HOW TO EASILY CONVERT A VAN INTO AN OFF-GRID TINY HOME | START TO FINISH!

hey we are being Thea otherwise known as the indie project and we're currently driving around the world in our self converted Sprinter van we turned this empty panel van into a beautiful completely off-grid home on wheels hello everyone welcome to day one the first day of our van build project we're really excited to get started and what we're gonna do today is basically get the van ready for tomorrow today we're taking the ply down in the area so we're getting windows fitted so yeah the first thing is to take that in these panels here we're only gonna take down the ones we need today just because we are having a window fitted here which is really cool and it's gonna be like a long thin window it's not going to be like a normal big window in the back because we just don't need that we just need like a little vent that we can open and that we can see out so yeah be good we're also having a window in the sliding door as well so get it all prepped ready so the guys tomorrow who fit it don't have to worry about anything mentis occasion about to occur people we're about to expose the wheel arch my friend welcome to the family yeah bit dusty but otherwise looking good what do I believe what makes me to do this home [Music] so we've had a change of plan we thought let's just take all the panels off seeing as we've taken apart for them anyway so yeah just taking them all off now because they're traffic so what we are doing now is B's dis clearing all the metal shards off the wood then we're going to move this ply out onto the floor so that we can get to this play floor and remove it and see what's underneath so we've been waiting for this for a couple of days so it's pretty exciting the car [Music] I never thought that I would be trying people keeps missing the clouds into Fame so the next thing we're gonna do this evening is remove the bulkhead so as you can see it's a big piece of metal it's very heavy you can see again it's these same stalks bolts but I reckon they're going to come out just fine so fingers crossed yes it's good okay so as you can see behind me there is now no more bulkhead it's all free behind me which is super excited it really opens up the van and it wasn't as hard as we thought be so yeah so bees just go around with the wire brush and just touching up any little bits that could be rust able so we're now preparing the van for the rust prevention so any areas where we've had to remove the bolts there's like flaky paint exposed metal I've been going around those areas with some wire wool it works really effectively you're just getting rid of any loose paint as you can see here there's some residue you should wear gloves with wire wool it really hurts when it stabs you so all these areas here where we had to get the Torx screws out we will be scrubbing down we don't seem to have any really extreme areas of rust which I know some vans do have so we're about to get started on rust prevention in the van it is raining that's not that funny noise is that you can hear in the background but the great thing about being in a barn means that we can work whatever the weather come rain or shine so let's get going [Music] so whilst I've been scouring the floor getting the chip paint work and stuff Theo's removing this little bit here which is surprisingly grubby underneath check it out so we will need to give this a thorough clean first of all give a Hoover then we'll give it a wipe down and then any exposed metal will treat so you can probably see behind me the van is now completely clean be just hoovered it and now it's ready for a lick of red oxide takes about 16 hours to dry so we can come back tomorrow and start to repaint another layer of something else over the top of it [Music] I'm actually really liking how the color of the red primer looks I'm thinking we should just paint the whole van in primer so every single tiny weeny piece of exposed metal has been covered up walls floor and ceiling let me just reiterate this doesn't mean that all these areas had rust there was no rust on any of these patches it was literally just little bits of where metal was exposed so you paint this over it to protect it from rust in the future because this is all obviously going to be covered we're never gonna see it it's also going to be in theory completely vapor barrier anyway so it should never have an issue and Theo's just finishing up at the end there looks like a murder scene this is the red oxide primer that we use to cut it from screw fix it's called a no-nonsense one absolutely massive tub we probably could have just painted the whole of the floor with it if we'd wanted to but instead we just thought we'd go on the patches so we leave that to dry now can't paint over it for about 16 hours but it's already getting tacky so in theory we should be able to walk around it and and stuff today so we can do what other things so excusing the socks and sandals very comfortable this is the dodo dead mat that we're going to be using to sound dead and all of the van width I went for the four point six six meter length with a width of 75 centimeters so fingers crossed this is more than enough I'm gonna unroll it now and cut the pieces to size so bees just measuring up all of the areas where we're going to be putting this sound deadening material and you've got to be super careful not to overuse it really because it's super expensive stuff and it should be pretty straightforward really because there's lots of mirrored areas so obviously here here and here is going to be the same pretty much the other side of the van so it