DIY Minivan Camper Built Out of CARDBOARD /Even The Shower!!

[Music] the Toyota Sienna minivan camper conversion that I'm taking you on a tour of today has got to be one of the most unique and extraordinary band conversions I've ever seen from the bed to the under bed storage units and even the cabinets and shower in the back of the van all of them are made out of cardboard for under 25 come on I'm going to introduce you to the brilliant engineer who built this well hello hello Pascal here we meet up again so tell me I don't even know what to say when we met last time you told me you were thinking about building a van out of cardboard a van conversion and so did you do it yeah yeah I did and well you know what I just want to get to it and look and see everything is in here you've got a cardboard bed cabinets but before we do that why don't you tell us what kind of cardboard did you use so I here at my office we have a warehouse where they just throw out random cardboard from boxes of stuff that comes with equipment and things like that so you basically so basically your materials for your build were free yes yes so it's not just a cardboard build but a free cardboard van conversion yes yes free and now on your channel tiny campers I watched and you showed how you kind of reinforce the corners and stuff yes all right so you're going to put a link under the first comment on this video on my channel so people can go over to Tiny campers and see exactly how you did it yes okay great so listen up folks you can go over to Tiny campers and you can see step by step how Pascal made this bed right here and he's going to tell us but you can go over and see it firsthand how he also made this cabinet and the countertop is cardboard too yes it's all cardboard and even this oh my goodness so you know what before we get started I think people they say the proof is in the pudding can you go lie down on that bed so people can see that it'll really support your weight how much do you weigh I weigh 170. okay and this could handle a lot more you you could climb on it with me too if you want uh no I don't want to take a chance in breaking your bed no it won't break okay okay so you know you can see that there's no flex at all no the bed is all cardboard or did you use any other materials I did use uh some paint mixing sticks so I wanted something free that I could get at the Home Depot and and I use that to help reinforce the boxes underneath and the boxes double as storage I mean they're basically storage Shores if you go to my channel you can see more details of how I did it let's see so some have paint stakes and there's there's some boxes with with no paint sticks so I just put a few items but basically these are boxes that I got at my work and I was opportunistic I just saw some boxes that were the same shape and I said hey those are going to be a good base yeah you just I see it looks like you just folded down the corners to make these stronger yes so I this one is folded down the corners okay and this one has half a paint stick right here okay half a paint stick right here you know just cut in half and there's another one right here so basically the support places are the corners and that's where you reinforced it yes well this this one I did on the sides okay uh this this box I just had the paint sticks here in the corner it's on the Four Corners okay so I did it three different ways just for people to see different ways to do things now this one is fully cardboard there's no paint sticks at all and I just use you know these cardboard Corners that okay I also got at work and they were so these are Corners so like that come on furniture the edges of furniture and stuff yes yes just packaging so this one is 100 cardboard so you can do it like this so I just wanted to show that there are different ways you can do the exact same thing and yes it's going to be very strong when you reinforce the corner and if you've got all the boxes together then it's super strong now look let's look here now I'm looking at now the base of your bed which is cardboard yes now that is shiny so why is that shiny so this is epoxy I did do an epoxy coating on this okay um it's it's kind of optional you can do it and it'll make it significantly stronger you don't have to and how much was the epoxy yeah the bottle that I bought was maybe twenty dollars oh my goodness okay and there's still half a bottle left so you epoxied this and then you I see you have the corners taped together over here yeah so here here's just packaging tape and glue coming around and again uh I saw some boxes that were at work and they had this it was a lid so I just said hey I could use the lid to those boxes to to make my frame around my bed and again this is just you know more cardboard underneath too so basically you've got a free bed frame yes I did get a free bread now you happen to have an air uh what do you call a pad yeah this is like an exercise uh pad okay so you can just use whatever you have at home or if you have a sleeping bag whatever yeah but so you have a free bed yes and then let's look over here now the cabinet how did you make the cabinet if you come around I'll show it to you okay it's the base of my cabinet and I started off with just the battery this lithium ion battery lithium ion phosphate battery and these do not need to be vented because they are a Lithium-Ion phosphate but I took the box that it came with and I basically use this as my foundation and I built up around it you can see I built this wall let me get in and look at the wall for everyone so you use the box that your battery came in and then this is this the same box or is this a different box now this is the white stuff is a different box see this this brown part is the battery box itself and yeah I see you didn't even need to epoxy that no no now this is what is this that's the white that's on there it's just a semi-gloss paint so that makes it not completely waterproof but it can get a splash on it and not be ruined correct correct so it's kind of water resistant you know if you spill something on it you wipe it up you're going to be okay now what about the counter what did you make the counter with so the counter uh is cardboard if you look here you can see the three layers of cardboard that I have and I just um you know did the corrugations at different uh angles so okay some goes this way and the other goes this way for for the reinforcement so that so you had them going in different directions yes so