She Transformed A $1,900 Vintage RV Into A Gorgeous Tiny House On Wheels

hello I'm Jesse and this is my tiny home on wheels it's a 1978 dodge commander my got her for 1,900 bucks off of Craigslist 54,000 original miles and I spent a year and three months renovating her and bringing her back to life [Music] I had kind of conceded to the fact that I was gonna have to get a really ugly motor home with like flying ducks on the side and you know that kind of indefinite 90s look but when I saw her in her awesome vintage look I knew she was mine by the time I talked to the guy the next day eleven people had already called because he was listing her for so cheap and there was already somebody on their way but they fell through and I had you straight there with cash in hand and the first thing I did was just crawl underneath her because I'm from Minnesota and have to check to make sure that it's not a rusted out frame and it looked solid so after that I was like I mean if it runs for 1,900 bucks I'm sold this used to be your standard camper seating arrangement it was like a horseshoe and then it had a table in the center that dropped down and there was another bed I didn't need to accommodate that many people and I wanted it to be more spacious I demoed out the two pieces right here put these chairs in and then I lifted this up to be table height so I built I built it up and then most of the time when I use this I just sit like this and I don't clip it up if I need more cooking space or more dining space I mean I really have this flip table honestly I spent a lot of time in bed mostly that's kind of those my chill zone but yes I have worked on my laptop here if I have anybody visiting and we want to have like a nice sit-down meal and we have like multiple dishes it's nice to have the extra space to do it and there has been times like where I've decided to bake and just having more counter room here to bake is definitely essential though this ended up being kind of just some negative space that I wasn't really sure what I was going to do with it but this area absolutely I had an idea and I built this up a bit higher as you can see this side is higher than that side and there is a cap door there because that is where the cat box is and you can actually access the cat box from outside compartment and I have a very tall cat and he needed some more height but yes so this goes into a storage compartment that's outside and the cab box is in there and then I just have more surface I have like fruit and avocados and plant and books and whatnot and then that side just ended up putting more extra kitchen stuff I didn't want to use a drawer up for the utensils and I salvaged that out of a dishwasher so I thought it kind of has a nice color and I wanted to reuse it and I like it to just be accessible I don't really have a ton of cabinetry and drawers so I feel like anything that I can come up with to kind of stick different things in different places oh so it did have cabinet doors but once again I wanted to open the space up because I just you know I figured the more negative space I could create the more open and breezy it would feel so I found those bins and they happen to fit very very snugly in there so I'm not concerned about them falling out and I had heard a lot of horror stories about things falling out when people are driving and going on bumpy roads or taking sharp corners and everything just like the doors opening and everything spilling out so that has never happened to me they are a bit of a pain in the ass like I do a lot of this because getting them in and out is kind of tough so I mostly just peer into them and pull things out and moving into the cockpit of Mandor I have a single bed up here that actually drops down which is why I felt so comfortable getting rid of the extra bed there I don't ever want more than three people sleeping in here I won't pull it all the way down but it does drop down quite a ways so it's nice if I have a guest they have their own little sleeping quarters I kept the original shag carpeting from 1978 this is one of the few original things that still exists in here the whole - actually there's a lot of original stuff happening up here still this is like you step into 1978 up here but this little table was already here I just put a new surface on it and I got some chair covers to kind of spruce it up a little bit this is the first rig that I got in that I wasn't incredibly intimidated behind the wheel I don't know I've always liked old vehicles so there was a part that felt really comfortable I've had old cars and for being how big she is I wasn't like totally rocked but I mean it's still nerve-wracking for sure and a lot of the gauges don't always work some of them work sometimes and I've learned I find my gas gauge sometimes doesn't work and I have to just give it a little knock in the right place and then it'll the needle will start working again yeah so this doghouse comes off pretty much daily I have had to do so many repairs since I left it's coming up on my six month anniversary of being on the road and I have already replaced countless fuel filters to transmission lines the starter starting solenoid I don't know probably a lot of other things too but I can't really recall off the top of my head my batteries both of them for the cab and the house used to be in here but I was having a lot of electrical issues originally and just to simplify things and to try to start figuring stuff out a little bit better I separated my batteries and so now my solar batteries are in the back I have two six bolt golf cart batteries for my solar panel it's a 230 watts I made a lot of changes to not really need much electricity at all like all of my light fixtures they used to be fluorescent and I switched them over to be LED fixtures and bulbs I do pour over coffee I don't have a microwave or I mean I have like a handheld blender and that's really probably my biggest drive a small fan I have the fan on my compost toilet my water pump but yeah I don't I don't have a lot of course like my tablet and my cell phone but I don't I don't use a ton of electricity so it's definitely more than enough this area I just did a new countertop and a new sink it used to have two shallow basins which I thought wasn't very practical I just wanted one deep basin and I got this off of Craigslist for like 20 bucks and then this wall was super water damaged and I was running out of time I couldn't rebuild all of the water damaged areas so I ended up just sprucing it up by putting this it's like a backsplash and then I did some sticky tiles so you can't see how bad the wall is anymore so I did have help