won't be too difficult to cut loads of pieces in one go hopefully don't know where to start just thought as well if anyone was watching it is possible to buy these in ready cut like sections but we just wanted to be able to cut them exactly to size from a roll and just work out cheap for doing it that way as well but if you don't want to spend I don't know how long it's been probably like half an hour cutting then you can just buy them ready-made cut one of the things you want to make sure with this stuff is that the temperature is right because if it's too cold it won't stick properly I think it has to be above 10 degrees and right now it's been really cold but today this certain has come out so now we can get on with this it's like it's probably about 15 degrees today so that's perfect so I'm just gonna peel off halfway down stick it on this straight as I can as I'm a perfectionist it's working nicely I try to face everyone with this Lamar I see that siren smile without final way to breathe but the way that your eyes shatter mine I will be defeated so now we've installed all of the sound deadening of the next step is to insulate so we're using two different types of insulation this is called super loft it's recycled plastic it's non fibrous you don't have to wear gloves or a mask or anything to use it it's not itchy which is one of the reasons why we went for it we just didn't like the idea of tiny little glass particles from the recycled one thing you can get going in our faces like we've heard happen to some of our friends so we've just unrolled all well just this is one small role that I've enrolled just to allow it to kind of expand a little bit and in the meantime I'm gonna measure the gaps where it's going top and bottom and cut it to size so it can slot in very nicely I could turn guys I can't tell you how excited I am about the installation process I've been waiting for this moment for a good couple of days we thought it was going to happen sooner but it's just one of them things we wanted to be bulletproof with everything that we do so we're taking the slightly longer than we thought we would but soon the van is going to start taking shape and we can really crack on with all the fun parts ah a second so for a wall insulation we've gone for a Celotex 50 millimeter deep insulation material it is a hard material it has no flexibility to it at all so what I've done is created a template now this is for the first panel the first template I've made is for this panel here it's the biggest one so far so let's see how it fits basically I've cut it out measured it to size and I'm going to now trace it cut it and carve it though we have cut all of the Celotex to sighs it was a massively arduous task especially because the wall panels are actually a slight slant so we had to make sure as you can see here that we cut the insulation to fit in nice and flush so that's something that we've been dealing with we've now cut them all so you've got one for here one for there one for there one for there and one for here now the one for here is an awkward one because obviously we've got this window here but we wanted to have it surrounded by Celotex so I've kind of made a bit of a jigsaw puzzle they do all fit around it so yeah we're going to also be set of texting up there it's gonna look absolutely mental bow will work so let's get sticking [Music] so we're almost at the end of the arduous task of putting the Celotex in the wall cavities Theo's just trimming up the last piece that's going to be going above the window there if you wanted to use as much server text as we could because it is the best the spray foam has gone on nicely we just need to trim it all off and all is going good so it's gonna be another night shift we finished three a.m. last night spraying some adhesive fluffy stuff I'm just wedging it on there [Music] okay so all the Celotex is down on the floor and it's all been nicely sealed in with the aluminium tape so that is now one big continuous vapor barrier there are areas over here you can't really see it too well on the camera where the top layer of the Celotex got peeled off so that will need to be covered with the aluminium tape as well but yeah it's all nice and flush all looking gray and now we just need to silver foil the headliner then we can put the cover back on and then we're just gonna temporarily put a large ply sheet on here also just put the headliner back in that was actually really flippin difficult as you can see behind it we have vapor barrier dit as well because we did insulate it so that's all on never want to take that off again but I think we might have to do to access some of the wires and I've shut the back doors now but we're nearly there [Music] in circles but on the ground soby is doing an absolute marvelous job of cleaning off all of the underneath the trimming and it's looking great the Vans never looked so clean and it looked pretty clean when we brought it but look at that it's just completely clean clear of anything and this is such an important part of the process because you want to make sure that there's not any problems for later on these all clean and dry and now it's time to silicon up I've got this silly rub neutral curing silicon and that stuff doesn't rust yeah basically people it said that you need one that doesn't have vinegar and these are the holes that they will be going in tiny little holes well actually they're quite big holes in the side of your van but they're just known to leak and you can see where it's leaked on the inside and that happens there like every splinter so it's best to make sure that they're completely sealed