How to Convert a Box Truck to a Tiny House

so last year I converted this u-haul box truck into a tiny house camper that video got a lot of attention on YouTube and there were a lot of comments and within those comments a lot of questions and so I wanted to answer some of those questions today I want to walk you through that video and kind of describe how I built this so that if you're interested in building one for yourself you get a lot more information out of this video then you will out of the video I published last year and so I learned a lot and there there were a few things I did that I probably shouldn't have done and so we'll go over all of that so let's start from the beginning this is what the inside of every u-haul box truck looks like and these boards are in place for strapping furniture and boxes and things like that together so the first thing I needed to do was remove these boards now these boards are held on with a bolt that goes completely through all the way to the outside of the truck and you'll see in this video that I reused all of those holes and so the next thing I did was remove the rolling door so I got a lot of comments about doing that a lot of people suggested they would have kept it and I probably would have kept it too if I had more time I do want to mention that I built this in six weeks and I was rushed to do it I just ripped it out because my idea was to frame a wall in the back that looked like a house to have that homey feel in the easiest way I could think of to do that was just to remove the door and so I removed it by cutting the cables now if you do this remember that these doors are really heavy so you want to be out of the way when it falls so the next thing I did was cut the rails off as you can see there's bolts that you can use to remove them but all of these were either stripped rusted or they would just spin the other side of them that goes through the wall there so I just cut it all out so that I would have a flat wall there to work with I got a few questions about why I was painting these boards these boards are just the framing of that wall and clearly it wouldn't make sense to paint them because they'll never be seen but that's not really what I was doing here this is more of a fungicide type paint I already had some of this and I just wanted to use it I thought that you know I'd never built a wall before if somehow I messed up in water got inside there I just wanted to make sure I had some extra layer of protection and again I already had the can of paint if you'll notice that wall that we just framed actually is not the width of the truck it would have been really hard to get a full sized wall in there so what we did was we built it in three pieces the next thing we did was put the sheathing on I used that same fungicide paint on the sheathing again I already had this you don't have to do this I thought it'd be an extra layer of protection and I was just trying not to be wasteful so we put the sheathing on so here we're cutting out the window with a sawzall the next thing we did was installed a vapor barrier or house wrap or honestly I don't even know what it's called because I'm not a carpenter and I don't do any of this stuff for a living notice it's on upside down I got a lot of comments that said that this stuff is really only waterproof if it's right-side up and that I was you know messing up by doing this that could be true I'll be honest I did that because I didn't want to advertise the DuPont chemical company in my YouTube video so I just flipped it upside down it was not very important to me but I thought I'm gonna do it and so whether that really ruins it the waterproof ability of it I'm not sure you can look that up but I will point out that um I got called out on that quite a few times the next thing we did was put in the window it's a simple 2 by 3 window I think I paid 80 bucks for it you'll see right here I'm putting spray foam in between the cracks for insulation purposes so these slats that I'm putting up are so that my insulation can sit in between them and it will give me something to attach my walls to I'm using the holes that were already in the truck for those boards that we've removed at the very first part of this video so now I'm just spraying spray foam up in the crevices of the corner so I'm using 3/4 inch foam board for the walls and ceiling I'm just stuffing it in between my slats right there and I'm taping it with HVAC tape to keep it up we did the same thing throughout the entire truck so now we're putting on the t 111 siding so this I am putting on in the wrong way on purpose so T 111 siding actually goes on vertically if you'll notice this house in the background here has T 111 siding and it's vertical I did it horizontal on mine because I was still able to make it waterproof and everything so it really didn't affect anything but I thought that it was more aesthetically pleasing it looks a little bit like a log cabin or something so I put it on horizontally so notice I'm caulking where it overlaps that's actually something I shouldn't have done I didn't know at the time but you don't want to do this because moisture needs to be able to escape the walls the thought that I had while I was doing this was that I was making the wall airtight for insulation purposes but that needs to be done from the inside the exterior of the wall should actually be breathable so that if moose Chur finds its way in there it can also find its way out so I got a lot of comments saying it was dumb of me to put the door in before I had built the rest of the truck but one thing a lot of people don't realize is I built this in Florida we have a ton of rain and as I was putting this door in we were actually expecting a huge thunderstorm and so now I'm using cedar as the trim so cedar is very resistant to mold and rot and so I would not recommend using pine or anything I use cedar as the trim for the door for the wall and for the windows I'm attaching the trim with a nail gun so now I'm insulating the wall with just some foam board and we're using the same 3/4 inch foam board that we used on the walls for the ceiling just stuffing it right up into place now