from family and friends but I did a lot of it myself I didn't have any previous experience with carpentry electrical plumbing and I just absolutely dove in and experienced a giant learning curve for a year and three months and yeah I mean I have luckily I have a lot of friends and family that are knowledgeable and you know they can always help me physically but I could call them on the phone and be like well what do you think about this and I did that more than I did any sort of online stuff I tend to learn better being able to talk to somebody and I did a lot of it just by going for it and messing up and I'm like oh well that didn't work very good and case in point right here so I this was a countertop that had been damaged that I got severely discounted I cut it and that had a lip and I forgot to include the measurement of the lip so when I put it on here I was about this much short back here so this was kind of my creative way to hide I just broke the lip off and then I and then I didn't that it fit perfectly that I was you know measured correctly but I just covered it up with this and continued on so I think for me the best way that I learn is through experience and making mistakes and you know I've definitely not somebody that anybody can tell what to do so I just prefer to flounder and you know sometimes it's tougher but it sticks more when you make that mistake you're like okay next time if I ever put a countertop and I will remember to in big you know subtract this lip measurement and the thing is is that a lot of the mistakes people don't necessarily notice you know at the end of the day you have a finished product and that's what's important so this side it did have the original countertop did have an extension on it but I had to make one to match I when I do the dishes I pop this up and this is kind of like my area to let the dishes dry and once again more counter space if I need it so this faucet what's up so high and so close to the back of the sink that it would just water would go everywhere and it was so annoying but I got this for like eight bucks and it is a super game-changer so you can like change it around I have two different kinds of flow yeah it has made my life so much easier so when I am on the road I do not shower very much I have a really awesome shower that you will see but I use it sparingly I because it depletes my fresh water you know the most out of all my other needs for fresh water and it also uses propane because I have to light my hot water heater my propane tank that's mounted is I think 10 gallons I just use a buddy heater for my heat now because my furnace I was doing actually was using too much electricity when I had to run it at night and then also it makes it more difficult when I have to get my tank on my unit filled you know versus just having a 20-pounder tank that I can go in exchange anywhere so that's a lot it's a lot easier for heat I think I can go about two weeks on 55 gallons of fresh water so here's another little like clever thing that I did to kind of speed up the process when I took up old hardware off of these it left three giant holes so I just ended up getting these little wood pieces and covered the hole so I could put my new hardware on which I don't totally love but it got the job done but in here I have just you know my plates and bowls and glasses and I most of my plates and bowls are stainless steel which is nice because you can reheat in the oven and on your stovetop and then if I do take a really hardcore turn and everything goes spilling out things will not break there clattery though which is kind of annoying and then down here here's here's a hot tip child locks I was having a really hard time figuring out how to keep these closed without it being super visual and a lot of the things that I were finding was not working with the way that my cabinetry was formed like I just like but in return things like a million times and then all of a sudden I was like well why don't I just get child locks so it works way better this is where I have my garbage this is actually a a paper shredder a container that I found in the garbage I was like oh man amount perfect how about the repurposing so this is my 4 burner cooktop and my oven which people always think is a microwave but it's not and this is original the oven actually had never been used before when I got her so um it's been use now for sure but I was all in really great shape so people always think that these knife Smuts must fall but they don't they're it's like really I mean it's pretty hardcore magnet nothing has ever gone wrong so I'm not I'm not worried about it and there's something does go wrong I'm very far away from where the knives may land my steps top has been great yeah I love it's more than I need so I'm happy with it 99.9% of the time I cook at home I do not have the budget to eat out so I am always grocery shopping and cooking at home Mandor did I ever did I ever say that I call my unit Mandor yes I believe so I think ranae's Mandor because saying the commander all the time is a mouthful so Mandor did have a generator it sounded like a freight train and once I got it running it would not shut off so we had to like pull the spark plug to get it to shut off and I just knew that there was no way I would ever use it so I got a generator that isn't necessarily for RVs it's not meant to be enclosed but I have it in case I ever need it it's the only way that I can run my air conditioning I really don't ever want to run my air conditioning I hate white noise so I don't want to listen to my generator and it uses you know gas and it's just it's just not something I really want to do I would love to just continue to drive away if it's if it's too hot so this is my fridge I run it primarily off of propane it can be run off of 110 as well it doesn't need a 12-volt assist but it's more than enough space that I need it was newer so I know how much these are how much they go for so when Mandor was only a nineteen hundred bucks and I knew that this fridge was a newer fridge as well I was like it's totally worth it but before I left it broke and I had to this little unit here is $400 so I got lucky I you know everybody that I called and norcold included they were all telling me like I have to bring it in somewhere and I was like I do not have the time or the money to bring it into a professional and so I just did troubleshooting as much as I could with like a little 12-volt light tester and kind of decided that this control panel has to be the culprit and I just ordered it and crossed my fingers and it ended up working so haven't had any problems since that was like very close