Solo Female Van Life - Her Ford Transit Connect W/ Clever Design Hacks

[Music] hey everybody my name is Kayla we're out here at gutted 2021 just outside great sandun National Park I'm here to show off my Ford Transit Connect so let's come on [Music] inside so we're going to start off here in the kitchen uh the first decision I made was I wanted this nice big countertop I made it out of Walnut pocket screwed it with some uh help with some friends and the first decision we made was we wanted it to be level with this window back here I chose this version of the for Transit Connect because of the passenger windows in the back that just gives me a lot of light makes the small space just look a whole lot bigger so we made this countertop level right here and that then decided all the space that we were going to have down here below so the first thing that we've got is we've got some drawers just beneath the countertop I've got kind of all my utensils here that I'll use for cooking I'm a big tea person so I've got all my chai and my matcha nice and accessible up top is where I've got all of my pantry items so I've got all my noodles my produce um and that sort of thing so something that I really wanted about this build was that I wanted to still be able to access my fridge from inside even when I'm just sitting inside so it's just a pop top uh fridge it can go all the way down to a freezer it's an ice Coe 12 ler fridge um what's really nice about it is it's Bluetooth controlled so when I'm driving in the front seat want to check on my fridge in the back I can change it to a freezer or you know let it let it warm up a little bit and the nicest thing is I've actually got this plugged into my starter battery in my car so it's really nice I can just park it's going to continue to run off my starter battery but it's going to shut itself off after it drains it to a certain amount so that's the breakdown I've got a little bit more storage here just like my pots and pans um and some other odds and ends but the my favorite thing about the kitchen is how it pulls out so I'll show you guys how that works now okay so on nice days like today I don't necessarily want to be cooking inside anyways and the great thing is is I can just open this door over here just a little bit more to give myself a little bit more space and then I just push down on these two tabs here and the whole kitchen will just slide on out like that and click into place and then that way even though I got a real small van here um you know I can stand up outside and use this as my cooking area so I take out my Coleman stove and I just pop it up like this I still have access to my fridge right down here so if I'm cooking I can just pop this up um I've got all my spices here that if I'm doing some kind of you know dinner and all my all my food here and then often times what I'll do as well I'll just move these cushions and move out my slats and I'll put a piece of wood right here so I've got a cooking area I can still access my countertop and then I've got all my cooking uh stove and burner going on right here off the end here we've actually got another set of drawer slides within those bigger ones it's a nice cutting board area space but you can also just pop it down like that it's a nice little sink I'll put my dirty dishes there the cool thing is I can grab it and take it you know to the camp sink and just get all my dishes washed off and then it just pops right back on up and then just slides underneath and the reason that I decided to put that there was these drawer slides um to bring everything out the fridge to be able to move this way these slides had to be on top of it so I lost all of the space and in a small van like this you want to utilize every inch and so I was losing these three inches of the drawer slides but by putting this uh little cutting board underneath I felt not as bad about it because I had that extra functionality so one thing that I really like about this is that we made it out of um 8 in aluminum some of my friends who do some metal work Consulting back in w son um they knew that I was going to try to build this out of plywood and I was going to be using you know half or 3/4 in plywood for this whole thing and I was going to lose so much space it was just going to be so much bigger because each one of these faces was going to have to be a lot bigger so by making it out of E8 in aluminum I was able to save a whole bunch of space and then you know fit in not only a fridge in my Coleman but then even have space for these drawers that stay inside um that I can store things in so I think that's one of my favorite things that we were able to do was make this out of metal and I think that's pretty [Music] unique so I decided to go full-time this summer um really because the pandemic has just really prevented me from meeting up with the people that I love and sharing in the same space you know we all have found ways to cope um the pandemic has pushed us on to platforms like zoom and you know really virtual um meetups but really nothing replaces being in the same place with the people that you love and so I really pushed hard to get my rig done as soon as possible and I hit the road and did this big loop um out on the east coast and just week to week was living with different friends and working from their kitchens their living rooms their you know dining rooms but just getting to share the same space with them um it was it just reaffirmed that human connection is just something that we can't live without the transition honestly wasn't that hard to transition from like living in my Co-op to this space I've always always like pick the smallest room in the houses that I live in um and I've always challenged myself to just even if