The ULTIMATE DIY VAN TOUR with FULL BATHROOM and an AMAZING MURPHY BED

hi friends welcome back to our channel i'm chase and i'm maria jose and this is our 2016 mercedes sprinter van named chevide which if you might want to know what chavity means it's cool in spanish i'm from venezuela and we like integrating spanish word to i don't know our daily life it quite literally means like cool awesome rad so it's very appropriately fitting we used to live in a school bus with our dogs jake and pablo yep they travel with us full-time this was back in 2018 yes and then we decided to downsize again into a sprinter van a lot of you have been following along over the last six months where we bought the van right at the beginning of a global pandemic and then built it all throughout quarantine and well six months later it's done so it's finally time that you get to see the whole tour of this van and we are so pumped to show you so come on in so you get to hang out with me first but first things first let's take off our shoes and hide them away in this little cubby here let's start in the cockpit thankfully marissa and i are able to both swap out driving privileges so i'm not always in the driver's seat that's something that was a little different than in the bus this is your standard mercedes-benz sprinter 2500 170 inch wheelbase so it's the extended version but it's non-extended after that it's not the longest that you can get we picked this up in california after searching for almost five months coast to coast it was an entirely fun process let's uh we'll say that we ended up picking up from a private party in paris california we flew there at the very beginning of the pandemic wearing our masks we were a little ahead of the curve and we met up with a really awesome family who picked us up from lax and took us to paris california where we bought the van from there we drove it straight back through to tennessee and started the build so while we're up here you may notice even though this is a high-top sprinter that this is relatively low well we built a shelf over the bulkhead but we took it a step further cue the lights babe so we installed those lights because this swivel seat turns around and we also wanted to bring a little bit of extra light into the cab area since we utilized this as part of our living space we took it a step further and installed four usbs two usb 3.0 on the left side one usbc and another usb 3.0 on the right side that way we always have forward-facing security slash dash cam and we can charge and use our laptops uh whoever is not driving while we're going down the road it came stock with the mercedes uh navigation system that comes with the rear view camera and everything a lot of people complain about that i think we actually really like the bluetooth in it it's not the most advanced but it does exactly what it needs to do we had to have this it opens up so much extra space we chose only to have the one swivel because we've got this wall here and then jake's bed is up here because while we drive he really likes to sit up and we wanted him to be elevated enough that way he could see out all the windows but it's also storage in each compartment here for their leashes their guidelines because we have hooks installed on the bottom side of the van that way they can always be outside with us and then under the seat is our diesel heater so we have a diesel heater installed with the remote up here it keeps us toasty warm and we've we've been in this van through every climate that you can imagine already and we haven't even officially moved into it yet so if you knew our bus before you know that floor plan is super important for us and that's why we took so much time designing the band layout which we put together a whole van layout guide so if you like our layout make sure to check it out the link is gonna be the description and there's gonna be info about everything about building a van but let's leave that to the end let me show you over here the sink area where the fridge is we decided to keep the kitchen area a little bit different sink in this part of the van we went with an undermount apron style sink i love it so much is a great size for a van it's not too small or not too big something else that we didn't have in the bus before was water filtration system but this is amazing we have always fresh water which is a five stage filtration which means we're always gonna have fresh water we also have a soap dispenser which we also didn't have in the van and it saves so much space to have the whole countertop open then we have our fridge which i love we used to have a huge fridge in the bus so having a good size fridge inside van without taking the whole space over was very important and that's when we found our isotherm cruise elegance it's at 130 liters otherwise 4.6 cubic feet and it runs on a 12 volt or on a 110 which we will explain a little bit more about power later in the video but let me get you a fresh drink no chase yeah i would take mine as you can tell we have a lot of space and the fridge is not even like super fill in so we still have quite a bit of space which makes me very happy underneath the sink we have this little area where we keep our vacuum we also have the water filtration system we have a water heater which works amazing we tried the