Full Van Tour: Land Rover Defender Campervan Conversion for Vanlife

come and take a look inside our home on Wheels hi we're Andrea Max and this is Riley our 2011 land rubber Defender that we've converted into our full-time home on Wheels so this is basically what we're going to be living in for at least the next year around Australia why are we doing this you're probably asking as well we've uh originally from New Zealand both of us we've traveled around New Zealand as much as we probably could uh we've done in bands rooftop tents full drives probably seen as much as we really could have so now that we're living in Australia we kind of want to do the same thing over here so hence why we've uh converted this Defender it's been a chaotic couple months in our last video we showed us getting prepared to move into it but we're now actually living in Riley fulltime we've had a few changes to the build over the last couple weeks while we've actually been living into it bit of an adjustment period but what works what doesn't you know it's a given you know considering it's such a small space week we are living in so now what you're seeing is the final build at least for the next couple months um we are really really excited to be able to show you guys around but we know why you're here so we'll stop talking and we'll actually get into it now the first thing I'm going to touch on before we get to the fun stuff inside and obviously the roof conversion is the color now you'll see in the last video or if you haven't watched it you should go watch it but I was not sold on it at all I was very skeptical whether we made the right decision or not I can assure you now we both love it I couldn't think of a better color for it now as well this ARB actually came with it um considering we are going around Australia and there's a lot of wildlife around is pretty essential so kind of just protects the front of the truck the other thing the truck also came with was the winch um now we haven't had to use it yet uh hopefully we don't have to the steady lights that we have on the front now they're kind enough to send these out to us so we're we're pretty stoked about that we don't know how many kind of late arrivals we're going to be doing to Camp or early early missions we're going to do in the morning so I think having some spotlights on is pretty key the standard um the standard lights for Defenders you know like a candle they're not that're not amazing so we definitely needed them so hiding in the corner is the UHF aerial Mount it's not on at the moment uh cuz we just haven't really needed it up but we do have it so when we are in the outback or you know going through some Bush with some friends we can still communicate when there's no service around before we do jump to the back I'll quickly touch on the tires that we're using you wouldn't believe it but uh it was about four or 5 days into our trip and one of our tires completely exploded on the highway which wasn't ideal um so we have worked with toyot Tire over in New Zealand so we quickly messaged them because it happened on a Thursday night so luckily they got back to us on the Friday and we kind enough to hook us up with a full set of U toyot Al terrains which we are absolutely loving and we definitely wouldn't have been able to uh to get around around with anything but these now that way at the back of the truck I will touch on a couple things that you can't see so we have a long range fuel tank installed which was already in there when we first bought the truck so basically just means we don't have to carry a Jerry can um of fuel when we're traveling around now the other thing is we have a helperman airbags installed in the rear of the truck which is essentially a airbag that lives inside the reare coil in the suspension it's predominately used for when you're towing heavy loads so suspension doesn't go really uh flat and saggy um or bottom out but considering you know the amount we have in this we also have those which again came with the truck when we first bought it just inflate it on the back of the truck the number one thing that we probably had no idea how useful it would actually be is this tie bag from xmm this holds a lot more than you think you'll realize so I'll open it up and then you can kind of see what we actually use it for so starting with what's at the very top of the bag is is our hose and our Nomad water purifier the number one thing that we were kind of told uh before we even started traveling was that you need a water filter a lot of places you go have pretty bad water so this means that you can literally filter water from anywhere uh most of the time we actually fill up our pitr stations but even then the water quality can be pretty poor so we just use it for everything so the other thing that's living in here is our hose um and power plug for on tap shower now that is this jurry can right here because we are in a effectively a rooftop tent uh SL roof conversion it means that we are staying at Freedom campsites so majority of the time they don't have any showers available they do the cold so having the shower is actually a lifesaver for us cuz means we actually have hot water wherever we go I'll say we probably get around four showers out of our ontap which is pretty good I mean that's at least for you know a few days because I mean if you're into this lifestyle you're not showering every day we did have a jker before we actually started packing the truck but as we kind of started filling it up we realized that it actually wasn't going to fit anywhere so we ended up getting this on tap instead and it is probably a hell of a lot more useful for the lifestyle we're living at least um it's a lot easier to use it's quicker to set