My minivan camper REVEALED! Full in-depth conversion van tour

hi i'm leslie and this is our 2016 honda odyssey ex adventure van it used to be a minivan but then i built it out we got the 2016 because it had great mileage on it low mileage i mean and we're driving the heck out of this thing so we wanted some room we also added a lot of stuff on the outside as you'll notice on the roof specifically it came without the roof rails which i added and then for crossbars i went with not a standard crossbar but a one inch perforated tube that goes all the way across you can order it to length and i wanted enough length so we could strap on two kayaks side by side in addition i added the eye hooks on the end they're perfect for hooking kayaks or anything else that you want to hook up on top we just recently added our basket on top the basket is perfect now because it just holds a bunch of stuff you can throw up there and lash and pull things down as you need them the backpacks we have up here right now contain all the things we don't want inside the van and that is propane canisters and dirty laundry so you can believe this is where they live we also have space up here to add anything else that we want to add i also keep my walking stick up here right this way let me show you around a little bit in the back you'll notice we have a bench facing out this whole thing transforms to a bed and i'll show you that in a minute we have plenty of storage space back here our big platform folds up here there we go and access is all this room down here where the third row seats used to fold down into once i removed the third row seats we had this cavern of space down here where we can all kinds of big items the stove etc plenty of space down here for just about all the big bulky things we need and we have access here to any of the bulky things we're storing underneath the bed right here we have also a battery operated motion activated light it's not on right now because it's also light sensitive so anytime it's dark and there's motion like you open up the back the light comes on automatically and turns off automatically these things are awesome genius there's a little area over here where we keep our really basic tools um screwdrivers the rubber mallet duct tape of course etc anything you're going to need on the road and that's the deck up here under this side of our roof rack i installed a an awning that's stored in a two inch pvc pipe i'll show you this in a separate video because it deserves its own attention but what we wanted to do was keep access to an awning that wasn't stored inside the vehicle now we have more room inside and it's very low profile up here so it's a two inch pvc pipe with threaded caps on the end it's held in there with some plumbing straps that are bolted to the crossbars and the whole thing slides out attaches and sets up very easily a separate video for that welcome inside of space in here for chilling out part of the build process was to measure the height of the bed frame to make sure that we had plenty of headroom and there's just enough when we put the platform on top of it as well as the cushions these are five inch memory foam mattress that i cut into four cushions and covered them in some outdoor cushion material for this purpose let me show you how it works there's our bed super easy the bed is designed to be as wide as possible because there's two of us traveling in here so we didn't want to compromise on any bed space at all it had to be comfort comfort comfort so that's why we got the nice high quality five inch foam mattress as well as we used all the space going across as much as we could to make sure we have as much room back here as possible you notice we also have these shelves they're built so that they fit flush against the against the interior of the van so they don't stick out at all they don't compromise any space and they fit a ton of stuff i used some trim as legs to hold them up anchored them down to the base of the bed frame and then i also installed these crossbars with trim as well and now this is a great storage space for all of our window coverings keeps them up out of the way these things were such a pain in the butt i will give them their own video if anybody's interested in what i did but they were ridiculously difficult but it's worth it because once i got them finished up they're just i can't imagine the van without them they're just perfect they hold so many things up here you can really customize it the way you want you could put in little shelves you'd store clothes in here but this also gives us access to all of the regular van accessories here like the cup holder etc so all the shelf is still intact none of this build was drilled into the actual van so if needed i don't know why it would but if needed you could take out the whole build and the entire van could be transformed back into a passenger van and you'd never know it right here up front this is a an arch that i built here we go an arch that i built that goes over as you see over the front two or back of the front two seats and the idea is give us some hooks we need hooks you're going to need hooks in your van you're going to want us you're going to want to keep as much stuff up off the floor as you can it's so easy to just throw things here but two things on the floor and it's a crowded mess so keep stuff up off the floor if you can this is use this space there's a lot of great space up here to store things so if you can do it put your things up hooks hooks hooks it's awesome this was a lot of trial and error i used a bunch of materials that i had around and and it was it almost didn't happen i'll tell you that but i wound up using this crossbar here