other day and it took like 10 minutes max to heat up the water so we always have hot water in the van i put the lids for our pots and pans over here so they're out of the way and they're not gonna be moving and rattling while we're driving which is very important for chase he hates all the sound of like little things above the fridge i'm very proud of this area because i was so afraid of not being organized inside the van and i i think we do pretty good i think we have a little bit too many essential oils but that's okay we have the space for above it we have cabinet with all our stuff for the kitchen like plates we love coffee coffee coffee mugs you know our everyday while i'm here i'm gonna show you two of my must-have for the van one is this pantry over here look at all the space in the bus we barely had any space for our canned food and dry food when we were building the van we knew we needed a space dedicated for all food related another of my favorites right here in the front and it's a full-size mirror i know i wanted a full-size mirror because you know we live in a van but we don't have to look bad right that's right now chase is going to show you the other area of the kitchen and now to the side of the kitchen realistically it's a multi-purpose space so we have plenty of prep space here for when we're cooking our electric induction cooktop yes you heard that right it is electric induction there's no propane whatsoever in this van we'll explain that a little bit later but this right here something that when we were in the bus we knew we had to find a better solution for and this was our trash area trash can in the van [Applause] so it's hidden we can throw everything away and then we can just close it up and on the lower part of the whole trash thing that came to us in an inspiring moment is an additional slide out drawer so we can make use of the lower part of this cabinet which is pretty much all of our cleaning supplies everything's on a soft close uh drawer slide but that doesn't mean that it stays closed so we have locks that you have to give a pretty good pull to the first drawer is super organized mariosai's cooking utensils and they lock in then all of our spices that we need for cooking some pot pans and bamboo chopping boards some really awesome reusable eco-friendly towels and sponges and our blender and some pots and pans that we had to buy for the electric cooktop and then moving on you might notice this is a relatively large space one in part it is like i said food preparation for us while we're cooking but it's also the home to a large majority of our clothing storage so we have these really awesome deep drawers this is a shared drawer for underwear and socks my drawer which house almost all of my clothes right and then rosettes which is significantly more organized than mine we didn't talk about this at the very beginning if there's one thing that mares a is really bothered by it's this so let's just bask in the glory for a second while she gives this mean face to me behind the camera oh don't you just love it but this isn't the only way that we can turn the lights on and off we did want a remote but we did understand that having a remote i was probably going to lose it so we do have a dedicated light switch that even if the lights are on up here we can also flip it off when we're in bed we can show that to you later and then last but not least our upper cabinet storage here it's kind of a multi-use and multi-purpose space as well everything in a sprinter van is truthfully we have some extra soaps and shampoos we've got some toiletries rose makeup bag and we have a space for our vitamins which reminds me i don't think we took our vitamins today there you go bud [Applause] now's a great point for us to stop and tell you about our sponsor for today's video which is kira trace and i a couple of weeks ago we're talking about how we haven't been feeling the best very tired and kind of like trying to figure out what's what was missing for sure we find out that we were missing some vitamins we went to careup.com and we took their quiz which is like five minutes out of your day but you put in all sorts of things about your life your lifestyle everything from dietary restrictions and any type of allergies and then kind of what your health goals are and the quiz spits out every vitamin that would work great for you something that i love it was the vitamins were made for us so it's not like i randomly went to the drugstore and just guess what i need and just pick up a bunch of things and hope for the best no actually i feel so much better after taking it as soon as we got the package we noticed everything was so personalized which i love and one of our favorite things about the packaging is the packaging is made out of compostable material so even though they're individually wrapped for us they're not wasteful and they're very eco-friendly and sustainable which is at the core of our foundation as part of the sponsorship we wanted something for you guys and care of was so pumped to give everyone of you that follows the link in our description and order some vitamins as well 50 off using the promo code teal 50. it's right here thank you so much cara for sponsoring today's video also for making us feel so much better we really do feel like over the last week