up and it basically just Heats itself up so the other thing that we have in here which is probably the biggest thing I think you kind of need if you are traveling around is a little pop-up toilet now it's not something you want to use you it's for emergencies really um especially at most of the sites we go to there's at least a long drop um but this basically means that we don't have to basically in a bush um which sorry I can't I cannot so yeah it's it's not a glamorous thing um but it just means that we actually have Security in terms of having a toilet on board now everything else that is in here is basically just like our rubbish bags our wet suits and anything else like dirty laundry miscellaneous stuff it is deceptively large so we have a lot in it and I don't know where everything would have gone if we didn't have this bag our roof conversion is easily our favorite part of this entire build that we have no regrets on in the slightest if you're thinking or even considering doing a roof conversion yourself I highly recommend getting a headspace camper because they are Elite this video is not sponsored by the way we just absolutely love this product there's a lot of options on the market whether it's a roof conversion a roof top 10 but the amazing thing about the roof conversion is it goes up in about 30 seconds it takes no time at all even if it's raining you know that you're going to be super dry really quickly we also love that it's all internal there's no ladder on the outside or anything like that because we didn't want to be restricted to getting inside and then we're in a small space we just wanted a big open space inside not worry about about the weather outside because we didn't have to get out to actually go to bed something that every heads space camper does come with are these little uh Circle things which are basically touch sensitive lights which are insanely good they're also wired into your doors so then when you do open your doors they uh come on automatically as well there are two little latches at the end of the bed which is almost like a his and hers latch as you sleep with your head at the other end it means that you can use it for storage for your clothes in the morning your laptop if you're watching Netflix at night all that kind of stuff so it means that this basically just pulls down just like that and you can either someone can store stuff up there I can still sit here do whatever I need to and Max while she's still sleeping cuz she sleeps in her stuff's there I think that's enough of downstairs let's actually get upstairs and see where we sleep and how much head room the head space gives you let's go and welcome to where we have our bedroom so this is obviously where we sleep upstairs and it is a crazy amount of space that we actually have up here on the back here we've got these huge storage Pockets that has everything we could even imagine couldn't be more stoked about are these USB ports so there's effectively his and hers USB charging port uh which we can just charge our phones overnight touring Australia especially in the summer months it's almost impossible to escape any heat especially when you're doing van life so one of the things that was a non-negotiable for us is soon as we saw the option to have these NR conversion uh these little 12volt fanss so they charge off the USB ports that we have up here but you don't actually have to have them plugged in while you're using them there's been multiple times we've had them on all night and they've been perfectly fine and we've even had them going through for a second night and they held charge amazing but when they do go flat you literally just plug it into the USB port and then you're pretty set and you can run it as long as you really need when Ollie makes these conversions he actually uses the original Defender roof which means you still get to keep the window that comes in the roof Factory because that window is there we actually have the mud stuff blackout curtains so we have actually put them up there just so we kind of don't get woken up too early in the morning since I think sunrises like 5:30 or something at the moment so would like to sleep in a little bit the conversion actually has complete blackout blinds so when it isn't just the mesh like we have now uh it's completely black out so no sunlight at all can actually get through it the mattress that comes with these conversions is a 75 mil uh memory foam we slipped on this mattress when we were moving out of our apartment just on the floor so I do rate them I think Max rates them just as much as me as well as the memory foam mattress that you get with the conversion it also comes comes with two other cushions that go over the hatch covers having those hatch covers there means that you obviously get a lot more space as the bed it's essentially a double size at the moment so putting those extra cushions just extends the bed of that a little bit more I'm 6'2 and I can easily stand up here no problem at all Max and I both get changed up here cuz it's actually easier to get changed up here than it is downstairs uh and this is something that I'll say a lot of conversions don't quite have the room one of the main reasons we have chosen to go with head space is purely the amount of Standing Room you do get up top now that you've seen how much fun it can be upstairs with the roof conversion I'm going to show you how the space transforms in all of two seconds when the roof's popped up so all we need to do is literally lift up the head space just like this and we've got so much more space downstairs now why we love our downstairs area is we can use it as a lounge we can use it as a spare bedroom room we can use it as an office an extra kitchen station