Elevator Bed & Full Sized Bathroom in a Camper Van!

no idea where to start and looking back it's just crazy the amount that we learned so it's absolutely one of the best toilets I think there is we took a lot of inspiration from home design rather than just looking at other Vans it was like an incredible test of our relationship hi I'm Nicole and I'm Eden and this is our first van build the concrete Oasis I'll show you guys around all right so starting with the front of our van this is our living room our very big living room and I think let's start with the most recognizable feature of our van which would be this concrete finish as we're kind of Designing our van we wanted to do something really unique and while we were looking for inspiration we kept going back to these like Tulum and kind of vacation rental style homes and we took our inspiration from there and we found a product that would work so this is actually micro cement it's a really thin finish that goes on top of wood it's pretty lightweight and it is waterproof crack resistant it's super flexible like you can put it on a panel and bend it and there's no cracks so that was the finish that we went with and we put it basically everywhere our floors our ceiling our walls and that's what kind of gives it this Tulum inspired look for our accents we decided to go with Walnut veneer on and basically our table our benches you'll see in the kitchen as well our Cabinetry and the homey feel of our van we really wanted it to feel like a tiny home or like a vacation rental um less like a van and something that really helped with that was putting in this partition wall so we put in this partition wall because we wanted to actually separate the cab from the rest of the van so that when you're in the space you feel like it's kind of more of a home than a van a lot of people question like why put up a wall and get not do the swivel seats and you're losing room but our living room already is pretty big so we can seat seven that was no big deal so we decided to do the the wall instead we did do a pocket door though so that if we wanted to go in and out you know let's say we're sleeping at night and we need to get to the cab that you still can go through actually on the store I also did a custom wood burning it took God knows how many hours but I'm really happy we added this little touch to the van so just like on the partition door uh kind of design language that we kept going back to was arcs we really liked like the curves um so we decided to do the arc on this door both of our Windows on this door and that door also are arced and they have a drop down blackout as well um we went with a curved bench and you'll see a few other places in the van that we decided to use like arcs as our kind of shape inspiration we decided to do the L bench so that when the door is open you have the perfect view I mean this is literally the best seat in the house also we have a lagoon table slides around perfect workstation and just by doing this seating like it is a little bit less comfortable to go in and out through the door but you see so many more people we see like seven eight people if you're friendly and the Lagoon table Services basically any seat that you're sitting in you can figure out a way to get the Lagoon table to work which is really amazing um also something that we did different with this Lagoon table is we it might look like a thick piece of wood but you can't really put heavy wood on these because they kind of tilt we actually did a a faux like lip here so it's actually only a half inch piece of wood with a lip around all the edges we did that same tactic on all of our benches and inside is actually the perfect handle to lift all the benches as well having that lip so this whole van was kind of a battle between design which is more me and functionality which was added so we're going to head to head but we made the perfect team because we really found a way to balance it all um some examples of that are like the nooks you know they don't have so much functionality but they do have a lot of design a lot of style so the Happy Jack is also a perfect example it's extremely functional you just click a button over there and your bed just drops down it's a queen size bed you don't have to make it and unmake it every single day so it's super comfortable for everyday living we also found a way to make it really beautiful we took a lot of inspiration from home design rather than just looking at other vans so both me and Eden love the look of like exposed wooden beams in houses so we decided to try and you know make that look so these are actually aluminum beams holding up our bed frame but then we decided to cover them in veneer to give them that wooden exposed support beam look so we also wanted the space to be super comfortable for working because we're both digital nomads so we made sure that we had tons of charging stations we have two AC Outlets one there and one right here and two DC Outlets that have USB and USBC ports we also have Shore power here and it's just super comfortable because we can both be sitting and both be plugged in and not have to worry about uh anything dying on us so under here is a huge storage that pulls out we also have in this corner of storage that's kind of more deep storage because it's a little harder to get to and our heater which the vent is right here and then under this whole entire bench is our electrical system and then under this curved Dimensions actually our water tank that's why this one is a little bit higher but we're able to fit a ton of water we have 36 gallons um a fresh water here also a few last things um right behind this bench we have two extra seat belts so that you can travel with four passengers and you can actually sleep four people as well when this bed comes down it can go to any height that you want it so you can actually only lower it to about here and then you can turn this seating area into another bed so you can actually be sleeping on this queen bed up here too and then on this full bed another two building a van has always been kind of this like far away dream for us and it just so happened that we met someone who presented us with the perfect opportunity to come to live in his house and build a van with him under his guidance guidance that was shayden Valentine and he really changed our life with that one time that we met him because we were just like it felt right and