Van Life Magic: Unveiling the Perfect Van Life Kitchen Tour

Channel my name is Brian and today we have the pleasure of having Natalie join us thank you Natalie for taking the time and giving us a tour of your van thank you I'm always happy to show my van that's excellent it's a work of heart it is you work so much on the van it's like oh a year of building of your life yes yeah and it is a beautiful band it's definitely caught my eye I was walking by and I saw it we had already seen met each other beforehand and I was just enamored with it I always thought it was such a clean beautiful build so I'm excited about getting to see it letting our people watching get to see it and so very excited thank you what kind of vehicle is this uh this is a Don Drum ProMaster 2018 it's the 136 wheelbase the shortest wheelbase okay I decided to go with the shortest wheelbase because I live in I was building while I was building the van I was in Montreal and parking in Montreal is probably the worst city in North America it's complex the signage is complex you have vignettes neighborhood vignettes and it's really hard and even with a vignette you have a hard time parking I understand yeah so that just makes it a smaller wheelbase because it is very short it's one of the shorter ones I've seen I'm very impressed so but yeah let's go ahead and take a tour let's go ahead let's go so it's a short uh wheelbase it's uh I but I wanted to put as much as I could into it because I live uh full time in the van that was the plan uh so I wanted to have a Dinette and um you know a good sized kitchen because I'm vegan and I I'm plant-based whole food I'm not vegan because vegan implies that you don't have a leather and stuff like that but I'm all food plant-based and I needed space to cook and I cook a lot so this is the kitchen area that's the dinette area and it's also where I sit to draw that's my drawing um lamp at night it's a USB powered lamp it's really brilliant what kind of art do you do um I do all kinds of drawings I draw on a watercolor acrylic acrylic and water gouache there's a new kind all kinds of uh drawings mostly drawings because you can't do oil painting in a van very hard yeah a lot of materials right yeah and right now I don't have my sewing material I also do cushions and stuff but I don't have anything I don't have enough space for this and I could probably put some stuff underneath the bed but it's hard to get there so yeah I decided not to okay I sleep I'm tall and the bed is a little short so okay there's a shuffle every night this all goes on the counter in the kitchen and I remove and I sleep like this Lily's in that corner and this is to protect actually my linens because Lily sometimes jumps with her wet paw and this is kind of it's kind of waterproof so it's perfect so with the bed then so you're sleeping side to side yeah my head goes there and I have like my um linen not linen Clothing Closet here it's a real closet for the coats I have all my coats here there's a rod that is actually a post for a you know when you have a balcony it's a balcony thing and it's bolted here and then I have these baskets I had to put a ton of little felt thing because they kept falling and I had to refold all the time they could all fall at once I can still pull it out but it doesn't fall as much when you go around corners yeah I wanted to have I have a lot of books I have a I still have a storage I couldn't get rid of everything so I have my favorite books in there I have my favorite uh European comic strip okay they're actually graphic novels if I don't have any Internet I can always read a graphic novel and it will put me to sleep I have my wobasto control right in the corner so that if I wake up in the middle of the night and it's really cold in the van the wabasto control is right there I open it tell me a little bit about the Wabasso I don't know what that is oh the wabasto eater is uh it's a German company like esbar I think they're they're right in front of each other in Germany apparently so esbar and wobasso make those the what they call the Chinese diesel we hear that all the time well they're they're the copy of the Wabasso in the S Bar it takes a little bit of gas from your tank because I have a gas tank I don't have Diesel and it there's an igniter and it starts there's a fan and it doesn't take too much uh Power or I have enough power with my solar setup to start all that and you have a nice dry eat it's not like propane so you don't have condensation it's actually extremely dry now you are where are you from I'm from Montreal and uh I uh I was tired of living in my condo I didn't do much in the winter I was watching Netflix and I was dreaming of having a teardrop trailer then I was you know I had I had been looking at all this but never doing anything about it and in 2017 after my mom died I was like wow you can die in nine days you gotta do something it's completely it it was like I felt like this was I had to do something different I was not happy I was not I didn't have