and I'm going to show you how we do it the closet area is something that has required a lot of compromise between Andrew and I but we settled on having a closet area here and we also have one storage bag that we keep in the front Bay when we are stationary or in the back when we're driving which just like has our shoes our jackets the extra bits and Bobs that can't fit in here so ladies and men this isn't our only closet area all we need to do is literally lift up our closet like so and it has all our clothes in here in Little Storage cubes we searched high and low for the Right Storage cubes for us and I do have one piece of advice and that is don't cheap out and get pount storage cubes because they rip on the side spend a little bit more money and get different ones if you can afford to because it makes such a difference majority of our storage bags are our bag smart bags that we literally just got off Amazon and they're great cuz they can ntion bags so we can really fit as much as we can in these bags and tuck them into our closet we probably fit about 50% of our original wardrobe that we have at home mind you that is an all seasons wardrobe that we had back in Sydney so what we can fit in here is really the essentials and we've had to cut it down to about one or two of everything besides our Intimates that we keep multiple love for obvious reasons so once we're done with the closet we literally just close it up and it's a great little countertop for us if we're just chilling we want to have our laptop up or we just want to have our BS and bubs on here it's a really nice flat service fast to use usually an inside the area of the home is known as the man cave but I like to call this moose cave because I usually take over it in the morning um I get my emails done my work done and I just pop this little side table up here have my coffee have my brickie while Andy does everything he needs to do outside or gets the truck set up for us to move on to our next location as two creatives that work on on the road we're both working up our laptops all the time so what that means is our downstairs working area really needs to feel like it's comfortable elwise we won't want to work in it and we need to work so one of the reasons why we love our build so much is we've got our galing window here which allows for beautiful indoor and outdoor flow we do love it and I'll be honest when we were first thinking of doing our builds I was like we don't need a goling window and Andrew of course convinced me otherwise and I'm so so glad that we've got it now the skull Wing was just from head space as well um there are a few options out there on the market but this one worked perfect for us and it meant we could get it installed when we got our roof installed which just saved on time so we're not complaining about that now moving on to our desk area essentially what this piece of wood here is is our bed base as well as our desk so it's multi-functional it avoids it feeling like a clouded space so we love that we can have it here all we need to do is pull this little piece of wood out here and while we're getting the Des set up we literally can just rest it here which means there's more space for us to get in and out and do things we need these are the legs that we use for our disc and when we first moved into the build we were like oh we'll just keep them in the drawer l i or but we use it every day so we just decided to hide it under our little blankets so we don't need to look at them but it's really really simple to set up and you just Glide it through here usually I'm a bit of a clut so it takes a few takes um but we just lock it in there and we just get our second leg bit here and pop it in like [Music] so and you can kind of lock it in just to make sure that it's nice and stable but we usually swivel it around because well I'll show you in a minute why all we do is just pull out our desk bit here keep in mind we can actually still set it up when it's raining we just like to do it when the ging's open because less wood less hazards flying around so we just get this little inbit here and and we're going to line it up to there move it on in and hey pristo you have yourself a disc the cool thing about the swivel disc is we can actually make it LEL to set flush here so that if Andrew is over here or I'm over here we've got a long enough just that we can both have our arms comfortably and work away it seems like a really small detail but it makes such a big difference especially in a small space so all we need to do is just move this little one around what we love about it is because we're always on the go say Andrew gets up to take a work call or I'm just chilling and I want to go up and fill up my water bottle outside all we need to do is actually just swivel the desk around like that and we don't have to change things around it's not like musical chairs inside we can just move out comfortably without taking everything off the desk it seems like such a small and insignificant feature but honestly the smallest details can make the biggest difference in a small space so we absolutely love this desk and I'm going to show you how we use it as our bed as well now just like you might have a pull out bed or pull out couch at home we also have the same feature in our Defender essentially what we do is just grab our back rest cushions and we place them down here to make a full bed so I'm going to show you how it's done the one thing about this though is there are some companies that do foam cutting and the covers custom to your defender or your van or whatever it looks like for us we ended up getting the covers cut and done with a beautiful lady off Marketplace shout out to Facebook Marketplace we got the fabric