we're just like let's let's just do it and um a few months later we moved to San Diego to live with him and build out this van so believe it or not this was our first van build um when we were sitting down and planning we were honestly super overwhelmed we had no idea where to start and looking back it's just crazy the amount that we learned we did not anticipate how in incredibly intricate this build would be we knew it was going to be a tough project but it was beyond all expectations I mean learning every single aspect of pretty much building a house from electrical and plumbing and Woodworking and design and there were all these things that we just had to learn pretty much from zero and I'm super super happy that we did it because just from the knowledge we gained out of doing this together was you know Priceless knowledge for the uh you know and good experience to have in our life and also in terms of our relationship it was like an incredible test of our relationship yeah you know there was really high stress and there were so many moments of like just wanting to give up and uh and you know butting heads and like trying to figure it out but I think we came out way stronger on the other side and really learned how to work together better as a team and it was overall very very intense but very positive experience for us yeah [Music] so this is our kitchen um we have a ton of storage I'll start with that um we have really deep drawers and we also decided to do a pantry drawer um just having one of these alone saves like so much space compared to these kind of drawers and the bottom one is big enough to hold kind of like big things like olive oils or wine bottles or anything so it's nice to have storage for like tall items in the kitchen also all of these drawers are soft clothes and then they lock in we actually haven't had one of these fly open yet which is really surprising but great um we have an espresso machine Evan loves his coffee and for me a little section to put all the teas I guess you could put whatever you want in those though um we have upper cabinets here so throughout the whole van we decided to just stick to the concrete and the wood finishes just because it's such a small space and we didn't want it to get too busy um so for the uppers we actually decided to add a little bit of an accent here it's Raton webbing and something that we did that we saw as inspiration is we added a light back here so at night when these are shut and you turn on those lights it actually like shines through and it's really beautiful um and they're also on gas struts so you don't have to hold it open and they also lock down so for us it was super important that it was going to be really comfortable to cook and also clean our dishes um we did a big sink with a detachable um pen and also we have a filtered water system here we decided to do all of our appliances and Hardware with black matte so that everything is the same and everything matches we also have our AC here um it's a super strong 12 volt um system it's the Dometic RTX 2000 yeah and because it runs off 12 volt you don't need to turn the inverter on which is great especially in these hot summer days we also have a pop-up counter here which is really nice when you're cooking on the stove top to have a little bit of extra space since it's a little tight here we have an induction stovetop it doesn't run off propane so it's a little bit safer we never have to worry about really running this thing because our power system's so strong I don't think we've ever really dipped below like 85 90 which is pretty crazy so we also have a microwave up here which is really nice to be able to just heat stuff up on the go or suckers for eating out a little bit um and we also have a big fridge here which is such a lifesaver um it has a freezer compartment here just so much storage in here we have never really had an issue about not being able to hold what we needed for the week for two weeks um and we decided to go with the stainless steel finish here and here um and you'll see in the bathroom we have one more stainless steel accent so basically for the kitchen for the whole van it's just black matte and stainless steel aside from the concrete and the wood finish so up here is also the controls for the inverter and the heater as well as we have a power outlet here and a power outlet here so we can plug in a blender the coffee machine whatever we need um also underneath these uppers we have a lighting strip so it's really nice at night while you're cooking you have plenty of light and that is our kitchen so moving to our closet we have a ton of storage these drawers go super super far out and a lot of them are super deep so you can fit plenty of things so it was really important for us to also have hanging space and hates folding his shirts because we did this like hanging closet solution and because the closet is towards the back of the van we actually decided to do a laundry chute here which is so so nice it's probably our most like useful feature in the van if you can find a way to add it to yours do it um you just take your dirty clothes pop them in the back you know if they smell if you're sweaty everything stays in the garage everything in the main area is nice and clean we decided to go with the same Raton feature here and we decided to have like these hidden handles so there's just a little routed out piece here and you just pop them open so that they would match these because here we also have a lip no no actual handles [Music] [Applause] so I grew up in New Jersey originally and in 2019 I moved to Israel that was kind of like this starting moment of traveling for me and then along the way in Israel I met Eden which I also grew up in the states I grew up in California and a little bit after high school I also moved to Israel that was about 14 years ago and since then I've been living there and working full-time as a filmmaker photographer and then I met a call in Israel and I'd always been traveling a ton for work and also for pleasure and after we met we just continued that that got even even stronger and all throughout covid and all that we were just traveling the world non-stop together we're also in a very transitional phase right now where we're both phasing out of what we've been doing up until now and starting to focus on making our own uh tiny home creations and vacation rentals and possibly more vans so this was kind of the