before I left like now I'm so close to leaving and that happened so going this way this wall actually used to be a doorway into the bathroom this is kind of where I did a lot of building and changing the blueprint of Mandor and making it a little bit more tailored to my likes and wants the bathroom there was a doorway here and then there was a doorway here this area was the only bathroom there was a toilet right there and it was a shower as well and it just it was way too tight I knew that if I was gonna be living in here full-time I would need a shower that I could move my body in I mean if you can imagine I'm a pretty small person and the toilet was right here and then you had like this little shower thing and it was just super cramped so what I did is I took out the toilet and I knew I was going to get a compost toilet so I didn't want to use my black water tank at all so I capped off the area where the toilet was and then there's still a shower drain right here but when I did that bottom of this basin obviously looked not great so I got these slats and the water can still drain through them but it covers up the fact that there used to be a toilet right there the walls in here where an awful really hideous linoleum I don't even I'm not sure if it was original but it was literally linoleum flooring that had been pasted onto the walls so I ended up painting it with porch and floor paint and then put the shower curtain just for extra good measure and I did this on the ceiling something I already had in my apartment and I just wanted to repurpose it and then did a new faucet and a new shower head and this is actually an RV shower head it looks fancy but it has the pause thing on it and it's meant for a low pressure it's really nice when I do treat myself to a shower in here I really enjoy it I built this it's amazing and this is how I take a lot of my showers now I just get a bucket full of water and kind of do you know the feet and the pits and you know the stinky bits but it ends up building this platform and then my compost toilet can get mounted here and it worked out really well because there was already a venting stack for the sink that I could plug my toilet vent to and then I built all of this as an addition this used to be open and I basically turned it into a hallway by building the bathroom closet here and you know I needed to close off the toilet area and then I certainly didn't mind having more storage areas I built this storage closet and it also works as kind of my control center for my solar my solar cables come in through the side wall right there because my panel is mount is mounted up here and then the cables run this way and then that goes to my charge controller and then I made a battery bank box under here and then my inverter is mounted right there my inverter power is the 110 throughout my rig but I also plug directly into it and you'll see in the bedroom the face of it is sticking out through the wall so I can plug in like my phone and stuff on the other side of this closet but yeah I used the 110 outlets throughout Mandor and then I use the USB s on my inverter and then this is another crafty moment when I got Amanda she was severely water damaged kind of everywhere but mostly like starting here and back I didn't know how bad it was until I started investigating and it unfortunately was pretty bad so I had to rebuild half of this wall and this is my way to hide the fact that I have like a new wall from like this point up and then this is like old old wall and it just it looked kind of janky so I found these at good old Menards and I didn't even have to cut them they actually just snapped in there they're the perfect size so it was kind of meant to be so I like I said before I had no previous experience I hadn't even travelled in a Motorhome before so I I didn't really know what I was getting into on any level which was good you know being naive allows you to jump into things that are a little bit over your head but I am super stubborn and I you know I will do it whether it kills me or not I knew that I was in for a lot of learning and a lot of I don't know just just kind of figuring out as I went but I didn't I didn't expect her to be so much water damage and you know putting my finger on the wall and it having it just sink in I was like oh god that's not good and then as I was tearing it apart you know it's definitely on so my dad was helping me at the at this time he he's been a carpenter his whole life so we kind of put our heads together to try and figure out how to rebuild a motor homes walls and he was just like well where do you stop you know like I mean it I could have replaced all of the walls and all of the ceilings and Mandurah I mean she's old and it's definitely seen good water but we stopped here here up and then the back did rebuild the whole ceiling and half of the wall on this side but yeah I mean there was a lot of times where I mean there's log tiers it was it was really hard but I knew I was signing up for something that was going to be hard and I wanted to embrace the challenge and know that it was an opportunity for growth and for becoming much stronger and more knowledgeable and just being able like I really think people are capable so much more than they give themselves credit for and I think that's true you know for other people so I have to think that's true about myself and you know we just have to keep on persevering and we can accomplish that you know so over here is the closet this is another reason how I knew Mandor was mine most motorhomes do not have good closets they're like tiny they're probably maybe this amount of size and I was prepared to get rid of a lot of stuff like I absolutely did not want to have as much things but I love clothes so this was and this made me happy that there's like a good amount of storage I have you know my hanging and I have a little shelf up here and then I have some bins here and four drawers so I didn't have to pare down my wardrobe as much as some people do think that a lot of the older motorhomes did have bigger closets it seemed like as they get newer the closets get smaller for some reason and then I installed this door which is the easy peasy solution to just have some privacy I got it from Lowe's it was pretty cheap I feel like it was maybe 20 bucks and you just cut it to fit so it comes a certain length and then you can just trim it off the bottom install the traps so it was an easy solution to create a little bit of privacy all right so come into my bedroom this is where I spend the majority of my time I won't lie this is actually where I had to build a new ceiling and and the wall is new on