and be ready for business so that's perfect we can see the sealing has come out so it's all underneath and it's all nicely barrier durán the edge so that should hopefully work [Music] so it's taken about an hour but we've done the entire perimeter of the van looks very very neat so when we took out the original floor we did actually keep hold of it which was really useful for cutting out the template of our new floor so it was in two halves you can't see both but this is number one the other ones behind it and it was really handy for getting around the wheel arches because they're a bit awkward and it fits perfectly now so from this angle you can see we've got the floor in we're going to be trying something with our stet which is why it overhanging a little bit you have to wait and see what goes with that and I've already taken the back piece out for varnishing and what are you up to Theo I'm gonna be we are large boxes the ones we've already got a very grubby a bit rotten so I'm gonna make some fresh ones so they last a lot longer and there's a know if you guys have spotted this weird artwork with pop going on the reflectix it's basically just so we can see where the points for drilling our beans in battens is gonna go so here's the floor laid out on top of the lino I wanted to just make sure they're 100% fit first and now what I've decided rather than drawing on the actual gray top of the liner I'm gonna flip the line around put these back on and then trace around the floor and then I can cry out [Music] to make it through [Music] stormy weather where we are to make it the moment has come to put that in that let's go [Music] love you after all the hey presto the floor is down looks very very clinical but I'm proud of what we've done oh hello me either admiring the work looks super good so down here we have all about tongue and groove wood and our battens that we've been using in the van this particular tongue and groove is eight millimeter spruce and we have our battens there which are 18 mil by 34 millimeters so they're brilliant because they bend to the shape of the van the only problem with this stuff is it is super thin so it can be a little bit of a problem because it breaks very easily so you have to assess every little piece of wood before you put it on because you don't want it to be broken so these actually all broken pieces that we need to take back [Music] so before we finish pulling the rest of the balance up we've put in the frame for the window oh it's almost finished now we're just about to secure it in place it's nice and level so once these are secured we'll then put the top bracket on secure that and we can carry on with the rest of the buttons before cladding so now that our battens are in place it's time to finally put the cladding up and I just want to show you a little tip that we've picked up from our van build so as you all know our van was a panel van before we converted it all began the conversion and she came lined with ply walls which we did keep which has been very very handy so for us we can use this ply as a perfect template to get the cladding cut perfectly to the wheel arch and to go around all these bits along the side of the wall and to also get the cladding nicely curved along the side there because this is gonna be our bedroom area we want it to be nice and neat so yeah we're going to basically line up just making sure that that fit we just have to trim off 34 mil from the bottom because obviously now the floors being put in the ply didn't fit in as perfectly but now it fits nicely and we can use it as a template for the cladding [Music] then we finished this last night but we couldn't show you because it was pitch black and we wanted to show you it in the beautiful sunshine but how good does that look I mean around here I'm so happy with it it looks so good around the window and this morning I've just started adding in these little touches these are what make it for us these little details hiding any little kind of wonks that there might be not there was many but to cut that edge was really difficult so that just hides that and looks really nice and now we are just working on this surround so we put a piece of edging up here along here and down here so it frames it off really really nicely and we got such a nice little shelf there to put a drink on put your phone on when you sleep in okay guys so here is the frame of our bed it's six foot long and the entire width of the van we're not having the bed the entire width the platform is gonna be the entire width so right now we're just putting on these little blocks to protect this from the wall and then we're going to putting a mid beam in and then an edge beam and then because we've already tested it and it does fit perfectly in here we will then be putting in there and attaching it to the legs that we've got it's the time to get drilling [Music] okay so here is the bedframe in okay guys so now that the bet is in and secure it means that we can now work on putting the bench in and actually last night we built the bench one part anyway let me show you so here is Theo and his masterpiece this is the bench nicer nice kneepads going on there mate thank you look in there looking fire so this is the bench do you want to explain it to them yes we've done it in two parts so we've got this straight bit that's straight bit then we're gonna join them inside the van and what its gonna have is you've got a gap here we'll get AB some runners and our toilets gonna slide out here we'll go down a cat flap here and jinju's litter tray is gonna be there so both of our toilets together not too many smells go