first step in that direction of learning how to build these kind of things developing our brand developing our style and moving into this new world that's it's uh totally new to us but very exciting so after building this first van like looking back on it we had a lot of fun and we think you know it turned out pretty great um it really like deepened our confidence in what we can create and build with our own hands um looking forward like the next few months we are working on building some tiny homes in Mexico and we're definitely open to the idea of doing another band we definitely will not be building this fan again because we see this fan as like an art piece and a one of one and if we were to do it again we would probably choose like another destination of the world like Japan or Morocco and use inspiration from there maybe even fly to that country get some interior Decor supplies and make another art piece that's like truly unique to itself if we were to do another one but definitely stepping more into this world of Vans and tiny homes and vacation rentals foreign [Music] this is one of the most special features of our build which is this full bathroom shower that created back here first of all we really wanted the shower in the back because we thought it'd be really nice to be able to go to the bathroom or shower with this whatever incredible view you're parked at um but it was also very important for us to do a completely separate space to get all your bathroom needs done so we have a nautilus store that shuts and closes off from the rest of the van and then in here you can get ready you have all your storage for your amenities and everything that you need your toiletries you have a second sink which is actually a slot sink that we made ourselves and it's just a totally separate space that you can get ready in the morning or at night before you go to bed so in terms of the shower itself we have a four gallon hot water heater which gives us on-demand hot water and this amazing shower head that only uses 1.2 gallons per minute so you can shower for a ton of time and we have our Max fan up there that takes all of the moisture out of the van so out here we also have our water fill line line and we also have an outdoor shower or spray down hose if you want to spray your stuff outside we have this hose right here and you just plug it in and you can either shower outside or spray down your surfboard or whatever it is you need to wash down and this whole bathroom also serves as kind of a wet room so if you come from surfing or you're wet or anything you can come in here take off all your wet stuff hang it in here and then go into your van and you don't get anything dirty inside your van the last thing about this bathroom one of my favorite things is this slide out toilet this is the levello dry flush I think it's the best tool that you can have in a van best hold on the market you don't have to deal with any smell any churning things up any taking things out everything is just sealed in there vacuum sealed and then when it fills up you just close it with the bag that's already in there and throw it in a regular trash so it's absolutely one of the best toilets I think there is and we love that it just slides out of the wall so now moving on into this garage area we wanted to make as much storage as humanly possible in this van as you can see so this is another other huge area where you can customize and put as much stuff as you possibly need for us it was we used the storage bin we also have the laundry bin back here which is from the laundry chute we have our vacuum our movie screen we have a whole pull out drawer here for tools and whatever you may need and has its own separate light you also have an AC and a DC Outlets here in case you want to charge anything or power anything outside of the back of the van and we also have these t-tracks where you can hang all your Gear helmets ropes whatever it is uh you want to hang here and also from the back here you can close this door and we have a rear ladder that you can climb up to the roof and up there we have a walkable solar deck it's 480 watts of solar but it's also walkable so you can sit up there do yoga watch a sunset whatever you want it's a full-size deck up there in terms of electrical we have a huge battery system in here we have uh 800 amp hours of lithium power that's powered by both our um both are 480 watt solar panel a DC to DC charger so while you're driving it's powering up and you can also plug into Shore power and charge up that way and we also have a 3000 watt inverter outside of the van we also fully upgraded the suspension system we put a agile off-road rip kit which raises the van a little bit as well as off all-terrain tires that we put um uh to just so it hands a little bit better on dirt trails we also added some steps so it's easier to climb into the van and wrap the whole van in a really special khaki green wrap and covered all of our trim pieces with raptor lines so that it's super rugged and doesn't scratch up or get dirty pretty much and that's our van thank you [Music] if you love this van and you want to buy it this van is actually for sale you can reach out through the link in the bio and in general if you are interested in this style of building and what we're doing you can go ahead and follow us on all the different platforms we'll have that link below as well and you can see tons of content about how we built this van and all our future projects that we have coming soon if you're thinking about building a van yourself and you're kind of like overwhelmed by it we totally understand that we just went through this whole process so we actually are offering design Consulting you can reach out on one of our channels on Instagram that would be edinram and on Tick Tock Nicole and Eden and we'd be happy to chat and see if we can help you in any way thank you tiny home tours for checking out our van we will see you on the road [Music]

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 502,309

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, off the grid, small space living, tiny house life, diy tiny house, diy home, van life, tiny home tours, diy van build, living in a van, van conversion, van tour 2023, living in a van tour, tiny house build, van build on a budget, van life plus, van life build

Id: sc_UAmvgo6w

Length: 19min 35sec (1175 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2023