Gorgeous DIY Vanlife Build in a Ram Promaster 3500

[Music] this is nice it is nice we've never been out this way whoa whoa whoa what check this out oh what is that oh my god oh my god okay i guess it's another one i get to see this stop the car yeah stop the car i'm getting out are you coming okay get parked i wanna i wanna check this out soon come on let's go see if there's anybody in there this is so cool you know you know just by looking at it there's an entire house in there right here i go oh hey hey show size mater is here [Music] how are you guys we're doing good how are you hey guys we knew that this would be a cool camper buildout yes it is wonderful so we're kind of wondering like would you guys show us around absolutely this is gonna be so cool so everybody this is tj george from van life's adjourned on instagram and we'll we'll put up all the links to that but they have done this custom van build and it's beautiful i can't wait to show it to you so you guys don't mind telling us a little bit about the outside yeah absolutely what what chassis is it on so this is the 159 uh wheelbase the 2015 ram promaster so we went with the 3500 just for a bit extra power just because we knew we're gonna put quite a bit of weight inside so right pull us along okay so now you've driven across from ontario to bc right yeah yeah we drove all the way across how'd it do it did great we loved it we had no issues uh we call him doug so doug performed well for us nice um yeah we did lots of driving a lot of mountains and windy roads so it came in handy very cool so i mean it's how long is it total it's about i think 17 feet okay so you were able to stealth park yeah it just we went with the 159 because it still fits in a regular parking spot so the 159 extended is just that about a foot bigger we didn't want that one just because it was that tired bit longer just trying to sneak into places and if we wanted to stealth park it was a little bit too big right um and we strategically only put windows in this side just so the other side just looks like a white pan yeah you'll never know the difference let's talk about how tall it is yeah so inside i'm about 511 inside with the insulation the sub floor and then the roof it's about 6 1. oh so i can stand up comfortably yeah we have no issues with that okay so you got the slider door first of all did you buy the van new or used or we bought the venues it's 2015. um it has about 170 000 kilometers on it now since we've driven across that's what we're at now uh but we bought it as just an empty cargo van okay so you actually had to put the windows in it had the sliding window already in the back windows right we put the window that you can see the slider out there and then we put the skylight in which you can see when you go i can't wait to show you this guy very cool okay so lots of power then you made it over the mountains just fine and really it has everything that you wanted inside how's the cab space the cab's good we uh look this model came with the upgraded vinyl seating um we when we were talking about what we wanted inside we wanted the shower for the private washroom to use the toilet if we wanted to enjoy the curtain um instead of just going for the ones that you see slide out on a drawer especially because we have a little a dog with us so we don't want her running around while you're trying to go to toilet so we strategically placed it so the chair goes far back enough for me um without hitting the shower wall okay yeah cause that's a thought though yeah you have to think it through and we can still get some storage behind as well so i kept like my skateboard jackets and stuff like that behind my seat right so how long were you guys in it full time we left when did we meet to go end of july end of july we left to drive across and we got here the end of august yeah from end of august and we just settled down here in kelowna okay very cool tell me about the tires just regular van tires no we we have a bit more heavy heavy-duty tires just where we weren't sure where we were going to be driving and we went on a few dirt roads um so they came in handy it's uh a bit more of a terrain tire as opposed to just a full road tire okay um so maybe we lose about five kilometers off the tube tank but that's about it okay cool let's see what you did around front here yeah so we kept the front fairly simple just with the whole stealth camping that we kind of want to achieve um but we did add the led light bar just because i don't like driving at night time so having that extra light is a big help right and we also sprayed a truck bed liner on the bumpers and going around the side just to prevent the scratches let's take a look at the driver's side yeah so this side we kept uh completely just plain as is because we wanted that stealth cab if we had to we'd leave this side facing the street that way nobody knows we're inside i can't see through any windows no light peeking out so for all everybody knows this could be amazon exactly okay and let's go around back at the back uh we added was led lights at the top because the way we set up with is how we like to cook out here and when we back up with our camping chairs if we need it at night time you can switch those on that's a whole lot of light for you i bet it does okay so these doors just both open right up right the doors open oh and they go all the way around all the way around so you can back as close as you like okay and then this side of the door is kind of instead of going for a permanent stove inside we figured we'd like to cook outside more so we wanted the portable to burn a gas stove and then we added the drop down table so so you take your stove from your storage area it just comes out look at that and then we cook out the back okay light view like this hopefully i know right if you if you angle it just right okay so this is quite a bit of storage space yeah we kind of when we were planning the build to start with uh we we spoke about what we both wanted in terms of living space did we want to shower stuff like that and then this whole area determined our setup with the step up for the living area just because you can see at the back we have a 25 gallon fresh water tank oh yeah we mounted it that way just to maximize our storage back here for anything that we might have so tell us about your battery and power system so yeah setting it up