HOW TO MAKE A CAMPER VAN From Start to Finish (Low Budget Interior) 2020

hey there this is Rick I hope you're having a great day this is a little video that I've been meaning to put together for at least 18 months but I finally got around to doing it and this is my van build video now when I built my van into a camper van I took photographs as I went along step by step and I'm going to be presenting all of those photographs in this video from start to finish and I'll be talking you through all the processes that I did in order to get my finished camper van which I use today now if you've ever thought about building a camper van for yourself hopefully this video is going to be for you because you should get some good ideas this is actually my fourth proper build and so along the way I've picked up a bit of experience and I'm you know in no way shape or form any sort of expert I'm just I'm just taking this sort of DIY handyman approach but it's certainly not you know from an expert point of view so I'm very much an amateur in doing this but I have managed to build for camper vans now and this by far is the best one I've ever done so anyway let's get this journey started you might hear me tapping at the keyboard and clicking away on a mouse because I'm basically playing the video that I put together and I'm kind of narrating over it so excuse the little clicks and things in the background but so here we start off with my current farm which is a renault master 2018 it's a medium wheelbase and a medium height roof now it started out life as a just a very basic panel van here it is without anything having done - I think that was the day it was delivered so it's basically brand new and untouched and so you can see my other van my old silver van opposite there and that's is the the camper van I had before it was getting on a bit so I decided to go for a new one and do another build so I did some very careful and technical sketching and came up with an idea and then today this is what she looks like and her name is Guinevere and she looks quite pretty on the outside and very practical on the inside and I've been camping you know quite a few times now and she served me really really well now fortunately this panel van was actually paneled out in wood so it had a wood floor and wood sides on it so that was going to save me a little bit of money because I could utilize those in the build so what I needed to do was to strip out the wood and that was just the case of unscrewing it and it all came away and left me with this kind of bare empty shell you can see the lower half there that's the manufacturing wood panels that's how it comes out of the factory the main wood paneling was done afterwards by the people selling it so after I removed the wood I decided to remove the bulkhead now some people do keep the bulkhead and they keep the cab separate from the living space and that's a perfectly good thing to do it means that when you heat the living space you don't have a lot of heat loss through the bulkhead area into the cab because the cabs aren't very well insulated now personally I much prefer having the cab open into the living space so I decided to remove the bulkhead and that was just a case of undoing a whole bunch of torque screws that went all the way around and there it is with the bulkhead removed nice and easy now once the living space had been built my plan was to just install a really heavy-duty thermal curtain that would divide off the cab from the living space overnight so that would hopefully keep heat loss at a minimum and that's exactly what I've done and it does work so here we are starting with a blank canvas it's literally just an empty metal box ready to begin so first things first I needed to put some roof lights in now I had to think very carefully about this because I wanted solar panels on the roof so you have to be careful where you put the roof so that you still have enough room for the solar panels so I did some more sketching with my incredible drawing abilities and I came up with this arrangement so I've essentially got three 100 watt panels on the roof as you can see if I didn't plan ahead where the roof lights were going to go it could have been problematic so I basically made sure that the roof lights were offset on one side or another in order to accommodate the solar panels obviously this is quite a fundamental thing you have to think ahead of time because if you just go ahead and cut the roof lights in and try to work around that you may find it extremely difficult to find solar panels that will actually fit in the spaces that you've got so there are the two roof light hulls I cut those into the roof just using a regular jigsaw now unfortunately I didn't take any more photographs of the actual fitting process but you just got to follow the manufacturer's instructions build a little wooden frame that goes on the inside and use plenty of mastic I used Sikaflex to seal everything in and as you can see there they are fitted so with the roof lights in place next up was fitting the windows now my main concern to start with was these strengthening bars where the windows are going to be I was really worried about how I was going to remove them but it actually turned out fine because they only stuck on with some sort of like foam type glue so I literally just slipped a stanley knife like a long bladed stanley knife down the back of them and they came out straight away obviously I will ground you can see at the top and bottom there where it were a right angle ground or rather my friend Austin angle ground the top and bottom and they just came away so that was no problem so then we're left with this large clear area ready for the window so here we are preparing to cut a hole in the panel in the side door this is my friend Austin demonstrating the little frame that we had to make in order to fit around the windows now we're going to be filling something called seats windows these are german-made and their double-glazed so you see these on caravans and on motorhomes and there are a lot more efficient energy efficient and more heat retaining than the standard glass bonded windows that are quite popular among van builders they're a little bit more expensive as well but they do have this panel on the back which contains a roller blind and a flyscreen so these windows are glued in place again using something like Sikaflex and with the the interior wooden frame and then adding the interior panel with the fly screen and everything they screw together and they pull everything tight together so you get a really good seal on the window so here's the window fitted in place I kept the protective packaging over the glass until the vom was completely finished just to protect it