chosen from Spotlight and from there we were just able to create a looking feel that we love because sometimes it can be a little bit limited when you are getting it done from one company so we decided to do two but you definitely can get it cut and covered to the same place this is our little desktop that we just showed you here and essentially we're going to pop this up and make a bit out of it we just keep this little piece of wood hidden um we can just shove it under here when we're not using it during the day but this is the key to making sure that the bed is comfortable so what we're going to do is slide in this little part of the wooden couch that we keep hidden and then moving on to the top of the desk which we showed you before this makes up majority of the beds so we just slide that in like so and then we add the cushions over the top and then the vet is done if we sleep downstairs and someone's sleeping upstairs or vice versa how do we keep it black out these have been an absolute Game Changer you look L just stick it to the side of each of the windows and it keeps it black out we have had a few friends stay downstairs already so it's perfect if we're visiting people or they want to come along for an adventure it means we don't have to have them sleep in a swag outside they can literally stay inside with us and there's plenty of room for everybody we're first testing out the truck we did notice that it was quite uncomfortable with the two of us sleeping downstairs we literally have to sardine next to each other here um to make sure that nobody's getting an inter interrupted sleep because of the fridge here but unfortunately with the Defenders there is compromise and that's just a part of it what we do love though is downstairs we've got our 12vt plugs and we've also got our little USB ports that live here so whether we're chilling downstairs for fun working away we can actually plug everything in charge it nicely which we absolutely love having because God knows when you've only got one charger in the car and you both need a charge it is not a fun time arguing over who can charge their phone first this little Top Cabin here is actually where we just keep our nonslip mat um during the day we keep our styling up here um the great thing about this is when I'm standing up inside say it's raining outside this countertop we can actually prepare food on so we can do it all inside as well when we're chilling downstairs just hanging out it's nice to have a little area besides here to put your belongings because if you're changing into your pajamas and you're lifting this up you literally have to move everything off it to access what you need so we just like to keep it up here one other thing downstairs is we have this little hidden cubby here um nothing too exciting in here I promise but essentially we just lift it up and pop it to the side and in here lives all the little battery um ports for the electronics for the charges here don't ask me too much about it I don't know enough about Electronics Andrew is going to cover that later on in this video but that's just where that lives down there so it's a nice little countertop that never really moves now one might be thinking is that storage you really have and the answer is no it's not here when the beds pulled out like this there's plenty of storage room under here so like I said if we've got friends staying or we're sleeping downstairs it's a really nice cavity to just store all the bits and bars that you don't want to see but when we are sleeping upstairs and this area isn't in use we've got plenty of storage underneath the couch that we managed to get built in which is an absolute game changer for all the tools the things I don't want to see things we don't use every single day so all all we need to do is literally just live this up here and we literally just pull these up here yeah when you live in a really small space it's really important to make sure that it feels cozy and it reminds you of home so we've added two different things on the back area here just to add a little bit more personality into the back of the truck now I can't take credit for this we have seen it on another travel couple's Instagram and Vlogs and it is a little map here so it's just a nice little momento for us to see where we are and to also show our French and family where we are on the map we just got like a nice little hely touch to the back of the truck here we've also added the wooden Timber feature here now the back of the truck before had this ugly black plastic and looking at it every day just wasn't a Vibe so we wanted to make sure that we had a nice flat surface so we can add Polaroids film pictures anything we like we can add to the back here so that is a work in progress at the moment she's blank but that makes it even more fun for what we're going to do next we'll take you along to the storage drawer now this is a lot bigger than it seems and it holds a lot more than you think it would it comes all the way out and it literally just lives under our couch here this has everything we need from our toiletries through to our ropes random bits like pigs that you don't want to see every day drills tools you name it it lives in the straw Andrew and I have absolutely loved having our toiletry bags in here because in a small space you don't want it floating around the front but they honestly pack such a punch and the reason why I'm showing you this is because so many things make a difference when you're traveling and this is one of them so when we had a shower outside when we pop up our ont we literally just hang it up here and we each have our own bag which has all our goodies in them and we can just work from there grab what we need have a shower