and then this is all going to be storage all gonna be storage there we're gonna have lift up 12 mil ply for the for the top surface that we can lift up access anything we need to save for here and that should make it really nice and secure and I'll be pocket holding every single joint so super secure and it looks really nice as well should show them how the pocket joints are looking so here we have an example of pocket hole joinery it just creates a really nice smooth finish and also a very strong join which is what you want for a seat okay guys so we actually grabbed some upholstery some comfortable cushions for our sofa check out these are from a caravan we got them off eBay we've got them the other day and they are incredibly comfortable and they fit perfectly in fact they're a little bit too big so we have to trim them to length but with ways they create a very very comfortable base for us to lounge on and don't worry we will begin and reupholstered we're not gonna stay like that we're not keeping them with this theme it does look exactly like the three-piece suite my Nana and granddad used to have when I was a child but we're going to get them reupholstered we're thinking maybe a nice pale blue that's one of our favorite colors what do you guys think [Music] so obviously it's not complete with the cushions because these are just the size cushions we need to cut to size but look at this this is where our composting toilets gonna slide out just like that which is super cool and it's soft shutting oh nice love it and if B comes off the C we can demonstrate how it lifts up so it's as easy as that you can get under here to all of your things and eventually we're going to get some really strong gas struts that are gonna fit there so when we lift this up it will stay in place so we're super stoked and also this one does the same as well this lifts up and there we go we can get underneath get all of our things out very easily and it will generally just make this a really nice place to hang out first thing we've got is the most important for a separator toilet and it is the actual separator and as you can see down there it's got a filter so it filters out any of the sawdust so the tube to the urine divider doesn't get blocked up and then we've got the number two bucket so some people just bag it and bin it will probably do that other people will actually let this compost down we've got a small 3.3 liter urine container so we're gonna see how that goes we will get a bigger one eventually but this is all we could get our hands on for now and then we have our toilet seat so yeah pretty simple but now it's time to build the actual box [Music] [Music] so here it is just pull it out from under the chair super easy access and it's ready to use once it's lifted out of its tray so we are now in the land of mattresses figuring out which mattress is the one that we want to get you manage to locate it it was the firm one yeah and we drove the van all the way to Ikea for it to be rolled up we could have bought the car have a you tailor camera yeah so it's the double its firm 135 there we go watch the muscle man I'm so excited so we just put our I care slapped back on the bed which is exciting it kind of transforms it from a wooden frame into a bed and the reason we went for slat is because we're going to have heating in the garage area which is gonna heat the garage area but also heat the mattress as well from the underneath so we shouldn't get any mold or anything because it's able to breathe from these slats there's lots of gaps and also they give a little also but be a bit more comfortable than just a solid plywood board so that was definitely a two-person job hence why we put the camera down but look be is lying on the bed this is super exciting we've been waiting for this moment for a long time coming so spacious I just can't wait now to build the side cupboard here it's just everyday it's my favorite phrase but every time we put one more piece in the van it really does bring it together and it feels like home and this is our bed and it's so comfy so this we've already started to dismantle it you can't see in all its glory but it's a very old cabinet that we want to include in the van build and we're just trying to figure out how to make this work on the bulkhead because we love it love all the intricate details so much character earthly we started to really bring our kitchen together this is kind of a rough organization of how it's gonna look so we've got here a lovely little fridge isotherm very good with power that also has a little freezer in it so that's gray I'm gonna bring some path nips over the hopefully I can freeze they'll last for Christmas because I couldn't find any in Portugal last year so we're going to have the fridge here you can hold a lot of stuff it's the exact same size as the one we had in our t4 and then next to that it won't be this high it will be higher up but obviously this is just for space spatial purposes we've got our little oven I'll put a link to this in the description because everyone wants to know where it's from and it's beautiful I am so excited about oven look at that oven it's got a little latch so I can't fly open this all peels off it's all silver check it out so we started off with one solid piece and that explains it - looks totally crazy at the moment yeah it looks very odd but when it's all together alluring eyes so we hopefully have a piece that's long enough that we can slot into here from the original so we can in fact where is it there we go yeah I'm hoping other way up so if this is trimmed to size that'll fit in nicely there and then we've