because that's actually plastic glass even though it's double glazed it's it's not made of glass it actually made it plastic but it comes out on these little Pistons and there it is on the inside and you can see the frame and that the whole thing is sandwiched together on this frame and you get a nice tight seal and you've got obviously got the roller blind there and the fly screen at the bottom here's the window on the other side we've just cut out the hull just using some red oxide paint to seal it up where where the cut was and here the windows in place we've got one on each side and then we've got a little one at the back which was a terrible mistake because I can't open it I really didn't think that one through don't make the same mistake as me I put that one there thinking that it would be great to have a little window because I was planning on having the sink directly below where that window is so it'd be nice to stand there doing the washing-up and actually look out the window but what I completely failed to take into account was if that window was open and I opened the side door the sliding side door the side door would just take that window straight out so I now have to have a big sticker on it that just says never open this window just to remind me that that's the case and there's me demonstrating the roof light so that opens now and you can see the wooden frame that we had to build in order to install those roof lights so here's a picture the finished sinks he got the windows and the roof lights in and now we're ready to move on to the next stage so this is the fitting of the mains hook up Inlet plug and decided where it's going to go now when you use a jig saw to cut out these holes it's always a good idea to put some sort of protection over the rest of the bodywork because the the steel plate on the bottom of the jig saw can scratch your paintwork so I just used I think that's FrogTape just so that the jig saw didn't scratch the paintwork around it so in order to do it you drill holes at the ends of the straight lines and then you cut the hole out so back to the interior we've now got the windows in place we've now got the roof lights in place so it's time before we do anything else to think about soundproofing now I'm using something called dodo mats now these are heavy-duty kind of bitumen based mats and what you do is you stick them on all of the large panels all around the inside of the van and what it does it deadens down any of the resonating sound that you get while you're driving along so here's the finished result these are dodo mats on all of the flat surfaces went for a drive after installing these and it was remarkable what a difference it made you just kind of lost a lot of the road noise and a lot of the the resonating that you get from the you know the big metal panels now these are self-adhesive mats and you let you just peel off the backing and stick them on so next up is insulation and the most logical place to me seem to be start with the floor so got hold of some wood some of it was good some of it was bad that's the disadvantage of buying them inbound packs had a few banana shaped ones there so the idea was to put a load of rafters down place insulation between the rafters and then cover the whole thing over with the floor that already came with the farm so here we are test fitting the rafters now on the edges there were all these little moldings all over the metal floor so I couldn't fit the long strip so I had to go in there and fit little pieces little custom shaped pieces but that was fine they did the trick and obviously they're going to distribute the weight of the floor panel above this wood which is 34 by 34 millimeters and this takes into account the size of the ribs and the size of the South tank if I show you down here hopefully you can see it's gonna sit between the ribs so then from the top of the ridge to the top of the wood is about 26 millimeters which means the 25 millimeter thick Celotex will sit on top of these ribs and will not protrude higher than the wood which means when I put the floor in there should be a nice sandwich of insulation without anything sort of upsetting anything else so after gluing down all of the buttons using SiC effects again I started filling the gaps between them with 25 millimeter Sikaflex now Sikaflex is a lovely material to work with it's very very easy to cut and it's a very forgiving material and a lot of that wasn't even glued down it was just wedged in and it worked beautifully and within a couple of hours I have the entire floor covered and nicely insulated so there's the finished thing so next up was creating the vapor barrier I needed to protect the wood from any potential moisture from within the living area so I did this using metallic foil tape I think this is the kind of tape that you use on metallic acting and I just basically covered over all of the wood so it essentially acts as one large vapor barrier next up was to reinstall the floorboards and I was able to screw those down to the wooden rafters that I'd glued to the floor the irony is I'd spent the entire day doing the floor and as soon as I got the floorboards down it looked like I hadn't done anything so there we go that's the floor now completed so I don't have to worry about that anymore so I can now walk around inside the van and do the rest of it now before I could add any insulation into the rest of the van I wanted to think about where I was going to put my wiring I wanted to hide as many wires as I could behind the the insulation and behind the panels so you know they weren't so visible now my design included all of the electrical junction boxes and controllers and everything like that were going to be on the off side rear of the van so that that was where they were all going to converge so what I did was I bought a big reel of 240 volt mains wire which was twin core positive and negative and I started feeding them from the rear offside area of the van to the other parts of the van where it needed to be distributed to like the ceiling the kitchen side and up towards the front of the cab so here you can see the wiring in place I've actually started to insulate the ceiling on the right hand side that's where all the wires converge because that's where the electrical control panels and everything are going to be now in the ceiling you can see loops that is a single piece of wire that converges on the the right hand side there but those loops are ready for the wiring for the ceiling and you've got a few other little wires on the left-hand side they're feeding down towards where the kitchen area is going to be they're going to be there to supply power to the water pump and the shower and things like that now in order for me not to