uh the way we wanted to do it was everything in the back to maximize our storage space back here right camping chairs we have a dog dog food her things take up a lot of space too um so we have 300 watts of renegy solar on the roof okay that then comes down to the uh mpp charge controller which is also renegy that then feeds into 200 amp hours of lithium-ion remedy batteries okay and we kept it like this so we have space to add more if you want to add more power you absolutely can and you have an inverter that then feeds to the 2500 well inverter 2500 yeah so if you want to plug a kettle in stuff like that right i have a good friend kyle uh he's based in toronto um ontario so if anybody's building around there he's a big help with electrical stuff i can link his stuff below for you guys perfect um he helped out a lot basically we have an ac fridge instead of a dc fridge um in terms of the power pool and the cost of a dc fridge is is a lot more and uh so the way he wired it up for us is we have relays so that we can independently turn off our fridge without turning off the inverter okay so if you do need to save power cloudy day stuff like that we can switch off the fridge use it as a cooler plug the kettle in and do stuff like that okay everything else is 12 volt um and he wired it with a 10 gauge wiring so it has more than enough uh capacity okay and the way we set it up is we wanted to access everything back here quickly and not be lifting up lids moving cushions and clothes just in case we had to get back to the electrical okay so then what do you use for heat so heat we insulated the van fully floor wool ceiling um and then we decided to go with just the portable body heater we've had a couple nights when we were driving through banff where it got down to about minus four we literally started that up for five minutes shut it off and the heat stayed inside okay so your insulation was good yeah it's great um especially once you put the reflectix on the windows too it keeps everything in nice okay and then yeah we have our 25 gallon hot water tank which goes to our marine grade pump so that feeds to the 12 volt pump with an inbuilt filter um and then we have a two and a half gallon hot water heater as well okay so if you do want hot water for doing dishes or shower nice you hook that up inverter switch it on up front wait five minutes you have hot water and then to fill our fresh water we just have a hose which we attached here so that just feeds right back so we unhook that hook it up to the tab fill it up we're good to go nice and very convenient and simple to do yeah we wanted to access everything as freely as possible so very cool so you plug in then on this side yes okay so we have here a 30 amp sure power connection up here so if you do want to go to a campsite friend's driveway plug that in you're not draining your batteries and run straight up show power very cool okay so that's how the outside is but i know what you guys are all waiting for let's go inside and check this out do you mind showing us yes absolutely oh wow wow this is great first of all what a color yes right we went with like a more um nautical like color scheme um we really like like the bright the white because it's very um unique like not a lot of people have the bright insides and it makes it a lot bigger as well right yeah so that's pretty nice yeah um okay so as you all know in our rv reviews i'd like to uh point out the features now this is a a solid piece of countertop yeah so this is a quartz countertop and we just cut it to size uh we obviously didn't put a stove top because we wanted more counter space okay um very nice and i mean that's the thing about these small spaces right is you can use a little more luxurious uh materials exactly because you're not using as much we wanted to make it feel more like a kitchen than in an rv so nice deep what is this sink made of this is granite so this is a black uh granite sink a bar sink that we got and we got a square one instead of circle i feel like it's a lot more um easier to use sure yeah very nice and like check this out sprayer yeah it all comes apart you can easily like clean the sink um we wanted like the height to add more like so and and then it does help to get inside things when you're washing and stuff yeah do you have water filtration yeah so we have a coconut charcoal water filter underneath it's like a three-step process um and yeah we get all our fresh water from there for to drink so it doesn't really matter where you picked your water up from last you can make it good for drinking yep all right so moving down tell us what you've got under here okay so we have a bunch of storage uh just for cleaning products all of our under sink we have like our charcoal filter and we have our gray water tank that we can take out and dump so everything from our sink goes down we can just take it out and dump it how big how big is that gray water tank it's 20 liters okay yeah cool there and then we just have another storage cupboard there and so you put dishes and things yeah dishes um groceries whatever we need we have yeah we have ample storage everything that we would need so george had mentioned a little bit about the fridge but can you show us just how much storage do you have absolutely okay we can put all of our like water and everything we need there and then we have enough space we have a little freezer in here as well do you know what how many cubic feet it is i'm not sure george i think it's three and a half okay and then we have all of our utensils up here anything that we need to fix nice and organized okay we need a custom one just so it prevents the rattle so we put the foam inside oh just yeah inside yeah this is cool i've never heard of this before but that would definitely change what you heard as you went down the road yeah that's cool all right george made these custom um homemade leather straps for our um ripples and the thing that's cool about that is you're never bumping into anything or catching on anything yeah nice so this is beautiful is this real tile yes so i wanted to have real moroccan tile in here uh we tried the sticker and we just didn't like it so we're just like i want the real thing so we made sure that they're very uh glued in there and tight so it wouldn't go anywhere right and it's not gonna crack or anything nope this is very thoughtful so you can fit a bunch