RV Transformation Magic: Creative Genius Turns '76 RV into Brilliant Tiny Home with Folding Porch!

and it isn't like I built it on a budget it's just like use what you have first what's in right in front of me well huh look what I can do with that you know hello everyone and welcome back to our next video today we get to talk to Kenny here Kenny thank you so much for talking with us today thank you for coming over so I noticed I was working the parking at a festival we're at right now which is Chasm Fest and I was working the parking and I saw him drive by and I said I want to see the inside of the screen thank you for opening your home to us well thank you Brian appreciate your time yeah and so you're not full-time on the road is that correct no I am not I have a house in Kansas and I have family all over the place and so I kind of I spent four months out here last year maybe five on the road and so okay so four or five months that's almost half a year no exactly and it you know and it was plenty of you know plenty of time out there to really feel it and enjoy the experience the rig that you have behind you how long have you been in it well actually I finished it up almost exactly I decided it must be four years ago now I was in Kansas I drove it out to Arizona without too many things that I mean certainly a lot to worry about but everything went fine but in your maiden voyage my maiden voyage I learned a lot along the way but in fact it was fine it ran fine it did fine had you been in other rigs before or had you grown up camping what inspired you to buy this or to do this my family traveled we would take a month-long vacation every summer we did the world's fairs we'd do Colorado Springs I got to Washington Oregon we went to Seattle you know just traveled a lot traveled but just like one month of the year just committed to that the rest time small town Kansas got me into it was I mean I knew I like to travel and we used to get when our we took our kids out a lot so when I retired I knew the first thing I wanted to do I built a little foam camper put it on the back of my well I built it so it could be on my truck or on the trailer and I pulled it around you know all over the place for a one summer then I realized an experience I wanted to build this thing I just built the box for it and I put it on a trail I had a trailer put it on the trailer and then it just was wonky I didn't like it so I went out into on the in the camper again so then I found the RV and well so did you build the box for it before the RV yes and then modded it so that you could fit it on right that's brilliant oh and well it was I saw this already RV at the side of the road and it didn't take me half a second to go oh my God there's the answer that is perfect cut down the you know tore everything off of it in like a day because it was so rotten okay you know put cut down the frame rebuilt side structural parts and and then you know what why did and then picked up the box off the trailer and backed it oh I built the whole front part yeah and then just backed them together and dropped it it was fun and so you you know you talk about your raddy old RV what year make model what is it so it is a 1976 Dodge it's got the 360 motor in it of course it's carbureted the old three-speed transmission relate to that yes yeah yeah I have a GMC version of almost the same thing it's 24 foot I think the way it sits right that is right now okay it might be 25 I don't know that's almost that's perfect though because that's almost enough to fit in a parking yeah and and you can just generally find a place you can just lay across too so yeah yeah I wouldn't want anything really any bigger it's um that's a perfect length mine is 23 feet so I can relate to it I think it's a great I don't want to go any bigger than that either because I like fitting in parking spots you bought the RV and then you built it out what do you think all in do you think you invested in us well really it's kind of funny because well if you don't count my time no yep we will count your time and I'll just have to show you all the stuff that came from my family from the house from the restore that I already had and so when you when I say well I started out and Built for Two thousand dollars that back box everything on it and all the way around everything wrapped it in can I mean just yeah and then I built the front part for like 1500 but then I bought the rig for like 1500 which probably more than it might have been worse but it's been so reliable that I've decided that's okay and so before solar oh well then you add so 1200 tires and you had solar panels which I bought at San Tan so they weren't that expensive controllers couple lithium batteries is like probably the I mean worth more than the rest of them right yeah so I got less than ten thousand dollars have probably somewhere I mean if you just added everything up but all kinds of you know previously existing materials so yeah so you did a lot of the the existing material is going to restore like Habitat for Humanity restoration oh yes a lot of a lot of restore stuff okay oh yes well let's I mean that's a good segue into let's just go ahead and do a tour are you good with that oh absolutely all right let's go these people heard enough from me already welcome to my home oh wow this is gorgeous in here well thank you a lot of stuff that it just came from matter of fact I can't think of anything I bought new except fiberglass reinforced plastic that's it all right that's it I got access to the cab right whole thing folds up right oh yeah and it locks against here and it creates a little shelf there's a little hook on here the cab is right there projector I can mount up there and then I've got this old map that becomes a a projector screen oh on the back side of it and so on the back side I got a projector screen and it's like it's the perfect like shot length for it gonna barely keep my feet out of the picture if I was really to tell you how much of this I didn't plan on it would be that would put that in front of every sentence I say here's something else I didn't plan on this is a table that my grandmother had a little it was like a stand-up table it's something neat that she