get confused as to which wiser which I labeled everything I just got a piece of masking tape around each end of the wires and they're all just labeled up so I know exactly which ones are connected to which so here's more of the ceiling installation going in now I use 25 millimeter Celotex again obviously I was working against gravity this time so I just used a few small blobs of Sikaflex in order to hold those into place and I propped them up with a spare piece of wood while they dried overnight once all the sealing insulation and the wires were in place I then stuffed all of the little ribs and the structural parts of the van with this I think it shredded plastic bottles you buy in big packs and it's sold as an insulation now originally and inside all of the the structural parts and the ribs and everything I was thinking a little bit about using high expansion foam because I know once it sets it's quite a good insulator but in hindsight I decided not to because it's just far too permanent and once it's in place it's absolutely impossible to get rid of so instead I use this insulation which you just stuff into all the nooks and crannies so there we go so that the shredded plastic bottle insulation I'm hoping it's because it's plastic it's not going to retain moisture or be problematic in that way and it's just nice and easy to work with as well after I've done the sealing it was time to insulate the walls again I'm using Celotex but this time I'm using 50 millimeter thick Sarat X and because it I've got the extra space available in the walls and so again this was just blocks of Celotex cut out in straight lines mostly and stuck in place with just a few blobs of Sikaflex just to hold it in place on a few occasions I did need to carve out the back of the Celotex in order to make it fit into the sort of strange shapes that it may have encountered along the way but overall it was a really easy thing to do took a took a while probably took about two days to do in total but you can seal the offcuts of Celotex down on the floor there and you can also see a big bale of that shredded plastic bottle insulation that I used so at the moment yeah the van looks like a sort of a like a bit of a bomb site bit of a building site but we all know this is not going to look like that for long you can also see actually on the lower right-hand side the inlet for the 240 volt mains mains Inlet there and the big blue wire that's going to fit to an RCD fuse box a bit later on also on the right-hand side you can see some black conduit now while I was running wires through all of the you know the structural parts wherever I could I also used conduit that's just purely to protect the wires from any chafing because obviously if you've got some sort of sharp metal parts that are slowly gnawing their way through wires you're going to end up with short circuits so wherever I could I did use conduit but to be honest I don't think it's gonna be a problem I've never had that problem in any of the four vans I've built may have just been me being a little overcautious but I figured why not you know certainly not going to do any harm now all around the Celotex I was using that shredded bottle stuffing you can see in the lower part of the door there I couldn't get any Celotex there because of all the working door mechanisms but fortunately that the mechanisms are actually quite shielded they've got these little shields all over them which meant I could get the stuffing sort of in and around behind them without it actually interfering with the mechanisms as the door locks and everything so that was a good thing and of course it's just adding extra insulation all the time and here you can see the same thing going on in all of the parts where I just couldn't quite fit the Celotex I've stuffed that that shredded bottle stuffing so with all of the insulation in place now it's time to think about vapor barriers inside the living area of your van when you're using it you're breathing you're using gas that produces moisture and you do not want that moisture getting on the inside of your inter so what I did was I used large sheets of this I think it's mylar bubble wrap you can buy in large rolls I think it's like her from a builders merchant and I used that everywhere to try to seal off as much as I could of the insulated areas and that as I say is a vapor barrier that will prevent moisture building up behind the walls which obviously is not something you want because if you end up with moisture behind the walls there's very little to no airflow and so any moisture that gets back there is just not going to dry out and you're going to end up with rust so once the moisture barrier is in I can then start to think about adding the wood panels back again so here I'm just test-fitting Machin making sure everything's exactly as it needs to be I needed to obviously cut out the holes where the windows go and it was a little bit awkward because these sheets are sort of in two separate parts so I had to sort of improvise a little bit I also had to install these little pieces of wood in the gap around the window just to make little window sills now for the exposed metal parts between the sheets of wood I stuck on some self-adhesive neoprene this is kind of like wetsuit material and what it does to start with it forms a barrier against the bare metal which prevents the condensation of water if you have a bare metal surface and you have moisture in the air that moisture will con then say on that bare metal surface particularly if that metal surface is cold so what you need to do with in your living space is not have any bare metal surfaces because I could say water droplets will appear on them so this self-adhesive neoprene I think it's about five millimeters thick seemed to me like the perfect solution because it's a kind of it's a it's a surface on which water cannot condensate so you will not get droplets of water on it it also is a soft material so it's kind of a little bit squidgy like having a phone barrier which means that those hard metal surfaces are actually soft to the touch so that self-adhesive neoprene formed the basis for all of my hard metal surfaces that were going to be exposed now on top of those neoprene surfaces I will then stick roof lining felt which is the same felt that I'll use to cover the entire inner surface of the van as you'll see a bit later on so here we are these are all the metal surfaces covered in the self-adhesive neoprene and then covered in the roof lining material these surfaces would otherwise have been exposed bare metal inside the living area of the van same from the back there you can see that kind of archway that goes around the the back doors there that was all bare metal so once again I just