fairly clear idea of what we wanted if we were going to live out of it for an extended time. Lights. Fans. Shower. Sink. Stove. Fridge. Queen size bed. Bench seating for guests. Power to charge laptops, phones, etc.

We did some preliminary research and decided that we could do it ourselves much more cheaply than paying a builder to do it. During the following build series we will flesh out some of the expected and unexpected costs, as well as providing a spreadsheet that details as best we can all the items we bought.

We are fortunate that we had the ability to afford what we wanted. I'm sure that we could have gone cheaper, but it would have taken significantly more time and some trade offs likely would have made the project cost more in the long term. We plan to use the van for several extended trips, but had we only wanted something for a few weeks, it absolutely would have made more sense to rent something.

The single most expensive item is the vehicle. In the next post we go through our thought process, some tips, and things we wish we had known when finding a vehicle to convert.