got a shelf running all the way along the bottom and we had to make sure that we had enough room on this side because when the sliding door shuts there's actually quite a chunky bit of rubber that sticks out so if this was too far over we're just getting slammed to pieces and annihilated immediately so that's why it's slightly further over and not right to the edge and obviously we're mirroring that on the other side for symmetry okay everyone check it out we've fully modded it and it looks totally mental when it's painted I assure you it's gonna be epic the vision we have for this piece right now it does look mad but it looks so beautiful we will be making it shorter these legs won't be that long it's an indie projects original revamped vintage thing based on one coach is like I think that it just needs one coat because you know we want it to look like farmhouse seeing I'm like you don't want to do another coat no I also think it does look good with one coat anyway so most of it is done and how fire does not look honestly I'm literally this is turned out exactly how I wanted it to how amazing does that look it's incredible it looks just how we wanted it to and now we're gonna finish off the cladding there and then we're gonna stain it with the walnut stain and it's really really looking nice this thing is we're gonna add at the top here little copper wiring tubing actually it's definitely a wire copper piping very nice very nice so yeah it's looking lovely in this little bar at the top really adds a nice touch to it this is fantastic so here's what we've done to the kitchen we've painted the entire unit to match up with that gonna look beautiful together and basically this is where the fridge is gonna go so you're not gonna see all the way to the back I've only done one coat it's not fully finished yet but it's looking really nice and oh we've put the drawers in they're not staying like that we are gonna stand these back and paint them too so we've got two drawers that we're gonna probably have to shorten because the sink will be going there and it might get in the way but that's fine they look really nice lots of storage space all of that way more than I thought we'd have and all than if you've peaked but we've got a water system as well you're gonna be seeing that soon let me show you what we've been doing in here so here is what we've been doing these past few days tons of story just suddenly emerged at the side of the bed so we're not leaving it like this so worried looks like I said very basic right now we've just basically done the main we've got all of the support up all of the shelves are in look how deep these are at the bottom this is perfect for socks and pants so all of our clothes and stuff are gonna go in here and what we're doing is we're not having it go all the way to the top so we're keeping it nice and open and we're gonna cover up all of the fronting with this really nice wood just so it looks a little bit more substantial and it will also act as a lip to hold stuff in and then we're gonna paint it the beautiful green color so it's gonna look really nice so now we're going to show you basically how we're gonna do that today [Applause] okay so we've now added all of the frontage ink to the shelves we've put it in the van to check how it looks and make sure it all still fits perfectly fine and it does so I'm gonna show you how it looks so here we have it it really has transformed it making the front thicker and now what we're going to be doing is putting it a whole long piece along there and along the sides and then I need to fill all of the screw holes in with wood filler sand it down tomorrow and paint it tomorrow because we need to be fully dry and we were gonna put shelves there but actually we're gonna leave it for now cuz we're not 100% sure what we want to do with it [Applause] [Music] and having to be honest [Music] and I thought [Music] [Applause] so you saw in the time-lapse that we painted it all the next step is to add this beautiful copper Bart if there's just finalizar than I in turn and we found these in home base for six pounds really cute little them baskets they'll be useful for putting stuff in so should we put it in the van now and see how it looks so here we have it in place loving the look we've got the little drawers in there they look really cute so we've just arrived back from Bristol it was a really smooth Drive if are a lot faster game back then getting there I think because we were just so excited to get the cushions in the van we've put them in and in fact we've put everything else in the van to put the kitchen in we put the bedside cabin in and the cushions in and it really has just brought the whole thing to life let me show you so here we have them in finchy how lovely do they look so comfortable so this came in the post yesterday and this is our front runner roof rack and Universal roof tracks we arrived at snail vans and the first thing to do was to check we had all of the components needed to fit the rack holes were drilled in the universal tracks and then countersunk the rubber seal for the universal tracks were then attached [Music] the next step was to connect all of the feet to the roof rack as well as the wind deflector after everything kind of roof rack was in place the universal tracks were lifted onto the roof and aligned with the holes sealant was added to the bolts and everything was tightened up the van was then driven outside for a water test we made sure that there was no leaks inside the van shortly after we lifted the roof rack in two sections to make it easier and connected all of the feet to the universal