of taking our new vitamins that are tailored uniquely to us that we're that much closer and that much more on track to our own personal health goals so if you would like to try them don't forget to check our link down below let's take a look to our bathroom area how i mentioned it before for us was very important having a bathroom in the band and of course it's not a huge bathroom but it's a very functional bathroom we decided to keep it all in one place it's a wet bath this time we did not go with a whole black water system we decided to go with a composting toilet where you know you do number two and it has a divider where you can mix it and it becomes compost and then it has a little area in the front where you can do number one way we it diverts to its own tech which we just take it out and empty it when it needs to be for the shower also trying to save space because of course it's a small place we went with a one where we can shower and keep it inside with a retractable shower door another way that we can keep things inside the bathroom was installing these where we can put our shampoo conditioner and body wash this was actually chase's fine and i love it it keeps the toilet paper in there and it's dry the whole time and you might be wondering how is it possible that you have tiles inside your band that is actually moving constantly and we use a lightweight backer to keep the weight down and that will install tiles and yeah that's all about the bathroom [Music] and now we are in one of my favorite areas i think i say that everything about the man we love every part of the van but welcome to our multi-purpose i say that in every area living space workspace and bedroom for the layout of the back we decided to go with an l-shaped sofa which has worked perfectly it's very comfy yep for being in a van of course uh and then you will be like why are these people having a tv on their band besides youtube videos i also work a fully remote job from the road from anywhere and it's it's it affords us a large opportunity to travel full-time but i convinced jose to get a rather large television for the space to function as my monitor uh that i plug my laptop up into what are you talking about is that a tv or is that our work well it's both we went with a frame tv because we wanted something that was um aesthetically pleasing as well as obviously functional so and then our table here is on a lagoon mount so we can move it pretty much everywhere unlike most vans that have an l-shaped sofa or a sofa in general and a table the table and the sofa do not become our bed nope we actually take it out of here and that's where our murphy bed comes to place we unlock the bed and then we pull it down welcome to our bed so now it's time to talk about our murphy bed and this was something that we knew from the beginning we also wanted in the van because you know we don't want to be putting the bed up and down and you know filling up and having extra cushions to make the bed or having a fixed bed just because i like to have friends over and i don't feel comfortable letting a bunch of people just sit in my bed what if someone spills in my sheets no no no no no so that way we keep it separate so it's like two completely different rooms it's super easy to pull up and down in this area over here we decided to also maximize our storage space and this part over here it's empty but that's where our comforter and our pillows go we have a little area over here where we keep some electronics that we don't use all the time but it's nice to have close by here is what chase was talking about earlier if we're laying in bed and we don't want to bring the remote because of course he will lose it we can just switch our lights off we have usb chargers for our phones and the most exciting part our dirty clothes when we were planning the van there's these small things that you don't realize you need until you're living in the van and you're probably like where do i put my dirty clothes well we thought about it and you know the the fun thing is it has easy access so i can just take off our dirty clothes or whatever and just throw it in there while we are in bed or you know we live in a van so of course inside here i feel like we are home but we can be in a parking lot we can be at walmart we can have random people outside so i like to be a little bit extra careful it also give us extra insulation so if it's too cold outside it will keep the van warm and cozy in here or if it's too hot it will keep the heat out and that's why we have our window covers they are made by a friend of ours which he lives in a van as well so it's very cool to support small businesses but not just that we even tried to make our own they didn't look good they didn't stay up and these are amazing they are magnetic there you go you also have a easy foldable material which comes with snaps so it's easy to put away as well so if you're thinking of building a van or you already have a van you need this these are a must have if you live in your vehicle that's the case we're gonna leave the link down below so you can check them out while i'm here i'm just gonna show you our upper cabinets which is more clothing storage this is mine very packed of course sweaters take a lot of space and this is chase's which you know he doesn't have many things in