stuck self-adhesive neoprene and then covered it over with the roof lining felt which was stuck on using high-temperature spray contact adhesive so with all of the detailing in place it was time to fit the wood panels so here they are in place now what I did for the panels was quite simple once I knew they were the right shape and the right size I took them back indoors and I covered them over with roof lining felt using high-temperature spray contact adhesive and here you can see where I put those extra bits of wood around the window the roof lining felt tucks over and all around so you end up with the roof line of felt going right up to the windows surround there obviously the corners were exposed but just a few little off cuts of the roof line I felt stuck in place and those little corner bits completely blended into the rest of the roof line and felt and were invisible so this is how I covered them in my back garden there just place the panels on a large sheet of roof lining felt obviously you've got to be careful which way round you place them in order for them to fit because obviously if you get it the wrong way round you're going to be covering the wrong side it's all gonna be about to/from so I I think I actually did that on one of the sheets I actually got it wrong and it was really easy to do it wrong so you got to be a little bit careful but once you've figured it out totally straightforward and really easy to do and and even the manufacturer fitted pieces of hardboard and they all went back beautifully with the roof line it felt on it and I was able to put them back into place using the original push-fit fasteners same again on the back doors there now for the rest of the back doors that they had no wood on the upper parts so I had to make a cardboard template for each side so that it would be covered over in a big piece of wood that would again be covered over in the roof lining felt same for the side door a nice big piece of cardboard cut into a template and then once again that will be transferred to a piece of five millimeter ply and covered over in the roof lining felt and there we have the finished thing five millimeter ply covered in roof line felts in place on the doors making sure it absolutely minimizes all of the exposed metal surfaces now unfortunately it appears I only took two photographs of putting in the roof or the ceiling now in my previous fans I always used large sheets of 5 millimeter ply that was covered over in roof lining felt but it was always a really difficult job to do on your own and because I was on my own I opted for a different option which I know a lot of other self-build campervan people have opted for in more recent years and that is to put cladding on the ceiling wooden tine cladding and I think one of the reasons why people opt for it is it is so much easier to install because you're only putting it up one thin strip at a time as opposed to handling these huge great sheets of plywood so that's exactly what I did for the ceiling I just put pine cladding into place one piece of the time using self drilling screws that went directly into the ribs running along the van obviously not directly into the roof skin of the van because that with holes in the roof anywhere where there weren't any ribs available and the ceiling had nothing to press up against I would normally glue a wood batten into place unless I could screw it into place without obviously piercing the roof skin so these are the only two photographs I've got of the pine ceiling after it was done I obviously wanted to get on with it and I've completely forgot to take snapshots as I went but here are the two pictures of it done and obviously with the lights in place and working as well I've also put the the floor liner down so this is a an offcut that I managed to find it was 2 meters wide by two and a half meters long and although it's kind of missing at the back up that doesn't matter because literally the living space is only going to be sort of from here forward so you're not going to see that all that's going to be hidden by the stats can be that the main bathroom is going to be on top of that so we've reached that stage in the fan build that I always love this this stage in the build where you've got all of the the essential stuff out of the way this stuff is sort of fairly routine stuff it isn't that exciting in fact this is this is all of this so far has been the boring stuff it's sort of necessary but quite dull to do so from here forward it gets more exciting because now we've got this blank canvas ready to be filled so we can actually start concentrating on working on the interior space you know I can start building the shower and bathroom now I can start looking into the kitchen cabinet and actually really get active now with the the stuff that's gonna be inside the van and for me that's always my favorite part of the build so first things first was to install the bathroom for this build I decided to get a proper shower tray for a camper van that has a moulding for the shower and the toilet but I had to be very very careful as to where I could install it so that the drain hole could go through to the other side below that shower tray is my spare wheel and that straightaway would restrict where the drain hole could go so I had to have a really good look around underneath to make absolutely sure that there was space for me to be able to do that now you can get these molded trades in their left or right hand version so I essentially had four chances to make this work and as it turns out after looking underneath the van the only option was to get the left hand version and the only place I could get a hole through to the bottom of the van would be in the lower right hand corner that you see in this photograph here that was the only position I could put a hole through to the outside and still have enough space to fit a drain plug I drilled a test hole it was impossible to determine exactly where it will come out the other side it was it was almost impossible to measure so there was a little bit of trial and error so I drilled a hole and as you can see underneath it came out right on the edge of a rib which was okay I could work with that because I could cut out from that hole the circle that I needed in order for the drain to fit now these plastic molded trays are actually they're quite thick but there also is quite a brittle plastic and there's a lot of airspace underneath them so you sort of have to build up this little framework underneath just to support them into place so I've got some off cuts of wood built up this little sort of shape that would support the the plastic structure so that when you're just actually standing on it you're not going to crack it or break it