track so the roof rack is now completely fitted with super-stoked of how it looks it looks amazing it's been turning heads already on the way back from snail Vans workshop everyone's just like whoa like so that's exactly what we wanted you might be wondering what floor have we gone for and we have gone for the next revolution in waterproof floors which is this stuff it's a vinyl click flooring we got it from wix's was it wicks wicks wicks is same thing we got this floor it looked pretty good it's not the lightest stuff in the world but it's fully waterproof and we didn't actually need much of it one pax gonna do this fine but probably only even use half a pack it's also incredibly thin this is why cuz you might be asking why have you not gone with the cork it's so much thinner than the cork and we needed the headspace for Theo yeah we've realized that the headspace was going to be an issue when we clad the roof obviously we don't have the cladding on just yet but we did some measurements and I don't want to be standing like that but did that in the boat and I don't want to do that in the van so as we got to the unit quite late I'm cooking a pizza and if anyone's worried about the flame yes I'll just drop the cheese on it by accident so it looks a bit mental but it's normally not like that but yeah cooking pizza whilst we lay the floor and check it out already so we've trimmed some bits let me just show you guys the trimming so Theo's got his food before me because as soon as you know I'm celiacs are tiny normal pizza which is sad poor we don't have any plates so be served it well serve the pizza to me on a piece of vinyl flooring how hipster is that like that is the next thing to be at your local pub the next step is to cut out on one of these pieces of wood a cat shaped head for gingy's litter tray okay guys so there's my template and here's the outline of the here the cat face shape hole that ginger will be walking in and out of to do her business there we have it so I just need standing back obviously that's the raw jigsaw out piece we need to make it nice and smooth for her furry body today we're doing a task that we have silently been dreading ever since we knew we were gonna be converting a van let alone when we got the van so yes today is the day that we drill copious amounts of holes in the roof of the van Theo just up there now behind me there is sorting out where he's gonna position the gland so right now he's looking at the light bar 1 they've also got the 4G booster to fit through the roof and also the solar panel so today is gonna be a rather nerve-wracking day but once it's done ok guys so we're now up on the roof next to the light bar this is the first thing we're going to install so I put it through the junction box as you can see this was white before I painted it black so it blends in nicer and then I've just marked out exactly where I'm going to put it and they drill a little pilot hole and then I'm going to use my step drill bit to create the bigger hole and then that's going to fit nicely and neatly there and then what I'm going to do is cable tie this wire to the side of the bracket for the light bar so that the wire doesn't flap about when we go off-road and stuff so what we have done is just added some hammerite to the edges underside and the top as well just to make sure it doesn't rust so sorry we didn't film it but it was a bit of a tricky process but basically we've just siliconed with Sikaflex 5:1 - around the glans so it's now all nice and secure and leave it to dry we were two days before we go go anywhere so that's more than enough time for this to set so this is the Sikaflex we used 5:1 to caravan 1 it's basically designed for use on our side it's UV protected and all that sort of stuff so won't go nasty over the years we were going to use another one but we've run out of thomas wind it again is from a local caravan shop and it's been great as great Sikaflex can be it smells quite quite fruity this is our final electrical setup in our garage area and there's quite a lot going on so I'm gonna talk you through it so first off we have 2 times 100 and power lithium batteries some sterling over here we have I call it a shoreline but I'm obviously not on a boat we can plug in our generator to top of our batteries or we can plug into mains power from a house or a campsite and we chose to have it inside because hopefully we're never gonna really need to use it and we don't like how they look on the outside of the van I've seen some people put them underneath the van which is a clever idea but we just didn't have time so moving up this is our mains power distribution so this is what runs our two gang plug socket inside and that runs into our Victor on inverter charger and this is the 12 835 so this is a charger inverter all-in-one which we thought was really cool down here we have a kill switch and this will kill everything to the battery so if we needed any maintenance or we leave the van for a number of days or go away we can isolate the batteries completely which is very cool and then obviously we've got all of our fuses I won't go into what every single fuse leads to but if you know you know we've got our shunt down there that's for our Victor on BM v so battery display battery monitor we have our Victor on MPPT hundred thirty that seems to be running well so far down here we have our 12-volt blade fuse box with all of our appliances and stuff going into there and then we have a Stirling battery - battery charger so when we drive that tops up our batteries and controls the voltage going into the lithium batteries in the fire distance you can see our