is a piece of what do you call it like garden border plastic garden border and i just spray painted it to match the rest you could easily just use plywood or some kind of whatever appropriate wood to make this whole arch and as you can see i anchored it here on the side by using some plumbing straps around the handle on the van it seems to work pretty well i've seen other solutions for this but this one seemed to work best for us at the moment and everything is at the moment because things can change we've already done a few different improvements and the the way your van starts out is not the way it will finish believe me another wonderful option that we added in is our our what do you call it like the light blocking light blocking curtain perfect for keeping light out but also if it's chilly outside keeping the heat in smaller space is better to keep more things to keep more things off the floor i installed a like a shoe holder this is something i made myself we started out using one of those over the door you hang them over the closet door and they hold all your shoes it worked okay but it was white it got dirty real quickly and it just didn't look really good so i just want something black that just looked a little bit more elegant i would say it just fits the van a little bit better i'm going to set this bench back up into a bed and show you something really awesome did i say set this bench back into a bed i meant bed back into a bench here we have some more storage which is a foldable crate super useful for all kinds of stuff and of course we love it because it stores away the next thing we keep here is our stowable table this is one of my favorite things you'll see that we have a countertop here that i built and i'll show you the whole pantry here on the other side in a second but the great thing about this setup is we can pull out the table this is a telescoping leg and then it hooks into this channel these edges here hook into this channel and it's sturdier than you would expect i didn't have high hopes but oh my god it's awesome uh so perfect you just want to pull over somewhere and have a little lunch here we are you got some work to do it's your office pretty handy i love it and i also love it because it transforms the space it's not just a bedroom it's also a little work space or snack space while we're here another thing that we love so much is our little fan oh my god this thing's awesome it keeps the air circulating which you really really need uh on a warm evening we crack the windows we get the fan going and we have good air circulation through here because it's such a small space we don't need one of those big max air fans or something it's not necessary this is a tiny little space we have the rain guards on the outside of the window so we can just crack them an inch or two and have some really nice airflow with this tiny little fan it's rechargeable by usb it's got a lithium battery in it so as we drive we just keep it plugged in it actually holds a charge really well and we've never run out of fan throughout the night and now let me show you the pantry this is where the action happens so it's a tiny little space but it does a lot for us right here is where we keep our little cooler no we don't have a refrigerator no we don't use electric to run the cooler we just have a simple little basic igloo cooler we travel with hard cheeses salami that kind of stuff as well as a lot of dry goods we're eating things like pasta oatmeal dried fruits nuts about cheese and crackers those are the kinds of things that we're normally eating when we're camping if we want something else we'll go get a sandwich somewhere we'll go out for breakfast so there's a lot of options we don't need to pack everything in here we don't need to travel with yogurt and eggs and milk and forget it it's too hard it's easy enough to adapt to traveling with just something like this and all we do to keep it cold because it doesn't need to stay that cold is we get a stop by convenience store and we get a cup of ice make sure it's the plastic not the foam because the foam doesn't let the cool out of it but the plastic does so we'll fill this up with some ice stuff it in here with whatever else we want to keep you know salami hard cheeses etc and then we're good to go it lasts pretty long as long as you're not in and out of it all the time uh plenty of room up here to store crackers tortillas nuts that kind of stuff just plenty of space believe it or not there's always room to stuff paper towels i added a shelf in here so we can divide the space and use it for a lot of different things right here we just have one of these little sterilite three drawer that's where we keep stuff all the stuff we need super handy and then right here on the bottom cups these are perfect for keeping two gallons of fresh water and a box of wine and what else do you need nothing so the storage space is actually working really well so if you have any questions about anything in particular that we showed you let me know i can give you some details uh and some specifics on any of the projects that i've done i got a ton of help from the youtubes and especially to awesome youtubers eric enjoys earth and bruce parks thank you guys you may notice your builds in my build uh it's all there uh the inspiration is out there on youtube i'm glad to help be a part of it if this helps anybody so shoot me some questions if you have any and i'll try to help if i can i'll see you on the road

Channel: Leslie Kalk

Views: 74,644

Rating: 4.882545 out of 5

Keywords: minivan, camper, conversion, vanlife, campervan

Id: FsCz8USgvJg

Length: 17min 3sec (1023 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 26 2021