of stuff in there but you can also hang more things yeah you can hang like utensils up there if you need um you can put all your cleaning supplies in there whatever you want and i just like the way it looks as well you're right it's very nice then you have another cabinet that's a decent size up here take a look in there yeah it's just um you can put glassware up there if you want and again with the foam so nothing goes anywhere nice very nice while we're up here let's talk about this so you insulated up there yes so everything's insulated um and then we put a ship lap up here as well as on the sidings right yeah so and like george said you guys are able to keep the heat in here yeah when you need to and i guess the heat out too long very cool okay so there's a couple steps up into your bed dining area next i wanted to ask you just how the whole table system works yes so this is our lagoon swivel mount table and so it just swivels very easily for us to have a dining space as well as an office space if needed and then this comes right off to create our bed space so this just goes in the middle here and we have another piece that we've just put over there and then these come down and creates our queen just under a queen size bed here um so this is just a canvas material um we got an upholster to do it for us it has memory foam as well as medium foam inside we have a zipper on there so we can easily clean it if needed yeah that's very cool because you want something casual but still looks good that's easy to take care of and i mean that's a mattress but is it comfy so comfy oh good plus i mean in amongst the skylight and all the windows and you can even have the doors open yep how cool is that i love it so you've even got more storage here show us that yeah so we have three full pullout drawers here so we just put all of more kitchen supplies um we can put toiletries in here and they're all very large we have like the foam again at the bottom so nothing rattles around yeah these are all custom made um cupboards fitted and made by george so nice and we decided to do with the blue which we love and then we just have more uh you can put baskets in here pretty much if you'd like and then or towels if you want and just put them in there and you've got all that countertop space exactly and a bit more countertop space there as well love it so uh what else what's under here okay so these i'm just gonna lift that for you so these just come up and we have a bunch of storage underneath the seats as well so that just goes all the way down we have tons of storage on either side and we also have it at the back as well very nice and then you also have up uh up here you've got a little bit of storage too yeah so these are our cutouts that we have we kind of use these as like our end table so like we could put like water glosses up there we need to put our phones we're not using them we also have reading lights here uh we the switch is just behind this cushion here and then we also have um wire plug-ins for our phones okay yeah nice and you get these great windows yeah and check out that sunroof that's beautiful this is like the biggest possible sunroof we can get that's what i wanted um and it opens up the space a lot and we can do like stargazing at night it's it's great very nice yeah so do you have uh other plug-ins yes so we have plug-ins on this side as well it's just your regular uh electrical outlet okay yeah and then you've got more shelf space up there yeah so this is more of like an open concept shelf space you can put like books up there whatever you'd like right yeah so when it's time to get on the road do you is it just minutes or do you feel like you have a big process to go through to to put things down so you can drive um it's an easy process i feel like like everything is um we designed it so that we could just drive and go okay it's pretty much just like everything's lipped or we stick everything on and it's just ready to go for us nice very nice so let's take a look at your other feature yeah you know the one that corey and i can't live without it's in this van i love that it has a bathroom check this out all right this is our full uh shower so we have marine decking on the floor here so it's all waterproof we have just our drain system there so we have the stick on tiles to give it a more like high-end look as well as our rubber seal and a white waterproof paint and we just have it at the top there as well and then our ship lap just continues into the shower we have our shower head with our hot and cold uh water tap and then just some um shower storage it's quite big really yeah right so i'm one thing i'm noticing though is there's not a toilet there no so we have a removable cassette toilet in there usually um so it's all ready to go for a toilet um we just didn't want to put it in there and we wanted to just you can buy your own so the cassette toilet though uh for our for our viewers the way the cassette toilet works is that there's just a little space in there that you pull out and you would just take to a sani just like you normally would and then the drain in the shower uh goes to what uh you can either hook it up to like a draining system or it just goes down into the ground right so you could pull over a sani and yeah exactly yep very cool so i clearly forgot we also have a bit more storage up here as well for whatever you'd like outdoor activities and we have our curtain our blackout curtain rod here ready to go we have some hooks for jackets and then this just goes all the way we have quite a bit of space in there it just goes all the way to the front of the van so i see you've also got a good fan in here yeah so this is our dometic max air fan um we placed it strategically in this spot so the air from um the window pulls out so we get a nice breeze in here as well as um we turn it on when we have a shower to get all of the hot steam out of the van cool so then into the cockpit hey george hey so tell us a little more about your whole cockpit there sure so we're lucky that this model that we chose it came with quite a few amenities that came in handy we have electric folding mirrors if you're in that tight spot we can bring those right in cruise control air conditioning uh connect your phone and then the main thing that's the biggest help has been the backup camera oh nice yeah yeah because it's tougher to see pop