I'm um in a home base just to figure out what it is that I need and not have any more than that and so I've always just loved small spaces when I think back on it um so this definitely was a little bit more of a challenge to really downsize a bit but I feel like I have everything I need and um it just felt like a new challenge and it even though there were some hardships with it it was just I felt like every day was a challenge and I was excited to figure it [Music] out all right so then on the opposite side from the kitchen we've got my living room bedroom dining room all in one um just the modular side of the design was what I'm really proud of in this really small space it's something that I think all four Transit Connect owners really have to struggle with and you have to solve in your own way and I'm really proud of uh what I have here so in the very first state that it's in we've got our living room kind of like our couch mode we've got our light switch back here for our Puck lights coming on and off um we've got our fan that we can turn it on and off and just keep things nice and cool for kind of like the lounging mode sometimes I'll set up my computer here and I'll work um but it's just like a nice relaxed state of just this is how I keep it during the day as people are coming in or out or I'm trying to like um be on the road and just kind of get some stuff done so after living room mode the next easiest mode is to transition to the single sleeper mode the width of these cushions here are exactly a camping mat that's what kind of designed this width um but if I'm trying to sleep in like super stealth mode not trying to go out of the car or anything I actually have my bike um in this aisle way here so that I don't have it outside the van and really like show everyone that I'm trying to sleep in here but I can sleep on this like narrow cushion it's not as comfortable just because I don't have as much space but it allows me to be able to keep other things in the aisle way so after the single sleeper mode then um we've got our slats that come out um that can just allow for the bed to expand and then the back of the sofa will come down and actually just fit right alongside here and make a twins siiz mattress um allows for a little bit extra space maybe if you've got a friend someone you really like along gives you guys a little bit more space to work with um and I think that's part of the design challenge is I'm not trying to cook and eat and work all at the same time really this transitions to support one motor or the other like either I'm trying to sleep or I'm trying to cook or I'm trying to work and um that's something that makes a small space still really workable and still really you know doable so after we collapse these things back in um we just rotate the large cushion here into an L shape from the back um slats that pull out here and the center area actually pulls up and we've got that table leg that we put underneath and that sets up nicely as a two-seater um dining area I actually can rotate the table around a little bit and get four people back here we had dinner up at Glacier National Park my sister and her husband and a friend we all sat back here really didn't feel cramped cuz I've got a nice amount of head space um and we've got just this nice wide table and like I was saying we're not trying to do many things at once we're just all trying to eat together and everyone that's in here says it doesn't feel like we're cramped even though it's a small space B but uh we make it work and I really like [Music] it all right so then under each of kind of the cubicles I've got just this drawer that pops up that's my clothes I call this bottom one my garage I've got all my screws and nails and spray paint kind of all my upkeep and all the projects I might be doing on the road um back here I've got another two sets of drawers so this top one is just my underwear and socks and then the bottom one is kind of all my toiletries and toothbrush toothpaste sunscreen all that kind of thing so up top the cabin here we've just got um this piece of metal that we bent the normal shelf in the four Transit connects will just come out this far but I just fit a piece of metal that came and just brought it right out to the back of the seats here and up top I've got some of my larger clothes items so I've got my pants my sweatshirts and jackets and then I've got always on hand my frisbee my sleeping bag and my pillow and that's what I'll use to set up and sleep back here um I've also then got my curtains that I just pull across to kind of give myself a little bit of privacy at night um as well as all the curtains that uh cover up all of the windows cuz this Transit Connect does have more windows than normal um but I really like the light and how much it opens up the space but I do have to keep those uh pulled together at night but something that I love about the Transit Connect is all the exposed metal so um I just pull them open here and I slide them open and I've got actually magnets on all three sides of the of the curtains so they just snap together right in the middle and then they snap to the exposed metal frame and that just keeps things nice and pulled tight I've got blackout curtains as the first layer and then a little bit more of a decorative fabric to match my cushions that I've got here so I Mo I made all those myself as well as the cushions um I love sewing and just being able to express myself with designing it instead of just buying it from somewhere really made the space feel like my own and something that I was really proud of I'm currently a master student um in the academic year but this summer I was able to take some time off from school I actually got a remote internship which allowed