there he has a very nice organize look at that and now back to the sofa area that's fine let's talk about the beginning of a love story that's a van without propane that's a van where you can run heavy appliances like air conditioners or blow dryers multiple vents fans televisions all at the same time and that you have to start with a very robust solar system and and battery bank so under our murphy bed is where we house our four 142 amp hour lithium iron phosphate batteries that's almost 600 amp hours of lithium battery storage completely usable amp hours we have a 3 000 watt victron inverter and a 60 amp renegy mppt charge controller up on top of the van we have 600 watts of solar put in series parallel that way we're maximizing our voltage output our amperage and we're bringing in power in relatively low light or cloudy situations which trust me makes our system so much more efficient we tried to run parallel only and we've tried to run series only and both of those just don't make sense for the setup that we have we've had zero issues whatsoever since we've put two panels in series two panels in series and then ran those in parallel so in real world terms what does all that mean and what can it power well it means we have a lot of battery power to power things like which we forgot to mention our central vacuum cleaner so we can hook our hose in here with a flip of a switch we are able to power both of our max air fans so we have two roof vent fans that can both pull air out they can pull air in or they can create a circulation by having one out and one in the tv and it can even power electric induction cooktop which is more or less a power hog when it comes to an appliance but we chose to go that route because we did not want any propane we had propane in our bus and even though it worked great we were never 100 confident in it confidence in a small vehicle is one of the most important things you can have so we also ran our plumbing down low everything electrical is up high and it gets blocked off so you don't have to worry about your water in your electric ever mixing which is also another cause for concern so we're all good on that front as well we have an app on our phone where we can monitor the system if need be we can see how many amps are coming in where our batteries are at as far as a charge level goes and how many volts and watts our panels are generating to continue allowing us to use uh the appliances that we use another key part to a solar system is redundancy and we talk about this a lot but we have multiple ways of charging our batteries we do have shore power it's hidden underneath the van we have an alternator isolator which charges our battery bank back here while we're driving but then we've also got our solar panels which do 99.9 percent of all the legwork that we need our renter will now be complete until we show you the outside of the van first thing first our awning which is an incredible addition to our van chase actually found that as well it's meant to be for jeeps but it goes around half of our van let's go to the back oh yeah by the way the van didn't come with any windows so we installed our back windows and our side window as well here this is a new addition for the van which i love we actually put it together on an instagram reels so if you would like to learn how we did these you better follow us on instagram it's a flip up table that we didn't know we needed but now that we have it i'm so happy we have it right here we have our outside shower we flip up this armrest we get out our outside shower we connected and that's how you have an outside shower which reminds me we haven't tell you we have 46 gallons of fresh water which is underneath the step in our living room area right here we also can fill up the water tank something else we have outside the van is on the roof we have a tv antenna where we can get channels anywhere we are we also have a signal booster which help us have wi-fi hour internet anywhere we go this is all for our event tour i know it's way shorter than the bus tour we hope you enjoyed all the little nuances and details if there's something that we skipped over or we forgot to mention drop us a question in the comment we'd be happy to let you guys know we also have a lot of information about our build on our website the link is in the description as mario as they mentioned earlier our build layout and guide are also linked down in the description as well also don't forget to subscribe to our channel we love to have you come along with us in our next adventures taking the van all over we'll see you next time friends bye [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Tío Aventura

Views: 1,524,207

Rating: 4.9206066 out of 5

Keywords: van conversion, van life, vanlife, skoolie, tio aventura, chase and mariajose, skoolie conversion, tiny living, off grid, camper, van tour, nomad, van life tour, camper van, ultimate van tour, diy van tour, sprinter van tour, van conversion tour, van tour with bathroom, van tour with shower, van tour with dog, van tour with murphy bed, cute van tour, boho van tour, chic van tour, rv, full time rv, #vanlife, rv living, digital nomad, rving, turn it up world, minimalism, vanagon

Id: CYrqw5RCWjk

Length: 26min 22sec (1582 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020