Her DIY Ambulance Camper - Empty Nest Inspired 50+ Tiny Living

[Music] hi i'm paula with vanvida travels and this is veda i thought vita was a perfect name for her because vita means life in so many different languages and not only is it an ambulance that has saved lives but i feel like in so many ways that it's saving mine okay so this is at the front of the box um this takes me straight into the cab and that was something that was really important when i was looking to purchase a vehicle being a single female on the road i wanted to do everything that i could to be safe this is my air conditioning system and then this stuff there's a couple of ways i've seen it done before i've seen people with refrigerators here they could access from outside but because i'm a girl and i didn't know what i needed for clothes i turned this into a closet so and i have like a ridiculous amount of room and i over packed you know being canadian coming from the cold i thought maybe i need a little more stuff than i really needed um all the top cabinets are really nice because we have the sliding doors and we can lift it and because this is already built in it's so easy all i did was paint this black someday i might replace this and then just put some doorknobs on it it was kind of fun and then this is kind of like the beginning of my bathroom section so in here um it is a locking cabinet but i don't lock it i just have the storage stuff i don't use much but might need like band-aids um and i took there was a strip right across here i took it off because there's so much extra space in the ambulance in behind all the cabinets and i just put baskets here to store some more stuff and then i decided to put this in here and this is again coming from minus 47 celsius this is full of all my winter tooks and mitts wet wipes and i have a little 12 volt shower head so i use that system in here which when i bought this none of this was usable it had a really low counter another shelf up here but on the other side was all of the ambulance electrical which i needed none of and it was a big huge panel we pulled out 50 to 100 pounds of wire so i use this for my bathroom and i have a composting toilet with the fan the fan makes all the difference in the world and i'm using peat moss do not use kitty litter that is the most terrible stuff i've ever used in here coming across the border i didn't know what i could take so i did that but i've changed it now but some friends in erinberg when i first got here actually rebuilt this wired in the fan did all the venting so that was great and then my shower i just hang up here all of this is just core plast so it's super light really inexpensive um but we did put uh a doorknob and a handle on the inside because that was an exterior cabinet you couldn't get in and out so we built that on there [Music] well van life definitely isn't something that i see at home where i live it gets extremely cold extremely cold um but i was i never really watched youtube for a long time and then it was like over christmas holidays my son was gone with the rest of his family and i came across a van life channel and i binge watched through the whole holiday season it was awesome i was like this is cool i could do this and because i'm a single parent my son was going to be moving away from home graduating and everything and i knew i was going to have a really really hard time empty nesting um so i don't know where i got the courage from my family is like we're so surprised you didn't justify yourself out of it because that's what we always do but i decided i was gonna get it my brother helped push me to do it and not chicken out so we looked at a couple vehicles and we were driving to go see one and i was checking on my phone and i was like well there's an ambulance here and he's like well let's check it out so we we got a hold of the guy we went and checked it out he was in his early 20s and he had the same plan build it out unfortunately his plans changed a bit his dad didn't want it in the driveway anymore so i was gonna buy it right then and there but he kind of come up with excuses and hemmed and hot so i went back home i lived four hours away and i just kept in contact with them over the next month because i know he he had it listed but he really did not want to sell it he didn't want to give up on that dream as well so i said i promise i'm going to do everything you wished you did [Music] so this is my kitchen area and i have changed this several times um i took out a shelf up here and the counters were really low but i'm 5'8 so i really wanted to put them at a regular height so initially i had a dresser in here and that kept sticking and it really wasn't effective and then i was looking in my garage and i was like why don't i put my workbench in here um so yeah so i took the pegboard out lowered this they're still connected so i lowered this all these drawers are really nice actually they don't slide open when i'm driving it's very convenient a friend of mine lowered this shelf so i could fit my little microwave in which is only 700 watts i wanted to make sure i used something that was really low power i put a little sink in i originally had a foot pump a self-priming foot pump that got damaged um so i bought another 12-volt pump that i was going to put in but because it was so cold at home i thought i would wait and in the meantime probably the easiest thing i've ever done was just bought this 12 volt chargeable little water pump that just goes straight into my water underneath and it's super easy and when it's cold i can just take it out i don't have to winterize anything i don't have to worry about any of that so yeah there's the sink with a little cover um decided that i wanted i wanted a table in here but i didn't want to take up the room because i really like this layout i feel like i have a lot of room so all we did was put this on here and i simply put just a little leg in there i could put struts in but it's really not necessary and so i can sit and do all my stuff on here like with my computer when i'm doing my live streams and it's just extra counter space [Music] this is the biggest thing i've ever driven i stopped an hour in and my legs were like jello i was so nervous i've never had a diesel i've never had something so big it was winter yeah it kind of freaked me out and i was like oh my god what did i do but you just have to have a little bit of faith in yourself and just keep pushing a bit and now i drove 3000 kilometers to get here not even realizing most of it's going to