like any uh it's something I wanted to do for a long time and I was not doing it and at one point I was like if you don't do it now you'll never do it so what inspired you to be actually in a van then as far as like what made you think of a van versus doing something else well that's kind of a I was watching a lot of tiny houses I wanted to have a tiny house at first and when you watch a lot of YouTube video of tiny house all of a sudden the the van started to pop and because I was also watching the teardrop trailer I think that the algorithm of YouTube started to show me tiny Vans and I was like oh my God that could be a that that's interesting and uh the more I saw that the vans that were outfitted and converted in 2018 it was like the winter of 2018 and I was in Thailand and I hadn't we couldn't get I was working there for a month okay and I had a lot of alone time so I watched a lot of videos and I started to watch the conversion and it was I became completely uh how do you say that when you're enamored or obsessed oh you know you watch you watch your watch I was like learning how do you do that and I was like trying to figure out if I could do it myself at first I thought I could do it myself and then I realized I've never held an Amber and I don't know how to use a saw and so so who did your build then well in the summer when I bought the van I still didn't know what to do and somebody told me about a cabinet maker um a bill he a woodworker in Montreal in Montreal so he said oh there's a guy at the back of my alley right in the middle of Montreal in downtown near one of the bridge you know not like an easy place to park at all and he didn't have like a a a shop we were actually parking in the alley and this was from November to March we didn't do an easy build it was a build worst weather ever yeah it was really cold when I stay in the wall when I painted I would have to go in parking lots where there was in parks where I would angle the van in the Sun and then I would paint okay then I'd go and I'd call him can do you think we can work today oh no there's too much snow the the plows didn't come so we'd wait another day and then it was it was a long build so it took about a good six months but I didn't have like the water tank it took a year for the water tank oh no kidding so you just use bottles up until that point yeah I couldn't find anyone to do the plumbing it was really hard to find somebody to do the plumbing and so someone else ended up doing that oh most of the things were done by different people the first thing I did was to put the um the window the side window it was done in one of those uh you know when you get a chip they installed the window then I had a guy that does the solar he did also the fan he did the fan and he did the ma this is the max hair and that's just a Dometic vent it is not a fan but it makes that circulation at night it works really well and when I cook above that so the the steam Rises up there and it goes away and I don't cook with oil so nothing is greasy I cook I water saute so we mentioned solar uh how many watts do you have on top I have 300 watts of solar and I have two AGM battery that are underneath the closet space on my bed okay and I have an inverter that's like at the back there it's a 2000 watt inverter because I have one one plug that's my one plug okay everything goes through there yeah I can pass through uh all anytime I wanted to be able to be able to leave quickly uh from any campsite that felt uh because I Boondock and you know I've had moments where I've had weird people circle around the van and it's unpleasant and you just want to be able to leave as you go uh I want to watch counter space this is amazing well the the reason that it feels very uh um like I have a lot of counter space is that first of all there's no I have to take out this to cook it is a butane stove it's from Japan it's actually uh what they use to cook their Shibu Shibu and stuff like that I like it because it's it's a really good uh distribution of eat this one is a it's a little more expensive than those um uh ones that you find at the camping places but it's worth it because it's a well-distributed eat and I cook I'm a serious cook even though I don't cook meat I cook a lot of things because I want to have a lot of concert space I made him do this cover and then I have it's it's basically an Ikea sink and they come with these inserts that are really practical see oh that's nice it's a good sized sink it's not too deep it's not too uh it's not the deepest I didn't need the deepest sink ever and I also have these insert that I put it I don't know if you're gonna I have like a little Rod here and I've put like this is my uh my thermos I always make hot water to clean myself in the morning and I keep it in here oh nice this is to cover the dog bowl uh and I have my dish rag you know it's a nice little setup and when I eat a lot of kale I need to clean my kale so I clean my kale in there perfect and I don't wash with my hair with that but