that makes it stronger if engineer to think about that kind of thing well but Globes you can benefit he figures it out and then you can copy it yeah all right so and this is actually just um wallpaper that you buy on Amazon over the top yes okay so this is waterproof wallpaper and it's yeah for your bathroom so it's waterproof also so I put it on the top to make it prettier because cardboard's kind of ugly right and then you paint it over it no this is not painted oh this isn't painting no this this top is just the wallpaper itself that looks really nice yeah so it makes the top look a lot prettier uh and you know this is it was five dollars for a roll and I still got a lot of that roll left so I'm heading this up and it sounds like now so everyone doesn't have to have a microwave or the sprayer that you had back there in the sink stuff you can just um use a bucket you know for you know for washing up and a gallon of water and you have flooring but the flooring was already here but you don't have to have that kind of flooring no you can just you know that's it's just from my previous build that the flooring is even there it's certainly not necessary at all so if you want to get started with cardboard so we were adding it up and you and I together figured it was less than 25 dollars yeah something like that you know just some glue sticks epoxy and and the wallpaper yeah and that's just a little strip of wallpaper yeah that's not even all of it all right well we've seen the back side of the cabinet yes and now let's look at the front side we know the top is a wallpaper waterproof wallpaper and you painted this so how did you reinforce these sides again so these sides are just these Corners are reinforced with again with cardboard Corners that I got from furniture packaging uh it's nothing special for free yes for free of course I'm going to call Pascal the free guy so here remember that's that's the battery and that's very strong and very stable the microwave sits on top of the battery which is very strong and stable and then I have the microwave um helping this side of the support now if you didn't have the microwave would that still be secure yeah strong I think it will be if I didn't have the microwave here I would actually put up another wall with a corner because the corners are stronger than a straight wall right right so I would put another corner right here if that's what I wanted to do so you have things that you're naturally using like your battery and your microwave for support but for people who don't have a battery don't have a microwave you know can't afford to have those things just get the free corners and support it with that and about what things would you say without the microwave and Battery supporting it with just the corners what do you think you could safely put on top of that counter Weight Wise me I I feel like I could still climb on top of it so clearly then a coffee pot a butane stove those things could be easily that could easily handle that yes yes so if you look at this part right here this area is only held up with four corners corner here corner here and this support right there and you know I'm gonna sit here and I'm Not Really Gonna hesitate because I know it is strong enough all right so so it's a strong cabinet you you can put things on there and cook and use it as a as a kitchen cabinet yes yes I mean keep in mind it is cardboard so you want to be careful cooking you don't want to get you don't want to catch it on fire exactly all right but now over here speaking of cabinets and things you have the cabinet above that everyone loved on your other build yes and this you re you duplicated it actually but using cardboard correct so I basically kept the exact same design I even took out the previous one and I I cut my cardboard pieces according to the shape of the old one uh but you know this door for instance it's just all cardboard I just cut out this section and I used a cardboard and how did you how do you make the cardboard bin to open oh you just it'll just bend you just crease it up well yeah I put a a metal piece and then I bent it too so it's a straight line so that made a crease there yeah I mean if you just try to do it by hand it's not going to be able to be all messed up now I see it's shiny so what is that shiny stuff on there so this is just packaging tape so it's part of the experiments that I was doing and I for for water resistance I just use regular packaging tape you know so that's why it's shiny and yes you know you could get get it wet and wipe it off and you're gonna be fine the ugly white stuff is when I tried to paint it and paint I learned does not stick to packaging tape very well so don't do that if you want to paint keep it on bare wood all right our bear I mean so let me ask you this you tried being an engineer you tried several different things using sticks to read reinforced using epoxy using the packaging tape what do you think provided the most support and what after trying all these different things for as you say proof of concept which thing do you like best and which things do you think will help support something cardboard in particular I mean I think the best support will be wood sticks but you know I was trying really hard to pay next to nothing for for these things so I use the the paint mixing sticks that I got at Home Depot but really you could buy a two dollar piece of stick at Home Depot and you put the stick right here and then you build the cardboard around it and it's going to be very very strong wow if it's going to be a vertical support you've got four legs you know maybe six legs so it's kind of like the concept of synergy two things by themself may not be but when you combine them together it doubles the strand for sure any one of these boxes underneath it's not very strong it's like laying on a bed of needles right that could hold you and you won't be punctured because there's hundreds of needles supporting you so these you know five boxes and each each Edge helping each other so each box helps support the box next to it of course which is then cumulatively yes as to the strength of the whole unit yes and and that's that's actually why I did um the epoxy on the bottom end because I wanted to wait to be evenly distributed I wanted something more rigid you could have done all cardboard but you know the more rigid it is the better the weight distribution underneath so because as you're lying there part of your body is heavier than another part so if you