and put it away when we're done so yeah I just wanted to show this little feature because I know a lot of Travelers will find these so helpful if you've been watching our channel from the start you will know just how important a good kitchen setup was to me and your kid but definitely not as much as I do because I absolutely love cooking so ensuring that we had a good kitchen setup was crucial for me enjoying our travels so I'll show you what it looks like starting with the obvious we have our 65 L Bushman fridge freezer we debated this for honestly endless hours do we want a chess fridge freezer do we just want a freezer 65 55 75 what do we go for but we landed up with a 65 lader and honestly for the two of us it's been really really good so far popping it open here it's a little bit messy I'm not going to lie but we can comfortably fit between 2 to 5 days of food depending on where we are and what we're cooking over that duration of time we found that the freezer element has absolutely worked for us a lot of people say that the freezer doesn't actually freeze on a lot of the fridge freezers but we haven't had that issue fingers crossed doesn't change when sum are really ramps up but we absolutely love it and it has all the storage space that we need so sh kiss from me moving on to the fun stuff this is our kitchen drawer it's broken into two main parts so we have our Main Kitchen cabin over here we usually just use this I'll show you the second half soon this is our dedic two burner here it essentially houses two different burner elements so whatever we're cooking we can cook in more than one space um luckily for me we managed to sneak a spice rack in here not as glim us as the one we had at home but it does its job and now for the fun stuff literally extends all the way out so this is where we store our key Pantry Essentials in here we've got all our kitchen utensils and all our dried Goods in here which just makes life super easy knowing where everything lives you can actually also use this as a cutting board which is really nice uh but to be honest we don't actually do that too much because we've already got another cutting board that we use we don't just have one Pantry but instead we have two and although it's nowhere near as big as our one in Bondi was and filled with as many Goods it definitely does the job for what we're doing at the moment so in here we keep our pastas and Rices everything that we can't really fit in this one over here but we also keep our prize possession which is our coffee machine in here as well as a few other bits that we don't want floating loose around the truck so again this can double as a chopping board if we need it to but usually we don't and it just keeps a nice little cover for us when we are cooking out here now you're probably wondering if they're cooking we there doing the dishes and I can tell you that we definitely do do our dishes what we do is just push our little drawer back away here and we head to our kitchen area and pull out our sink when we first had our build completed the sink actually lived behind here but we found it was way too niggly for us to actually do our dishs behind here so luckily we had some tools in the back and we managed to move it to the front here which just makes a lot more sense for us and the build so once we've popped it in our little Nook there all we do is grab our popup sink push it out stick it in and we can do our dishes now that our kitchen's pushed away we can show you what's around our kitchen area it is a little bit of a mess but it's organized chaos we promise under here we keep all our Zer cheairs these are perfect when we're camping out on the go um they're just nice to live under here and we also keep our dedic hose because our gas burner only works with one of these so unfortunately we just have to live with that and we keep that tucked away there um another thing we always have handy is our zali fireplace this pop out fireplace is something I'm so excited to use but unfortunately we haven't actually been able to use it yet because there's a fire ban in Queensland hopefully next year when everything chills out a little bit we'll be able to to use it and I can cook outside on it which I'm really really excited for as you can probably see here we also keep our battery solar box thing here I don't really understand what that is what battery system do we use great question now I won't go into too much detail because I don't know an awful lot about batteries Max MAV said I know a lot about batteries before however it might not be the case in terms of the battery system that we are running we've got a 200 amp lithium battery and with that we use a 2,000 W inverter to charge kind of everything we need we've got camera batteries drone batteries laptops I mean we're Max and I work kind of 24/7 so it's pretty essential for that now 2000 watt could be deemed as a bit overkill for us the main reason why we chose to actually go for 2000 watt is for a couple reasons uh one is we have starlink and that drains quite a lot of our battery and the other is Max she needs to dry hair all the bloody time okay let me come in and explain because I feel like here we go the ladies at home will understand all the men dried hair if you don't dry your hair it goes Buffy we're creatives taking photos if I don't have cute hair we don't have cute photos make Point thanks for coming to my TED talk goodbye now let's just glit that up but it just means that we have the option to actually use a blender and all these little electronics that use quite a lot of power in a short period of time now to charge it we also have a 160 W solar panel that lives on our roof but when it isn't Sunny for a while like it has been the last few