now the length of wood that you see sort of on the right-hand side in the middle area I stuck them together with some self-adhesive neoprene now that sort of did two things first of all it stuck the wood and held the wood inch in place together but also it made it slightly cushioned so that when you do step on the shower tray there's just that slight cushioning going on there rather than sort of rigid plastic it seems to have worked extremely well and it does support the structure of the the tray which you see here I also needed to install a couple of little blocks of wood under the lip of where the toilet was going to sit just to again for more reinforcement to make sure that there was not going to be any stress or undue stress on that rather brittle plastic so here you can see the toilet is in place the shower tray is down I think it's glued down using Sikaflex and you've got the beginnings of the bathroom structure in place now I'm using stud wood standard stud wood in the UK I'm not sure what size it is just kind of from memory I think it's about an inch and a half by about three inches might be slightly off from that but you can get hold of it nice and cheaply and it's a really good medium to work with nice and strong it's not too heavy and so I decided I would make the entire bathroom structure using this Starwood so here this from the front and there's the structure starting to take shape I'll be so got a doorway into the cab and then a kind of like a stud wall on the sides and at the front in front of the loo there and obviously I need to build a wall across the back as well the main structure is slowly taking shape now we've got a bit of a cupboard on the left that's going to be a stuff cupboard for bedding or whatever else you want to put in there little area above that's going to be for all the wiring and obviously below that cupboard you can see the battery there and obviously below that is the wheel arch on the right-hand side you can see the structure starting to take shape that's going to be a cupboard and a place for the shower and that's what that ten liter jerrican is gonna be for hours we'll talk about that in a second she's now plugged in the batteries I've got one there and I've got one down there the two 120 amp hour batteries and these are going to be connected up to the charge controller which is gonna be sat on here now the control unit I'm using is called a/c tech to five Oh something s a I'll show you a little picture of it here now the reason I've gone for this particular one is because I had all sorts of trouble with the the standard split charge like the joy type thing because I couldn't get it to work with the main engine battery and the solar panels on the last farm so this C tech is designed to work in conjunction with your main engine battery and your solar panels now as it turns out originally I was going to have the second battery up here but they are so heavy I just wasn't keen on having that much weight that high up it just wouldn't be good but you know for heavy heavy weights you need to keep them as low as possible to the ground so this one's basically sat on the wheel arch but that one is on the ground or on the on the floor of the van and I'm quite happy with that arrangement I've also figured out that with the electrics I can put all the electrics in here this is going to be like area purely reserved for electrical wiring and stuff like that I've got a control panel it's going here which I'll show you in a minute now I could have covered over the shower I've got all the gear here but I thought I need to leave these walls open until I've at least done the wiring otherwise I'm gonna be trying to work through solid walls and it's just going to make my life really really difficult so I thought I'll get the wiring out of the way before I climb to the bathroom and finish it off I've actually got another wall to build across here on which the the back of the loo presses up against etc now I've also got a cunning plan for a hot-water tank for the shower now I've never had a running hot water system in any of the vans I've ever owned and it's never been a problem I sort of I did ponder on whether it would be worth getting one but to be honest I think because I've never had a problem with it and because they're so expensive I just didn't bother I just didn't think I would need it however I did need to sort of think out how I was going to get some sort of water system to feed the shower so I can't with this design and this is a 10 liter Jerry cam and the idea is I'm going to have a tap that's coming from the main water feed you're sorry the main water reservoir I'm gonna have a tap here that will feed cold water directly into this Jerry cam and the idea is I'm just gonna fill it up sort of about so high with cold water and then from the kitchen because this is right next to the kitchen I'll have the the the hob is going to be here I can quite happily boil up the kettle and open that up and pour boiling water into there and top it up so I've got some nice hot water there for a shower I have built a wall I'm still waiting to cover this but yeah the idea is that I'll have a just a simple self priming 12-volt pump inside this that will feed off to a shower hose or showerhead and then I can have a shower in there and no problem at all with whatever waters in there and worst-case scenario if I just happen to run out of water and I haven't finished shampooing my hair or whatever I can just reach round top it up alright it'll be cold water but I can top this up a little bit with some more water and carry on my shower so I think that's quite a good little design now I have built another wall here place yet because I need I don't want to cover these walls up until I've done the wiring because I need access to everything but it's it's basically it's gonna have a storage space in here which I will cover up with what probably more the gray felt again I do have access to the battery down there when I need it there will be more paneling on there so I could put all sorts of things in that cupboard you know bedding or whatever I've got the control panel here which is is pre-wired at the moment but I'm gonna I'm gonna change the wiring on it because at the moment when you wire it up it all lights up and to be honest I'm not that keen on control panels that light up all the time because I get a bit paranoid that they're using electricity all the time but also at night time if you want to leave say I don't know certain things on you know so what I've got a circuit that's charging my phone or whatever I'm gonna have a really bright light lighting the van up so I'm going to disconnect all the lights and literally just have you know on and off so I think that's the way I'm