make it more rigid is what I'm hearing you say it's at the bottom the bottle push all the boards at the same time that's the idea all right again this takes an engineer to come up with this kind of stuff but I'm glad you did it so now people who are concerned and don't have the money to do build out can do can do one in cardboard yes they can oh my gosh and they can make it look good too if you put more effort into it I I didn't put a lot of effort into making it look pretty I did do some effort but you can see with with some effort you could actually make it pretty too so you weren't about decorating you were just about finding out what works and what doesn't work yes actually that is true so you know the paint works great on bear cardboard and it makes it pretty could be prettier you know the the cardboard you can make a hinge out of it you have a shelf and you so now oh your shelves are cardboard too yes everything's cardboard oh my gosh so your shelves inside there are corrugated cardboard yes just stacked on top of each other yes there's two pieces that I okay this I just tape together okay gluten tape holy moly so you had a shower on your last build you have a shower on this build so it's built out of cardboard yes yes oh would you mind showing us sure so basically the Basin I wanted to make the same shape and size as my previous build and just kind of do it out of cardboard okay and so this is kind of just storage area when it's not in shower mode but you could see what I did was I just took a lid a cardboard lid and I cut it down and I built up a wall around it and this is has has not no glue or anything just packaging tape so uh this one I wanted to do with just packaging tape because I wanted to try different things so could a person actually put what is that red stuff they put to re make water showers waterproof or could they even epoxy this if they wanted it they could epoxy it um I I don't know how well that'll work uh all right because I don't have any data for that but they can they could reinforce it but in this scenario it's just really not necessary the way I have it because I have this this plastic sheeting you know how many mils thick that cheating is about I think it's 35 35 mils well I think 25 something like that okay where did you where did you get this shooting from this is just Home Depot and it's it's actually just scraps that I had laying around the house I didn't even go out and buy it so I don't know exactly what it is all right I just use what I had and I think that's the main thing that we're emphasizing here that you can do a build on the cheap with hardly any cost using materials that are scrap materials and materials that you have yes so really you could use a trash bag a heavy duty trash bag for for a compactor you know a compactor bag because they're built to they're really strong but they're just not big enough right right okay so you're probably a large you know trash bag all right you know I got my my old drain hose and it just drains down and and really this is going to be waterproof you know you're not things aren't going to get wet yeah how do you dry this out so it doesn't get the cardboard wet and um when you're through okay so when you're through with this you kind of just kind of put all the water down let it drip down but when you fold it up you just fold it up in this manner okay and that way you know if there's any moisture still it's still in the bag it's it's not going to go into the cardboard and if anything drips it'll drip down the drain now and then you could actually you could actually take that out and lay it out in the sun and it would dry for sure that's the best thing to do and it would dry very quickly yes you take it out shake it a few times you know this this is removable and it's disposable you know if if you don't feel like cleaning it throw it away do a new one wow so I'm going to ask you this last time I asked what are you going to do next and you said I think I'll do a cardboard camper so of course I have to ask you now what are you going to do next how can you possibly top this well next I I have in my mind a designed for a full-time camper build and it's going to be a home on Wheels so it's not going to be cardboard it's going to be really durable and it's going to be more luxurious so this is really really cheap but I got some more expensive things in mind for the next build because my concept is that you know somebody who wants to live in this full time you know you want to invest maybe let me let me get this wait a minute free Pascal is going to do a luxurious build it'll be more luxurious it won't be it won't be expensive okay I just can't bring myself so you're going to do a bill that's going to be luxury on the cheap that's what I'm going to call it that sounds luxury on the cheap okay well and how long is this going to take because you know everyone's going to be dying to see it it's it's going to take a couple months and I am going to scavenge uh things again again I already scavenged a bed so it's going to be a luxury bed but I didn't pay anything for it so still on the cheap and I I think you you had a good phrase for that you're probably going to take longer to scavenge the items and you're going to take the bill that I bet sometimes yes so I've been trying to scavenge a counter that I could start as my base and then build around it but that's a little hard so I may have to start from scratch but well you know what go over and if you want to see His Brilliant ideas go over and check out tiny campers and he has step by step on how he built the bed out and it's really it's really an instructional video I watched it and someone could go along as you go and do it and then you did it on the cabinet also and so tiny campers and you're gonna put a link on the first comment on this video when I air it so people can since I don't know how to do links so they can go under your comment and hit your link and it'll take you all them over to your videos yes all right well Pascal thank you so much and we will see you down the tiny camper cheap Road

Channel: Glorious Life On Wheels

Views: 64,636

Keywords: van life, rv living, camping, van conversion, Glorious life on wheels, boondocking, cheap van builds, cheap rv living, YouTube, DIY, solo female van life, solo black female van life, black YouTube creators, cheap van build, stealth parking, stealth camping, camper, Vancity Vanlife

Id: hb_Ym_JqBK0

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 22 2023