that it was like carved in Tahiti or something and so I made my own luau Lu Andrew's table at a one inch iron but then I don't know that I planned that it would if I if I spaced it just write it lock right in there into that door and at the same height and the same length I don't think I planned that I remember and so with that uh the swivel system you just built that yourself on this is just like one inch iron standard iron pipe oh and you just made it so it swivels just put and put two of these one of those one you know these pipe in things and they just left them just tight enough you know you can always turn it at One More Level tightness yeah so it's a little tight so you're just using the threads as they swim yeah the threads just tighten up enough now your bed what kind of mattress do you have I have just got two pieces of foam that we're laying around identity foam underneath the the cushy foam but it was com it's comfortable to sleep in oh yeah it's fine I mean I it's six six this way laying there very comfortably of course everybody has a ceiling fan but my ceiling fan kind of demonstrates the fact that you take a big this is only an inch and a half pink styrofoam and you glue fiberglass reinforced plastic to the inside of it to make the ceiling to make the walls and then actually I ended up just cutting this out to fit the fan but it turned out the scrap piece fits right back in there that's great yeah so I didn't that oh wait did I plan on that oh no this picnic basket is uh something that my grandmother had in her basement for sure probably a hundred years ago was out doing picnics in it and now it's a nicest little dirty clothes hamper a person would ever need and that's good that you're bringing these heirlooms into your your place yeah and well and it's good because they were just there you know this is an oscilloscope and it just basically was used by Electric electrical engineers from way back in the day but I think it's a classic piece of art from the time and actually my battery monitor is right there oh nice okay and then actually I found an old volt meter there actually does measure the voltage on my panels okay this measures the voltage of my batteries nothing it also hides the actual um you know and and so and so and because this was awful bright at night and it just looks cool this is of course my towel rack it usually sits over here uh but then I can swing it right here and I give myself some privacy at night over here I can pull out my entire closet oh wow here comes the shower and these these towels pull out on under cow you know under under counter towel rack so that I've got more space I got plenty of space in here my own homemade composting toilet oh it is actually vented out the back it also has a five gallon bucket under an in a five gallon bucket lid on top moss and I have a lid for it but I don't need it with the vent fan I'm working on a urine diverter I got a little a little plastic tank here in the front I'm working on but I have found the perfect place and for a toilet paper dispenser now wouldn't you think oh somebody would have thought of putting it right there where your hands are anyway yeah that's what it happened because it was kind of like broken in here and so you just used a a it's a tub it's an old roll around toolbox it's one of those Craftsmen roll around tool boxes it has the handle that popped up on the back it was broke off the wheels were kind of broke off because it's vented out the back in the air you know it wouldn't differ from a thousand dollar model as far as I can tell functionally what do you think what do you think it costs you to put this together nothing yeah because you got all those I already I had this lid just laying around for you know I thought I might use it so I did actually end up buying it this was in my sister's garage and a computer fan which I already had from scalloping a little piece of plastic pipe that comes from that goes from there out into that now do you also shower in here or no oh yeah I've got it I've got it no pain water heater cold running water I have 1100 watts of solar well that's a lot of solar well I bought those at San Tan those I bought some I had some 240 watt ones from them I had some 310 watt panels so I bought two battleborn 100 amp hour 12 volt battery I'm in series so actually I'm running a 24 volt system oh so my in my 3000 watt inverter is 24 volts and my refrigerator is 24 volts and then I got a little tiny 12 volt thing for the little tiny lights and everything runs everything else right to the fuse box I ran a few wires around and this little tiny antique hinge that locks behind this weird little thing I have here so that in fact you know you can pop that out and open it and then after you close it you know you don't have to worry about it again yeah until you want to lock it back down for travel for travel because stuff does wanna wants to jump out fall out of course not too badly no so you have good storage under here it looks like that's canned goods mostly just odds in the ends and then I've got canned goods up inside of here and this is a little tray that my grandmother had brought back from California back in the day this fit over this hole because the sink used to be there and now I've got a whole bunch more storage in there that I don't need the drawers the way they made them you know drop lock in kind of well I do have a uh three like everybody also have an air conditioner it's just a standard window unit it's a 5000 BTU and it was very convenient for I mean I can run it on my 1100 watts of solar and two batteries for a while into the night so you have propane in your rig as well for those two things my instant water heater and my wave three do you use a microwave very often rarely if at all actually what I've got is an induction cooktop and it fits right into this neat little drawer an induction this part doesn't get hot the pan gets hot so I can put a pretty big pan on here much as I want to try to cook but then I keep my pots and pans in these other drawers oh and that just goes down and it drops down and I've got one one ear shock thingy on it so it'll stay up you know when I'm not using it but then I had to I just added this for