this side as well and then it did not come with this bud platform I had to build this back here it was just kind of naked the bed platform is on hinges so I can lift it up in there storage underneath and then on each side that kind of supports the bed platform there is my freshwater tank over here and I have like my hot water heater over there and my water pumps over here so I can still access everything that I need to this is the bathroom vanity that what used to be on the wall around the corner that I loved the look of so I needed to find a home for it and this ended up being the only wall that it would fit on but it's nice because I got some bedside stuff in here and nothing ever falls out this ledge originally was probably only you know this wide and that got demoed out and I rebuilt it to be wider cuz I knew I had a queen-size bed and then I had some negative space so I figured this would be a great spot for the cats to lounge because I have so many windows back here they absolutely spend a ton of time back here this is like the chill zone for all of us since I have kind of some cubby holes within the framing I just have you know suitcases and baskets with sweaters and extra blankets and that's whatever I can kind of shove in there these are LED lights and I just use rechargeable batteries for them but they have a remote so it's nice I can umm they're light enough for me to read and then I can just like click the remote when I start falling asleep but these fixtures are LED so I use those as well if I need a little bit more light these are from Ikea and since my windows are so massive I had to kind of piece them together and I ended up with gaps here but these gaps ended up being a really happy accident because the cat's love to just kind of peek in between them so even when everything shut down and most people can't see in here my cats can kind of still peek through the cracks in and keep watch the storage up top is already there but since I had to rebuild the ceiling it ended up being a little lower because we beefed it up and so I had to take the doors off and I just made these curtains instead and everything that goes up there is nothing that's like gonna fall out you know just some boxes and stuff so this is also not only do these two windows open up but this back window it came it came at the screen but everything was waterlogged and so it wasn't attached anymore everything was broken falling apart and I can get even more airflow back here and then I am it still has a screen so I can come in so you know having all these windows sometimes it sucks with the Sun coming in because it can get quite warm but when everything is open there's so much breeze that blows through that it you know it can it can still stay cool even though the sun's coming in it's really nice having all these windows I mean yeah the downfall for sure is when I was in much colder weather this is the coldest room and the hottest room but like I said as long as the windows are open and I have my fan here and I can get the air circulating it's not too brutal and since this window isn't really open I can always pull you know there's the screens just on this side so I can always pull this line to block out like half of them yeah half of the Sun that comes in and then have this little penny cycle get kind of a happy medium like I said before with the heat I'm mostly worried about my cats getting too hot so what I did is this area is the under bed area and there's more storage under here and my older cat tends to want to hang out under here anyways and so I created oh there he is that's a tray you and I created a little space under here where I just blocked off any of the areas that can get any sort of airflow and then I have a plastic bin that I bought and I fill it with ice and I just set it right here and I drop this cloth and it keeps it like 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the rest of Mandor so you already hangs out under here anyways and when I have the ice block there his paws are just hanging over and he is keeping cool so I made a different choice on the floors than most people do I was really kind of concerned about the expanding in the shrinking that floors do when you're not in a temperature controlled environment I went what this is a linoleum product and it's free-floating so you don't glue it down which allows it to expand and shrink all it wants without warping the only thing that was tough about it is you got like one shot to cut it correctly but I made a subfloor out of quarter-inch luan and kind of put it together like puzzle pieces and then I rolled out the floor and put those puzzle pieces onto the sheet and then cut around it and it turned out pretty decent and people do a lot of time think that it's the planks but it's actually just one sheet let's check out that cat box around like my pride and joy of my build I'm gonna show you where I keep the cat box so if you look there is the cat door that I showed you from the inside and then we're keep the cat box there's the cat cleaner and then right here is the basket with that cooling pad on this side this is like a whole dedicated cats site is where I keep food this is just kind of where this is where moon she likes to hang out this is where when I Drive she this is like her panic room this is where she comes to hang out and to feel safe and then I try use panic room is under the bed this is my camco super 8 150 I knew I had to have something secondary to Mandor because Mandor gets about 6 miles to the gallon and I also knew that you know she's not a spring chicken and I might need to rescue myself sometimes I did not want to tow a car because I was already a bit intimidated with driving her last thing I wanted was the extra links and dealing with the jackknifing and I just I didn't want any of that so I decided to go with a larger scooter and it has oh my gosh it's so amazing I'm grateful that I have it pretty much daily when I get set up somewhere I can offload it and then whether I need to go do laundry or get groceries or scooter just explore or scout out an area this is like so amazing to have and it's really it's really made me feel safe at times to like I know where and I was not sure if the manager was gonna start again and I was like well that leads to have me scoot I'm very grateful to have this all the time if you want to follow along on my adventure and trust me it is an adventure I've been blogging about it and I also post daily updates on Instagram you can find both of those links below but it's a girl and her commander awesome thank you time thank you [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 4,252,897