in reverse camera comes on and you can see everything when you're backing up so it's nice and safe nice can you tell us more about this flooring it's beautiful the whole floor structure how does that work yeah absolutely so we have a subfloor and we just insulated that and then we put this chevron pattern tiling it's just a laminate um wood like laminate so does that go all the way through under everything first or did you put it in after we put it in first okay yeah so it goes underneath um pretty much all the way to the benches in the back there tell me about the switches and things that you have in here yeah so we went with the more flat modern style uh switches just right when you enter so we have what i was talking about at the back how we can turn our fridge on and off independently of the inverter so if you're running a kettle and stuff like that or you need more power you can just switch that off we then have our led light switch for the under mount under the cabinets along the floor there which is really cool a hot water heater inverter and then our water pump okay so we kind of strategically put it that way so water pump if you need to shut it off it's right by the sink right and stuff like that [Music] then we have our queen bed and the good thing about the promaster is we sleep this way you can sleep with ways it's just enough so next let's talk about the all-important numbers i mean you all want to know the numbers right so you guys bought this van and then you had to start building this all out how many hours of your time did you spend making this this great how was it tricky i spent close to around two months probably 12 hours a day i was outside mostly every day just building away seven days a week seven days a week wow okay so i mean that that's quite a bit of time and then of course you had to source everything yourself yeah that was that was tricky with the whole we got pretty lucky once the whole lockdown with covert happened we uh we ordered as much as we thought we would need like amazon stuff like that before all delays started to happen um so obviously that time frame could get a bit quicker if we had everything there we were waiting on a few things like the skylight things like that right and then i mean you spent all this time putting it together it's a labor of love and i mean it's a beautiful van but there is one more exciting feature about this van it's for sale so so cool but tj and george are pros at this now and they are going to start building out vans for you so i know you guys have some people that are uh interested but you said they were in the u.s yeah we've had a lot of interest for custom builds from the states but with the border closure right now that's that's tricky with them so they're currently on a waitlist until the board is open and they can plan that whole thing out and sending us their vans and getting that built so what that means is you guys have some room in your schedule right now yeah yeah how cool is that so i mean if you're canadian and you'd like to get in touch with these guys i will put a link in the description because well first of all you're going to want to know the details of the sale of this van if it's the one for you and if you wanted something just a little bit different then they can contact you and you guys can talk about that so ball parking the price what kind of thing would you expect it's very subjective with what you want in it obviously it's to the individual's needs whether they want the shower they want the high-end finishes stuff like that to recreate something like this you'd be looking around between 40 to 50 000. okay and so it works best if the person you're working with brings you their van yeah that way the client gets to choose the van they want whether they want the sprinter the pro master we can help give our advices to what we would recommend as opposed to what they're looking for because there's pros and cons with all of them right um we could help source them a van if that's what they needed but the van would be in their name they'd bring it to our shop we would build it out for them give them the updates that it goes along and they come pick it up that would be kind of cool so people could then um go up from there if they wanted to add some features like what kinds of things might they add i mean it's endless possibilities what you can put on these things we you can add the new 12 volt ac fresh air unit which is great because it's 12 volt van life has kind of shied away from ac just because it used to draw so much power from your batteries now with that 12 volt system it's really good um as opposed to roof racks you can get lift kits if you're going to go off road stuff like that so so really a person can just sit down with the two of you and go step by step through all the things they want you'd be able to put together a quote for them yeah we would give them a final materials list with kind of everything they'd want we'd do a couple facetime calls of kind of do they want the fixed bed this lounge conversion layout stuff like that and you'd be open to ideas i mean we all know the van lifers out there have great ideas about stuff that they want in their van very cool okay and so we'll link you guys so that you can talk to george and tj yourselves and figure stuff out and set stuff up but we're just so super thankful that you guys took the time to show us doug you gotta love doug right this beautiful view this beautiful van i hope you guys liked this as much as we have we're really thankful for that oh thank you so don't forget to give us a thumbs up hit the subscribe button and we'll see you out there thanks for watching [Music] we're not the coolest band ever make sure you check out those links

Channel: Does Size Matter

Views: 16,406

Rating: 4.7744036 out of 5

Keywords: van life build mistakes, alternative living communities, vanlife electrical system, van life routines, van life 2020, van life build 2020, best van life hacks, van life couples youtube, does size matter rv, does size matter interview, campervan conversion cost, campervan, full time vanlife, rv canada, rv canada winter, rv canada 2020, lagun table, renogy, class b shower, custom vans tutorial, vanlife storage, van build storage, nomadic van, off grid solar tiny living

Id: WxsTOw07R2k

Length: 30min 15sec (1815 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020