convenience for travel normally it doesn't matter just a little pin that goes up it's a little yeah just a little sliding thing these drawers and that one back there came out of this box that had been in my sister's attic for like 30 something years and turned out to be just practically the exact size and it'll slide out but just to actually not just practically the exact size the exact size to put it for a refrigerator in I don't know if I even bought it because it was the right size to fit in this box or I found the box after I got it just a happy circumstance just fit so perfectly for people that really I just found these these glass doors at the restore and then everything else just sort of like developed and built itself around them like I said the windows are from the restore that sinks from the rest or the microwave the refrigerator it's actually it's a Cedar Chest it's actually something my great-grandfather had built for my grandmother and so I can't open it all the way because of the cushions but it holds my batteries my controllers people worry about I got a fan down there to help my keep my inverter cool everything all that you know and then just tools this is a this is a checkerboard that was in my grandmother's basement I remember from when I was six years old sits up there if I were a checker player but it's a nice little end table this is my sticker from the beach bring your own vehicle uh fall of 2022 I just came down back from from Pahrump and had the best time oh excellent with a bunch of cool people thank you for uh volunteering your time and hanging out with those guys no don't thank me that's you know it's like is there something I can do for that would be more fun than that I don't know if I can even think of what it is so I got these little O-rings I just hook underneath there and they get latch onto here and hold this thing shut and it just makes me happy all right so that's quite a deck you have here so tell me how you built that I created a fold down deck you can't see the hinges on there but then I was going to create a narrow Dynamic front so this actually folds down I'm gonna get rid of these legs just come right out of there oh and they fold over each other top part folds down and there's clamps on the side so I add a lot of structural side-by-side stability because on the back I always thought it was going to wiggle around yeah and then this folds up and I can clamp it onto the sides and it really feels structurally significantly enhanced rig made of basically it's styrofoam glued together with Gorilla Glue Great Stuff foam and like Cool Whip no and so this is eighth inch flooring boards that were like mahogany and so it this is glued flat onto onto two inch XPS styrofoam it's covered with like Marine Glade grade of urethane so that it it turned into almost like a piece of plastic this is some stuff and I had these around for 30 years at least before I and had enough left over to do that that's boards from the restore that's just Wayne's cotton that came out of somebody's kitchen and it's only a quarter inch thick and it's glued straight to the styrofoam well actually it's glued to the canvas because the whole top is wrapped in canvas and glued on and painted down and then those are stuck on there and then the cedar boards are the only structure I got a one by two there and a one by two there so no internal frame just all well that's a cheap that's a sheet of Styrofoam so it's well insulated well yeah except like I said the doors leak a lot of air but other than that it works pretty well I got a bunch of pieces from an old um Murphy bed one of those that folds down in the front that was a piece of the side of it that was already cut out just like that this is a piece from the front top of it this is a five dollar door from the restore of course all right so this one actually is a bi-folding door and so I made it and it wasn't just it's because it was what they had for five bucks but then they can actually fold it like that and lock it in there so it doesn't blow around in the wind just found out in California last year and and I've been look I was you wait till the right thing just shows up and I actually didn't buy that at a little you know little garden shop okay in fact it's nice to have an instant propane water heater kind of getting it balanced and getting it set the way you want it to be okay and then and so two propane tanks my water pump my water tanks underneath this part of that same Murphy bed and I filled my water right in I got a little hole right there all right to fill up the tank so Kenny thank you so much for showing us that very unique interesting build all out of recycled material you really spent very little money on the build itself that's amazing it isn't like I built it on a budget it's just like use what you have first I mean I'm kind of a minimalist in a lot of ways my whole thought process rolls around you know what's it right in front of me well huh look what I can do with that a lot of things that like you say I just found it I just and you repurposed it and uh yeah eventually I didn't even know necessarily what I was going to do with it when I bought something for five bucks what did you think like can you imagine taking an old motor home and building something like this could I do it with my old motorhome I'm not sure if I'm ready for that step yet you guys got something out of today's video please go ahead and subscribe to the channel give us that big thumbs up and until next time we'll see you guys all down the road bye guys

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 70,342

Keywords: car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, camper, camp, boondock, travel, caravan, tiny, house, RTR, Bob Wells, Nomadland, CheapRVLiving, Cheap RV Living, vanlife, van life, how to live in a van, van dwelling, van tour, van conversion, living in a van, camper van, van build, diy van build, sprinter van, van living, #vanlife, van dweller, campervan, vandwelling, diy camper van, RV Life, Living in an RV, Class B, Class C, Truck Living, Living in a car, boondocking, Living in a RV

Id: XZssxYIOpb4

Length: 17min 2sec (1022 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 23 2023