me to go back home build out the rig and then I've been on the road for this last month in about a week here I'll be starting up school again so it's been a great way to just get a taste of being on the road and building out my first rig and um meeting all these people has gotten me really inspired to uh after I graduate get into this a whole lot more I'm a biomedical engineer and right now I'm studying artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare so there's a little bit of flexibility there of stuff that I could do on the road I'm really interested in being able to continue the passion that I have for engineering um and I've got a couple options that might be able to facilitate being full-time on the road um but we'll just see how how things turn out and I would love to at a minimum I would love to build out a bigger rig and just take that next step of a little bit of a bigger space but for now being a Weekender that I'm looking to have built out this is this is doing the job all right so then across from the other door this second door that pulls open on the transit um just beneath this bench here I've got my paxes um Power Pack it's a 300w hour um power bank but the really cool thing is it's got everything in one I've got an AC out I've got lots of USB ports um and then I also have my DC out and so these plugs that are here are going to my lights and my fan and then this plug here is where you can charge it up so I either have that connected up to my alternator so when I drive it charges or I pull this cable out here and I've got my solar panels that I'll pull out front on top of my hood whenever I park somewhere so I can just plug that right in all right so when I'm out in the sun in the desert and the sun's beating down um I don't have an air conditioner but this giant aluminum blanket is really enough it's just a really really lightweight um kind of reflective material and I just literally throw it on the front um mostly the head of the car and the windshield is where a lot of the heat will enter into my car so by just putting the sun shade on it I feel like it keeps my car easily 10 to 15° cooler than what it is outside and um doesn't look pretty but it gets the job done and um can't complain about that so another thing that I just really love about this car in particular is just the small size of it some people see it really as a caveat but I just see it as being a really flexible and versatile rig to get you around wherever you want to be um I can park it just in a normal parking stall and nobody will suspect that like I can sleep in it at night so another thing that's just great about it small size um I get between 25 to 26 mes per gallon um and that's just great when I'm trying to go long distances in comparison to some of the bigger rigs you know you've got a lot more space but obviously that's going to be compromised with your gas mileage and this thing's nice and small and meets my needs so not looking for anything [Music] else I would say my biggest reflection on building out such a small space is I was really challenged to think about what it is that I need for my lifestyle and for what I was looking to be able to do I think we see a lot of videos online of these big rigs with toilets and showers and like these beautiful black backsplashes and all of this space um big solar panel build outs and so on so forth but um when it comes down to it like you really just have to think about what am I trying to do and you know where am I trying to boond do or you know who am I trying to meet if you're just trying to meet up with friends you know more than likely you'll be able to sleep at their places and you know charge your computer there and you know get air conditioning there so just think about really what you need and don't over complicate things and know that your rig is going to be like no one else's rig and you should be proud of that um rather than trying to just copy what everyone else is doing you know really finger printed and really make it your own for your lifestyle and that has been the most rewarding experience because I feel like this build is something I really have ownership over and I love and I can't can't wait for that to come out in all the videos that I hope to share with the decisions that I made that I made and how I built it because um it's a really liberating experience and it's just part of like a formative part of your identity of just like who am I and like what am I trying to do so it's been a lot of fun and I can't wait for the fact that this is just the beginning my Instagram just got released for uh this van coming to gutted I knew I was going to meet up with a lot of people so it's Murphy mobile um being my van so Murphy mobile and then another underscore is where you can find and follow along on all our adventures thanks guys for following Along on this tour um I'm just getting started so I'd really appreciate if you hopped over my channel and if you like my videos and are interested in hearing more specifics about the build and um seeing a little bit more behind the scenes of how everything got put together I'd love it if you guys give this video a like give them a subscribe and uh you know hop over my channel as well um hope to see you there and can't wait to share [Music] more [Music]

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 224,954

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, tiny house england, tiny house uk, tiny house movement, tiny home, small house, small spaces, small house design, alternative living, architecture, affordable home, off the grid, small space living, tiny house life, tiny home uk, diy tiny house, diy home

Id: gg-FU2OO74A

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 09 2021