be through mountains and i'm a prairie girl and i did it and i am so proud of myself for doing it even the build i mean you only have a certain budget you only have certain tools but you find a way to make it work i think if i really truly changed anything it would be i wished i really believed in myself first when i started this project i second guessed myself a lot and didn't do the first build the way i wanted i was afraid to cut in the roof i was afraid to do the wiring and then i'm like you know what i can learn this [Music] one of the perks about the ambulance was the cabinetry in here and this is so solid i could probably hang off it without hurrying so in here i mean because i have so much extra room there's so much room in here i couldn't feel everything so i just lined up all my hats in here this whole thing is like a library with used books the ambulance is really great especially being canadian because it was already insulated but i found it wasn't insulated as well as it could be so i added tons of insulation on the roof and all around the sides and then i just bought a panel board to put up there i was like this is easier it's affordable i think a sheet like this is like sixty dollars so i mean it had the look that i wanted and i could actually install this myself without having a bunch of tools so it worked really really well for me so under here is my entire electrical system so i have my batteries i have my 3000 watt inverter and then i have a 12 volt bus bar in there when i look through here i when the inverter is on i can see what i'm sitting at for how much power i'm using but i can also see it off of here as well i've been out in the cold before and that really drains the batteries quickly so when i'm only using my 12 volt power i don't have any alarms going off to tell me that they're low so this i think was well this was definitely under 20 and it's probably my favorite thing that i bought to make sure that everything is running well i do have shore power on the outside and that's connected to this outlet i put this fan in and this one isn't your normal size it's not the 14 by 14 it's a 12 by 12. but the bracing across the top wasn't the same distance when i got to the back so this fit in perfectly and so i just wired the light which i really like the fan i wished i had saved up for i wished i saved up for a really good fan this has one speed in or out but it hardly moves at all like it really doesn't move much air so definitely if i'm gonna change something it's gonna be a much better fan i built my bed to the same height as this because i kind of wanted it all to match which gave me a lot less room underneath so when i put my 12-volt fridge underneath i had to find the lowest thing i could to slide it in and out so this was easy i didn't have to build anything it's light it works and then i just keep my little fridge it's 18 liters plugged in underneath my bed and that fits great i have a little less room than you would think under here for one spot just because where i live is so incredibly cold that i didn't want a lot of the small wiring going underneath the ambulance so we put them under here but i've got a pipe that goes underneath that all the wires are fed through so that i can't bump it and break it or it gets cold it kind of gets fragile i don't have to worry about any of those issues that way and then on this side i just have like my laundry basket and stuff like that the back half is where the water stores and i access that from outside so this i really like too again the top ones all slide and have these little hinges so because the ambulance had so many shelves i could just put them anywhere i wanted so this was like the perfect height for three rows of food they all have the the lip on the shelf so nothing falls out at all yeah and i didn't have to do anything it just came like that so it's exciting and then i just have things like i have a tire inflator i have my battery charger maintainer and stuff like that i have all my dishes in here and the bed is great i'm 5'8 and when i lay down with my head right against the wall and my feet straight up here i fit perfectly but nobody sleeps like that so i keep my extra blankets down here and i just tuck my feet in [Music] there so my first impression when i started watching the van life videos maybe wasn't the best i'm not going to see which channel i first came across but it was like the whole instagram sort of version it really didn't look like this person probably lived in there but the idea was great so then i just kept looking up more and more and more and i really found the variety that i found on youtube was really good because when you start seeing all these fancy builds you think you can't do it you think you know i'm going to look like i'm some popper out there but people are real this is their lives this is their home and you don't need all that superficial stuff even starting this i'm already downsizing stuff in my home like i have five bedrooms and two bathrooms and i am all alone in there probably the most lonely person in the whole world and the material stuff is not bringing me any joy whatsoever this is bringing me joy so i actually have a youtube channel i kind of consider it my little legacy for future generations to teach them how to push through fear and see all the rewards to it actually my younger brother really encouraged me to start recording the conversion and and posting it so that i had it and through that i started doing live streams and i have met the most amazing community of people so my channel is vanvida travels i interview a lot of youtube van life creators and i've probably learned the very most from all of them in this process so if you want to like and follow definitely check out vanvida travels i'm also on facebook and instagram my email is vanvida travels gmail.com but if you ever want to talk and communicate with me just message me through messenger on facebook [Music] you

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 151,589

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, tiny house movement, tiny home, small house, small spaces, small house design, alternative living, architecture, affordable home, small space living, tiny house life, diy tiny house, diy home, van life, rv life, camper van, off grid, van conversion, van life build, rv living, tiny house living, tiny house tour, ambulance conversion, solo female van life, ambulance to camper conversion, ambulance rv

Id: 8cu5-OVmApM

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 05 2022