going to do so here we have a picture of the RCD fuse box being connected up for the mains hookup and that's going to basically feed a couple of 240 volt mains plugs inside the living area there's a quick little tip if you're working with those thick heavy-duty cables you're gonna need some thick lugs like these now most normal electrical crimping tools will generally not touch these crimpers so I had to order this crimping tool the handles they are almost a foot long and they made really light work of everything but I only discovered I needed to order them once I'd started on the wiring work and it actually set me back two days while I waited for them to arrive so a little tip I just throw in there just before you're ready to do your wiring if you're working with those really thick lugs then get yourself a pair of these and it will save you a lot of stress so going back to the bathroom construction here is the first stud of the wall that I'm building right across the bathroom so here we go that's gonna be sealed off and then I clad out the bathroom with these really thin corrugated plastic sheets that you can get quite cheaply on eBay and they just slot into each other quite nicely you have you still have to kind of glue them into place with like a clear mastic to make sure that they're water proof and here's the back of them then I just added a load more Celotex for insulation obviously leaving the back of the loo available so you can change the loo over and I put it down the sides as well and then I clad the whole thing over in Pine cladding so there we go finish back wall there it is from the inside all done and all looking good however this was a mistake I sort of regretted making a solid wall at the back of the van once I built it I quickly realized this was a mistake and the penny dropped when I went to my local builders yard to buy some six by four sheets of plywood I went to the back of the van opened the doors and thought oh I can't fit them in the van so I had to put them in the side door and it was a pain in the bum to do basically because by then I'd already built the kitchen unit and I ended up like really in a bit of a cold sweat trying to get them in the van but also from a safety perspective I just just wasn't happy I just wasn't comfortable with the back end of the van being shut off I wanted a second escape route you know if I had any sort of trouble perhaps of fire in the kitchen or whatever in the front end of the van and I couldn't get to the side door it could be really bad so I thought no I I really want a second option like an escape route from the back of the van so I decided I'm gonna cut a doorway into that wall so what I did was I pulled off all of the pine cladding stripped out all of the insulation and then I did a bit of cutting got a jigsaw in there and made this arrangement so I've actually got a doorway which is about five foot tall and then obviously I cut out the the white cladding there and there's a doorway and I was just much much happier with that arrangement obviously for privacy if you use in the bathroom well the back doors are gonna be shut anyway so there's no problem and when you're having a shower a simple fix will be a shower curtain going across there I've got I've actually got a shower curtain that goes all the way around in a kind of a big square inside the shower anyway so absolutely no problem with the shower or water issues or anything like that so there we go just kind of neatened it off a bit and then put the pine cladding back again so there's a finished thing with a doorway cut in much much more practical so if I need to go and buy some you know large panels of wood or big lengths of wood or whatever well if I just got a transport something big I can hopefully get it in the back doors rather than trying to manhandle it over the kitchen counter through the side door which you'll see a bit later on so here's a brief scan down with all the electrics in place you can see those big heavy-duty lugs attached to the CTEK unit which is controlling my solar panel panel input is controlling my output into the van there's the RCD unit for the mains electricity I've got everything on a couple of isolator switch is that isolator switch shuts off the solar panel and the isolator switch further up shuts off the main power to everything inside the van so next up was the seat and bed so it's quite a simple system of a fixed bench that also has a secondary part of interlacing slats so one pulls out from the other I'm sure there's a name for this type of bed I don't know what it is but it was very very simple and quite logical to build a good piece of advice is don't have your slats too close together if they rub together when you're pulling the bed in and out it's likely with you know expansion of wood etc that they could lock together and you'll never be able to open your bed so make sure you've got a nice thick gap between the slats so there's no danger as I'm ever touching together but yeah so it's kind of fairly self-explanatory here we go here's that here's a video of the bed's being pulled out it's kind of self-explanatory chamfered edges on the front there got chamfered edges on the underside of the back there as well that's just so that there's no issues with riding up over that back bar that you see and this is a perfect little arrangement so when you pull it out with the cushions on you pull that out you've got basically a single bed that's about three and a half foot wide by six foot long and you can get two people on there it's a little bit cozy but the lip on the front of the cushion kind of helps you falling out of bed but it's also doesn't come out to meet the kitchen unit so you've actually got a little little bit of a gap between the kitchen unit and the bed so you can kind of shimmy between it so you can still maneuver around it although it is a little bit of a pain to leave set up during the day because it does get a bit in the way but there we go so that's the bed so next up is the kitchen unit now this is my mark one kitchen unit I actually change this later on but I will show you this design anyway this is what I call the skeleton system where you build a skeleton of wood and then you clad it over with plywood to put it up sort of an outside on it and here you can see I've built the basic shape that little panel on the left-hand side of the fridge there below there is a heater called a pro pecs as a pro packs heater based under their and at the front of it you can just see at the bottom of the picture that's where the warm air blows out so basically I built this skeleton box you can see that's from the side door there's the back of the fridge there's room in there for two gas bottles that's gonna be the gas bottle