motor home Wi-Fi 4G booster so that's the other side of the booster that plugs in to the area on the roof and that gives us really nice 4G signal definitely recommend that and yes some other wires you can see down there a diesel heater running into the system as well so there's a fair amount going on I don't think I've missed anything there but it's very neat and tidy what I'm going to be doing is I'm going to put some sort of cover just to protect the batteries and some of the cables up here so if I slide stuff into the garage area it's not gonna get damaged but I will do that at a later date so here we are guys this is the ceiling cladded with our beautiful lighting how amazing does that look and also when I was explaining the inverter plugs these are our inverter plugs so we only needed two because basically we need to charge a few things and use Bea's laptop because she can't get a 12 volt charger for it so that looks really nice we've gone for this beautiful copper plated plugs so it's super happy with how they turned out and we've got our switches on the side here so if I just flick these switches that one turns on the one in the living room and then this one turns on the one in the bedroom and how cozy does that look we got nice warm LED lights they draw hardly any power and I just love how they look super excited with them so if I just turn that one off I can show you what style we went for it's very like bulkhead style light it really goes with the silver the gold the copper we're kind of mixing all these different colors but it works really really nicely so on the outside of our van we've actually added quite a few modifications and the reason for that is we do a lot of off-road driving but we also are planning to drive this van all the way around the world so that's a little bit of an exclusive for you so make sure you subscribe one of the main questions we get asked is about this snorkel it takes the cleaner air when you're driving off-road and takes that into the engine instead of taking over the dirty air from download' like you usually would we've also added a light bar currently we're near the Arctic Circle and in these sort of countries where it stays dark a lot at the time or you're driving around at night that can be moose in the road that can be reindeer so from a safety point of view it's really good to have a light bar it's also good at night when you're pulling up to a location you're not really sure what's around you your wild camping if you want to check out if it's a good spot or not the light bar is really helpful for that as well so one of the main things we had added to this vehicle is a lift kit so we actually have five centimeters of extra lift and it makes it a little bit tricky climbing in and out of the habitation area but it means that when we're driving off-road it's really good because we've got that extra clearance so that's really important if we're going to be driving around the world we also had these BF Goodrich all-terrain tires that are ko to s and they're 245 75 are 16s so coming around the back of the van we've got this beautiful rear wheel carrier this is made by a guy called Williams he's on instagram go check him out and as well as looking beautiful it serves a purpose we can no longer fit this massive all-terrain tire in the stock carrier under the van so we had to fit this but I'm pretty pleased with how it looks so one of the most exciting parts about this project for me was installing the front run of roof rack this thing is amazingly well made and allows you to add so many different accessories so the other side of the van we actually have an ax mounted on the side because we'd love a good campfire we've also have a shovel if we need to get ourselves out of any situations or you need to go to the toilet in the woods we've got a three hundred and thirty five watt solar panel it's a beast that is also on the roof rack and we have a storage container we have our motorhome Wi-Fi 4G booster which is amazing that gives us Internet pretty much anywhere we go and we also have a jerrican holder this thing's really important for when we need that extra fuel capacity we're so happy with how our van turned out and can't believe how comfortable it is to live in it has everything we need to be able to work from the road and the standing room is ideal when the weather isn't great OB batsto diesel here has kept us warm in the Arctic and the insulation worked amazingly at keeping the heat out in the summer if you're thinking of converting a van then do it building to your own specification is the best decision cool down mug life as they shimmer in the Sun as they glimmer in the Sun I hope you guys enjoyed the absolutely mammoth van build series video and if you want to see the full van tour the link is in the description make sure you subscribe because soon we are shipping our van all the way to Canada and traveling North America in this van so we're very excited and we don't want you guys to miss it

Channel: undefined

Views: 538,794

Rating: 4.8678565 out of 5

Keywords: van life, sprinter van, the indie projects, camper van ideas, diy sprinter van conversion, diy van conversion, dodge promaster, full van build timelapse, how to convert a camper, how to convert a van, how to do a van conversion, off grid camper, self build campervan, sprinter conversion timelapse, sprinter van conversion, ultimate van conversion, van build timelapse, van conversion electrics, van conversion heater, van conversion how to, at home, lockdown uk, stay home

Id: JpZNuLUhkA4

Length: 53min 58sec (3238 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 02 2020