Keywords: tiny home, tiny house, tiny home on wheels, van life, camper van, shipping container, design, tiny houses, tiny homes, tiny house tour, rv renovation, budget rv, full time rv living, rv renovation before and after, rv lifestyle, full time rv living tour, van tour van life, rv living full time off grid, full time rv life, rv tour, rv conversion, tiny house on wheels, rv home, rv house, a girl and her commander, vintage rv, tiny home tour, rv restoration

Id: jcrkTnf8rQk

Length: 31min 46sec (1906 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 22 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Luckftw]

She transformed an old RV into an RV!

[u/BoognishSupreme]

If this is anything like the people I know who live out of kitschy vintage vehicles—she begged her Facebook friends and relatives to donate to her Kickstarter so that she could FINALLY realize her dream of just kinda driving around and shitting in random places, and now her old fucked up RV breaks down all the time in terrible spots, so she has to fire up the Kickstarter again to get it fixed. Maybe in return for donating to her Kickstarter, you get a remote reiki healing session, or something even less useful. When the Big One finally happens, and all the trees are on fire, all the broken roads out of Los Angeles are going to be clogged with vintage VW Buses, all weighted down by wood paneling, beaded curtains, and gin soaked mattresses.

[u/Mean_LaQueefa]

Did she also replace the engine and transmission, or does it get a mile per gallon and break down constantly?

[u/Noxvenator]

RVs aren't a thing where I live, can anyone give me a quick explanation on how sinks/shower/toilets work on these?

[u/creator111]

She looks like and sounds like Madchen Amick