Locker it's gonna have a dropout hole directly below where the gas bottle is sitting there there's the pro pax heater I was saying about fitted in place and then it's got a shelf that goes on top of it hides it there's more shelving gone in there and then there you can see on the right hand side I've added a five millimeter wood panel that's been covered over in a self-adhesive wood vinyl this the same wood vinyl that I've used to cover the side panel there on the right and the door and you can see the overhead cupboards as well on the left so there's the back end of the kitchen unit that came through the side door again it's been clad over with five millimeter ply that's had wood vinyl sticker stuck onto it to make it look a bit woody and obviously a little bit of a cupboard door fitted there so there we go that's my mark one kitchen in it and I'd be completely honest with you I just didn't like it I just just wasn't happy with it you know I used 15 mil Conti boards as the doors of the you know the cupboard doors they're just clad over again in that self-adhesive vinyl but the fridge was too low I had to sort of stand on my head in order to sort of find anything in it and the cupboards just one they just weren't big enough that the cupboards were just inadequate because that's all cupboard there on the left that was mostly taken up with a 25 litre jerrycan of water and it just had a very small slither of a cupboard above it that you can see when you open the door unfortunately haven't got any photographs where I've opened the doors but yeah I just didn't I just just wasn't happy with it now the thing is I went away shortly after I built this to help a friend build some cub in his camper van and we came up with a new design of cupboard that I absolutely fell in love with and it just so happened I don't know whether it was luck or fate that the pro pecs heated I have in this mark one version of my kitchen unit the pro packs heater gave up and it stopped working now in order to get to the pro packs heater I actually had to dismantle this kitchen unit so I kind of treated it as a blessing in disguise and it will give me an opportunity to build the mark two kitchen unit so after disassembling this mark one kitchen unit I began construction of the mark two now this is using sheets of 15 millimeter furniture board this is not the light weight vying the board you can do in the light weight variable barring a board is extremely expensive but to be honest I thought I'm going to be using such little amounts of this furniture board I will just use the regular stuff it's just a bit heavier so here we have the initial construction of the mark 2 kitchen unit now I've done away with the skeleton system of making a skeleton of wood framing and cladding it over I'm actually gonna build that the whole thing out of furniture board now you can see I've already put in place the gas cylinder the diesel tank for the new heater which I was going to fit and the 35 sorry the 30 liter Jerry cam for the freshwater here it is from another angle and this is it partially built now with the mark 2 version with the pro pax heater broken I decided to install a diesel heater instead now with the diesel heater I didn't really need to have two gas bottles because all the gas bottle is going to be doing is running my camping stove so that freed up a load of space so I was able to build a gas bottle Locker that was just big enough for one gas bottle so here is the mark 2 version partially built and you can see the gas bottle Locker and the locker where the fuel for the new heater which I'll talk about later and the fresh water is going now I managed to find some latching draw runners which I built in two the unit here and you can see them running here and that is my table which is ideal and it just tucks away when it's not needed it's the back end of it now his progress being made on the mark 2 unit notice the fridge is up much higher than the in the mark 1 version it's also in a slightly better position I think so the work surface is a piece of laminated MDF which is got a shiny finish on it to makes it quite a nice work surface this is the finished thing I've got some lighting in there now the whole point of building this mark ii version was not to have cupboard doors instead you've just got these large shelves with big lips on the front to stop things falling out and it just was a hundred percent more practical than those tiny little cupboard doors that I had on the mark 1 version which just weren't very good at all so I'm much much happier with this design and it has served me so much better so it's just it's a hundred percent better than the mark 1 version and looks really good they're all lit up as well and those little shelves they're just they're just perfect and also if you know you want to figure out what you're having for dinner or whatever you can just sort of sit back and let's just sit there on the seat and everything is there available to you at a glance and you haven't got to go rummaging around in cupboards it's just brilliant there we go just put a little bit of silver trim on it just to polish it off a little bit and that's finished job done and ready for service so direct comparison there's the mark one version the fridge was down low the the cupboards were hot you know really inadequate the cupboard doors were were held on with you know tiny little hinges that were really delicate it was just a rubbish design compared to this just so practical there was no comparison mark one version marked to version I would take the mark 2 version every day of the week and twice on Sunday now if you remember I was saying that one of the reasons I had to disassemble the mark 1 kitchen unit in the first place was to get to the pro pecs heater because the pro Peck's heater had stopped working but what I also realized after I'd plumbed it in was that the pro pecs heater vents to the sliding door side of the van which is all well and good but if I had an awning up and I ran the pro pax heater the Horning would fill with carbon monoxide fumes from the prop from the pro pax heater so all in all it was a pretty poor design so I decided first of all I wasn't going to use a pro pax heater because it ran on gas and that meant I would have to carry two gas bottles with me because obviously I'll get through gas a lot quicker using the heater so I decided to opt to one of those cheap diesel heaters and I would fit it to the other side of the van so that it would vent out of the off side the driver's side and the awning would be on the near side the passenger side now we are jumping around in time a bit with these photographs because I I installed the new diesel heater before I built the new kitchen unit so it's sort of we're doing