days to be honest um we when we're driving along our battery system also charges up our main battery that we use so we're usually pretty safe one of the big non-negotiables we had for our entire build was having a big awning now the fact that our kitchen does slide out completely out of this drawer means that we're in the elements whether it's the Sun or the rain or even the wind so having the awning that completely wraps around and keeps us out of the sun when it's super hot or out of the rain when it is pissing down means that we can still kind of cook as per normal not have to worry about we can still sit outside no issues at all our favorite part about this a is probably the fact that literally takes about 30 seconds from when you unzip it walk it all the way around the car quickly tie it off and then and it's all set now the one thing that we really wanted to make sure of any awning that we were kind of getting is we didn't have to have poles or tie it down on each corner of it or anything like that cuz it just takes too long to set up or if it's too windy then it just gets difficult the fact that it is completely freestanding and supports itself without any poles or ropes or anything like that uh just kind of means that you have to take it down if the you know wind's getting above 40 km or roughly around there um especially gust cuz it can just come up uh with no supports pulling it down now if it is windy we can just tie it down we've got some pegs and some rope that comes with it so we can secure it but for what we using it most for and for hopefully where we're going with wise we don't need any of that no not everything's floating on our roof we have a 3/4 size uh Rhino Rack platform that we've got up top and then we also have a little Rhino Rack roof bar at the front that's just to mount the solar panel I also wanted the solar panel on an angle as the front of Defenders the roof angles down a little bit so that kind of just hides it a little bit and hopefully it makes it a bit more aerodynamic it might look like we have quite a lot of stuff on our roof but we don't actually have that much weight we wanted to keep it as light as possible other we realistically wouldn't even be able to push the roof up um so what we've got in our 95 L Storage Box items like our snorkel set we've got a backpack we've got some hiking gear in there but it's all very light gear now the only other thing that's up there really is the little four legs that on top of the storage box that's just for our styling so then when we are camped up places the sty link as high as possible it's not on the floor and it just makes it super easy for us to kind of know it's there and it doesn't get in the way of anything now that you've seen inside of the truck though what's next we it's safe to say we're definitely not going to be stopping YouTube now that's only the beginning we just had to address you know the build itself and everything else to do with it a lot people probably be asking a lot of questions um so from now on we're basically going to be documenting everything we're doing along our travels and and doing van life as well I think that was our biggest thing when we were looking into doing van life and Digi Nomad we really found it hard to find channels or accounts that cover both sides so we want to make sure that we're doing that in our content and showing the good and the bad sides if you have those scene accounts that do cover both please drop them below for us because we always want to know more so please let us know it's good to kind of address these things early on rather than us learning from our mistakes uh but that's one thing that we really want to cover with our channel so you'll definitely see a lot of meltdowns yes I've already had quite a lot of people asking how much this thing cost and you know what what's involved if they were going to do it so we're going to do either a separate video or even in the description below we've got like a link that you know it'll break down what the cost were involved for us to do this and make it nice and easy for everybody so we've kind of been able to put our skill set together for our build which has been awesome when we do drop the link below of how much everything costs that might not be exactly what we PA we paid yeah I mean we obviously are working with brands for this build but if you were going to do it yourself it would obviously show a pretty good you know representation on what it'll cost you to get the exact same thing and by all means this is not a walking talking Contra deal like we paid for 90% of railing and unfortunately but yeah we just wanted to disclose that we will obviously let you know who we've done work for and if we do like sponsored content we'll be sharing that as well obviously we are very much in the learning phase of all of this so please yes please be kind and you're going to hopefully see us grow a lot in a short amount of time CU we want to learn yeah absolutely so strap on in because we're about to give this lap a good crack yeah bloody o if you made it this far thank you for watching yes we would appreciate a chicky sub a like oh or even get on our Instagram because we're going to be posting a hell of a lot more on there oh okay yeah what he said then um so yeah thanks for uh thanks for sticking along this long and uh we're so excited to show you what's next yeah we are and we will see you in the next one we'll see you soon hopefully [Music]

Channel: Andy & Max | Land Rover Defender Vanlife

Views: 19,313

Keywords: Van Tour, Vanlife, Defender camper conversion, Land Rover Defender camper, Full van tour, tiny home

Id: 5vFiQidlpnM

Length: 33min 5sec (1985 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 10 2023