what I do is I have a little plastic thing here and whoops what I do is let's put this here I have this portable shower with um it's a little foot pump oh yeah and it's one of those bags you know like when you go kayaking and you pump it and there's like you know it's it's got a stopping mechanism so you don't you put hot water in it and you can wash your hair comfortably I don't really have a shower enclosure so what I do is I go to uh I was I had a Planet Fitness membership but it's too complicated to get it back now because I anyway it's complicated and um because I'm not in my country so what happened is I go to truck stop now it looks like you have a water filter on top oh yeah the Berkey yeah I've never seen one that small yeah that's this that's the sports Berkey and when you buy it it comes with it comes with a bottle that's how it comes and there's no spout and how do you get water out of there then you have to always remove it it's a little bit it's not just practical I wish there was a tiny spout on it uh it has made it difficult right now I I need to re-prime it and I didn't prime it and so you have to put the water in the top it goes to the bottom you put the water in the top it doesn't make much water I don't know if you can see how much oh wow yeah yeah it's it's actually easier to use their bottle which actually has another filter so I've been using the bottle a lot more than but it comes together this is the kit the Nova cool is from BC I think they're made in BC and there's a latch here so it doesn't open we've changed the cover I didn't want to have the plastic cover and uh basically a lot of room it's very roomy that that's a 12 volt fridge it runs off of the solar and it doesn't take much energy it's like all those dometics and uh okay it's pretty much the same this is pretty much my seat because I have the view yo that makes sense of course all right and uh and so then you convert it into your bathroom you want to show us how to do that yeah I I took the cushions from an old IKEA chair that was the measurement for the seat when I decided to uh have the dinette you know we were talking about which um how big do you want it I wanted the size of that IKEA chair because those cushions are actually in the sheet that's the Nature's head composting toilet and uh so I have all my dry goods in here like uh you know beans and coffee oatmeal I think I needed more so I got this thing from Ikea uh it's like a little drawer thing and I just store it like that here and it's full of Art Supply I managed to put a lot of things in a small space like that and my Lagoon table flips I either I can have someone over and we have a meal very nice this is my lamp my working lamp it's a USB lamp and it's when I work at night when I draw it's perfect I have a bug spray a bug net because there's so much bugs in Quebec oh yeah it's a little the Northeast is very uh difficult in spring because we have it's not comfortable with the bugs it's not like the West it's worse and this goes up I won't pull it up all the way up but I'll show you the underbelly of the oh wow that's the underbelly of the van so I have I have a lot of it's a toy hauler absolutely Natalie thank you so much for the beautiful tour of your band I absolutely loved it I love the simple design thank you yeah and again there's just so many little parts of it that I think are important and you said uh Comfort is was really important to you right yes Comfort is really important to me I saw this uh vantor one day of a guy named Lee and he said he had greatly underestimated his need for comfort and he had to do his van build three times yeah and a lot of people do that they have multiple builds so that's the same one yeah looks like you nailed it with this one though kind of I just miss my studio that's the one thing that I'm missing but you can't I I have I couldn't fit a studio in there I think I have as much as I could yes and you do you utilize the space very well and I think that's very impressive thank you yeah folks out there thank you so much for watching the video today and joining us on this tour uh what did you think of the build what was your favorite part please let us know in the comments below but in the meantime give us a thumbs up please subscribe to the channel give us some love and until next time we'll see you guys down the road bye guys thank you foreign [Music]

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 216,096

Keywords: car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, camper, camp, boondock, travel, caravan, tiny, house, RTR, Bob Wells, Nomadland, CheapRVLiving, Cheap RV Living, vanlife, van life, how to live in a van, van dwelling, van tour, van conversion, living in a van, camper van, van build, diy van build, sprinter van, van living, #vanlife, van dweller, campervan, vandwelling, diy camper van, RV Life, Living in an RV, Class B, Class C, Truck Living, Living in a car, boondocking, Living in a RV

Id: 3agVX0l8KFc

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022