a bit of time travel here with the photos but that that's fine so here is the heater about to be fitted and it's one of those like I said those cheap Chinese heaters that everybody swears by and it runs from its own diesel tank originally I was put off buying a diesel heater because I sort of assumed that you would need to tap into your main diesel tank on the van which I wasn't comfortable with doing but when I realize these things run on their own tanks it just kind of opened up the world to me and I thought brilliant I can go for one so there it is that's where it's going to be it's basically going to be in a box under the seat and under the bed so I built a box around it using offcuts from the old Mark one kitchen unit so I basically recycled the wood which is why it's covered over in that self-adhesive vinyl still so there we go just a fairly crude box it didn't have to be anything special it's going to be sort of out of sight under the bed but I've left a gap at the back for the airflow to be able to get inside it it's covered over sufficiently so that sort of nothing can get in there and block it you know block the airflow so I decided to have the the diesel fuel tank on the same side as the side I fill the van up with so that obviously if I need to put diesel in the diesel tank I can do it while I'm filling up that was the main reason for and I've got easy access to it with the sliding door so with the heater in place that bed back in place the new kitchen unit built we're now looking at pretty much the finished van and obviously added a little bits and pieces on like for example this leaf table I used 90 degree hinges with that lock so you've got an extension of your work surface there kudos to my friend Damon for introducing me to that design of hinge I also built some overhead cupboards very simply using the skeleton system I put a wooden framework in and then clad it over in five millimeter plywood and reinstalled the control panel so is on the front there I also changed the original door on the bathroom for a sliding one which slides to the interior of the bathroom and I did that using two large heavy-duty draw runners and it was a little bit awkward fitting it's because the draw runners have to be absolutely parallel to each other in order for it to work properly but it was just a little bit of trial and error in order to get it to work it's been working beautifully for the last 18 months all I do is every now and again I'll just spray a little bit of silicon oil over the draw runners just to prevent any issues regarding you know water from the shower and like I say I've had it running 18 months and it still works beautifully so there we go that's the finished interior I just got a little Persian hole runner rug emerge to pick up quite cheaply on Amazon and I had to cut it a little bit just to make it fit I also got a throw a nice sort of a suteki throw to go over the caravan cushions which were a bit sort of dowdy and not a very nice color and it's kind of like got a nice only feel to it I've got some nice sort of warm lighting going on there and I didn't want to go for some sort of ultra slick sort of modern shiny thing I wanted something that had a little bit of a I don't know a sort of a rustic feel to it and I think I've achieved that there and I'm very very happy with it it's very cozy it's very comfortable and that diesel heater works beautifully so very very happy with it externally all I did was I put on a few coach lines I changed the wheels over the Maori ones I've got some running boards which are actually plastic drain pipes with LED lights installed into them with the little end pieces that curve around so they actually have a metal I spray-painted the surrounds around where the windows are to make it look a bit more camp Valley I added a Sun Visor over the top of the windscreen and a stone chip protector on the front of the bonnet there just kind of makes it look a little bit cool also added some running lights obviously on the sides and at the front there I got some daytime driving lights and that's pretty much it the rest of it is is completely stock and but it's just a nice looker and I'm very very happy with her and hopefully she'll give me lots of nice camping trips for years to come so there we go that is my van build like I said at the beginning I'm certainly no expert in this this is just doing what I know how to do this is the way I do it this van has been by far the best the most comfortable the most practical van I've ever done I've learned quite a few new things in this particular van built and one of the best things I did with this one was rebuild the kitchen unit that secondary you know that mark2 kitchen unit is absolutely so practical I'm so happy with it and I will use that method in all future van builds unless I come up with an even more practical version but I can't see that happening also the bed in my previous van builds I've always had a bit of an issue with the bed not being that comfortable but this time round I used those Caravan cushions and I also made sure that my bed was longer than the six-foot and that's made all the difference this bed is so comfortable it's as comfortable as my bed at home I've had the best night's sleep while camping ever in this particular van so I think in any and all future van build I will be using Caravan cushions even if I buy them secondhand I don't care those Caravan cushions are by far the most comfortable cushions I've ever slept on you know in a van so I hope you were able to you know pick up maybe a few little tips or ideas or something you know along the line do feel free to use and copy and borrow any ideas that I've put out there that's why I made this video so hopefully this video will give encouragement to other people to have a go at doing your own van I've ruffled on long enough I hope this video was useful to someone thanks for watching if you haven't already do please thumbs up and subscribe do of course feel free to leave comments in the notes below and again thanks for watching I will see you in the next video until then take care you

Channel: Rickvanman - Variety Channel

Views: 844,123

Keywords: how to make a self-build camper van, motorhome, Low budget, camper with bathroom, self build camper van, camper van, self, build, built, motorcaravan, campervan, camper, van, camping, tourer, touring, renault master, MWB, camper with shower, van conversion how to, tiny home, van build, van conversion, tiny house on wheels, diy campervan, low budget diy van, how to build a van, van conversion ideas, van tour with bathroom, van life conversion, diy campervan conversion, van life build

Id: oe749pdNYoc

Length: 59min 44sec (3584 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020