I'm making the cut out for my ventilation fan the fan that I bought requires a 14 by 14 square so I'm measuring the square and then what I did was I drilled four holes one on each corner of the square that way when I got up on top of the truck all I had to do was draw a line to each hole and I had a perfect square so I cut that square out with a cut-off wheel so this piece of the fan is actually just the interior trim but they make it really tall so in case you have really thick ceilings you can still use it so you'll want to cut this to fit yours if you're pushing it up flush inside the truck you want to make sure that whatever you're using as a ceiling is there so that you have the the right depth so I cut it with the same cutoff wheel that I was cutting the roof with and then I set the little frame thing for the fan on and I pre-drilled all the holes then I covered those holes in the whole area with putty tape and then put the piece back on and actually ran the screws in the next morning I came out and cocked it and put the fan on it's just two screws on each side it was really easy to do so now I'm finishing the insulation on the ceiling as you can see my fan is installed the wires are hanging the next thing I'll do is wire this up for lights we used some really cheap rough cut one by four is essentially even though they're not actually will even one inch thick for the ceiling when we stained it with an espresso color stain so we didn't do a perfect job with it there is cracks and like I mentioned we were rushing this project we were on a very strict time frame and so we were happy with the results we weren't too worried about perfection here so now I'm installing the last piece of the fan which is that trim that's the piece that we had cut earlier so now it fits perfectly in there we screw it in and the fan is done so for the walls I used the cheapest lightest plywood that I could find and this is five millimeter utility board it's really flimsy really cheap but it did the job and I'm attaching it with those same holes that were in the truck from the day I bought it I didn't put any more holes in the side of this truck I'm using some really cheap boards as trim to hide where the plywood meets and again attaching those using the same bolts that were already there now we're putting the trim inside the window here and we're finishing the inside of our framed wall so we painted everything white just to keep it simple it also kind of reflects light really well and makes it kind of feel bigger in there and so this little frame right here is actually going to be for the bed up on top where my kids will sleep and I could have just set a mattress up there but I made this little frame just to store a few things underneath it and so now I'm building a ladder for that so my kids can get up and I bolted that in so we had to cut this mattress to size so the way that we did that was we made our measurements and used a sawzall to cut it and then we put the mattress protector that came with it back on it so now I'm building what's going to be our bed and also our table and you'll see later in the video how that comes together so I this part was one of the things I half asked the most I really threw it together with cheap plywood and two by twos and it was a really simple concept and I was really rushing this process and so we're painting that and using plywood to cover it and then I'm fixing rails where the table is going to sit flush into this so that this thing can become a bed and so here I'm installing some guardrails so that my kids don't fall off the bed while they're sleeping so I had a bunch of scrap wood from the ceiling board and I thought I'd fit them into this wall because it looks pretty cool now I'm installing the lights these are simple 12 volt LED lights that I bought off at Amazon they hardly use any power and four of them was enough to light up this whole truck so now we're cutting the counter I got the countertop and the cabinets that it sits on for 50 bucks altogether I made this little jig to cut out the circle you can look how to cut a circle with a jigsaw online to find out how to make this little jig that's something I did I did not come up with this concept I got a lot of comments people thought it was pretty cool and so now I'm installing the cabinets just bolting them into the walls and putting some adhesive on top and placing the counter on and so here I am installing the cabinets I put up a piece of wood so that I could keep the cabinet's level and it also gave me something to rest the cabinet on as I screwed it in I decided to drill some holes and add some carriage bolts just to keep these cabinets up since we'd be going down some bumpy roads and it's been a year now we've been all over the country through the roughest roads up and down every mountain and they haven't moved a bit and so here's my table / bed this is what it looks like as a table and I made this little setup where I can pull the pins out and remove it and place it into the center making it a bed so if you want to see a tour of this I made one last year I have a ton of other videos on this truck this one was just a simple explanation and it's kind of turned into a longer video than I thought so I won't ramble on too much if you want to check the links in the description of this video you'll find the original time-lapse video which just speeds through all this you'll also find a tour of it and if you go through my channel you'll find all kind of stuff we've converted an astro van we've done all sorts of stuff like this so check it out and I appreciate you guys watching I did this so that if anyone had questions for their own build maybe they could learn something here if you do build one of these and you're inspired by this please let me know in the comments because I really want to check it out thank you guys for watching I really appreciate you and hopefully I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Cole Webb

Views: 822,411

Rating: 4.9204941 out of 5

Keywords: tiny house, box truck conversion, box van conversion

Id: 3qXtmqBt0jk

Length: 13min 28sec (808 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 29 2020