VAN TOUR | Engineer builds MASTERPIECE | Van Life UK

hi everyone uh welcome back we are lee and sarah in september 2019 we decided to buy a voxel vivaro short wheel base aka vambo it has been a long project to say the least with thanks partly to coronavirus which allowed us to make some massive headway in the conversion and i'm pleased now to say that we have finished and we are going to show you so without further ado here is the mantle so one of the first things that we did was to upgrade the cab seats for long distance driving we wanted to be as comfortable as we possibly could so we took out the seats that were here and we replaced them with mitsubishi warrior captains seats so this involved a level of engineering and luckily lee is an engineer some of the good things about having these chairs are that there's some storage space underneath now so this is a good place for us to store things like emergency first aid kit very important if you have a lee with you who's always getting injuries we also keep our digital air compressor for the tyres which has proved very helpful and then last but not least our um fire extinguisher for safety and your cooking and my cooking rude so this is our kitchenette this was something that wasn't initially in the plan but we realized quite quickly during the conversion that we needed more space for uh food prep together designed this but lee made it and i have to say it just looks absolutely stunning i'm so so so proud of him it was a team effort we stained the wood um and then sanded it back to give it some nice effect and obviously painted this bit white with some nice copper touches yeah originally um it was going to be just the boys food bowls and then nothing above which was like a huge waste of space in a short wheelbase fan as you'll see we've really tried to maximize the space as best as possible so yeah so they've got their food bowls here their little feeding station but it's also our feeding station too so we have a decorative shelving here all important clock but when you're away in the weekends who cares what the time is um and we also have some little twinkle lights in kilner jars we did want to have them out around the tops of the van but our cats like to chew them so not a good combination we actually found that they look quite nice in jars so that's a win we realized when driving that this this drawer which is quite a deep drawer tends to slide forward so we've put on a little twisty sort of mechanism just to hold it secure and it's great it holds frying pans our bowls for nibbles the boys extra bowls for food mugs everything basically it's a really good draw we have got a whistling billy really handy we did have a different kettle but we realized we needed a larger capacity so we went for this one which we love we've got our amazing wooden viking cups for drinking our coffee when it comes to cooking really easy this lifts up like a school desk we can lift out our cooker place it on top and you're good to go um we also have the other side of the kitchenette a beer bottle opener and underneath we did a cut out for uh just extra storage it's a really good place to put sort of blankets or if it's like slightly chilly towels just so just a storage little cupboard there and our lagoon table was mounted here as well when it comes to parking up finding the perfect spot where it's peaceful and you are gonna hunker down for your evening we wanted to have some privacy from the cab into the living space so we decided to make a copper curtain rail which is fixed up here and we've got some blackout fabric that we used to make some pull across curtains both sides and also on the doors and the back doors so it's all matching so the next part of the van is uh seat number one this is lee's seat primarily this also doubles up as the boys litter tray so we fitted a pack flat for them and then when it comes to emptying which is normally lee's job as well we just lift this up and away we go but it's a very comfortable seat we installed a legume table which just goes on there and then you can kind of move it around wherever you're cooking chopping veg playing cards making coffee and it's just fabulous if you haven't got a lagoon table look at the link below they are well worth the investment bloody traffic this is our sink and water system we made a change since then we have a nozzle in the end of the tap which was created and made by my other half li it's just copper pipe with joiners then we found this which we had to have it's basically a antique jam pan from france and we drilled a hole out the bottom and fit waste water pipe into tanks which are down here so we've got 25 liters waist and 25 liters of fresh just behind here and they are secured with cable ties we didn't have electrical water pump system we opted for a whale foot pump which works absolutely amazing and we prefer this because you can kind of control the amount of water usage that you use as opposed to when it's like the electric pump how much water i got left am i going to run out that's what we opted for next is our diesel heater this has been a lifesaver when we've gone away and stayed it's important that you're warm and cozy and this is absolutely brilliant it's just a chinese diesel heater fitted and drilled down through the floor so that the fumes escape it's not drilled into our fuel tank we wanted a standalone one separate from that so we also have in here our dometic tcx 35 liter capacity fridge which is brilliant again we also installed some air holes in the front and to the side as well just so it doesn't overheat it's got huge capacity it's been brilliant for us for going away for weekends and trips away so cannot rate that enough because we don't want to have too much wastage for the van we tried to recycle as much as possible these holes here were covered with leftover eyelets from the curtains so yeah they were super glued in place they look really fancy and nothing wasted win-win next is seat two which is not my seat primarily it doubles up as a storage box which is great for dried food the boys biscuits any other old bits and pieces it also does hold a porta potty toilet so we can have the option to have a built-in loo but we decided we preferred the storage so we've gone with that we actually use bivvy lu which we keep behind seat two and that comes out when nature calls and you don't wanna go outside so the van has 140 amp hour battery we decided to have the voltage display here i don't know if you'll see it or not but it's showing 12.4 um and we also have our usb points we have one here and one at the back as well so that we can charge your phones when we're asleep and then this one's like a spare at the minute so if a later stage you want to put something in you could um so like in every house you always have a drawer that contains old batteries old remote controls this is our version of that on our van we keep our harnesses for the boys their leads extra lights we've not really had the van that long so we've not been able to fill it with much crap yet but we're really hoping to in the future so we had four touch lights fitted they went for like a warm tone so it keeps it nice and cozy with all the wood and literally just touch them on touch them off easy as that so we opted for a max fan deluxe with smoke tint just to go with our black and white theme that we've got going on with the exterior of vambo we are super duper chuffed with it you can control it with the remote which we placed up by the top of the bed it's worked really well for getting rid of like condensation in the mornings keeping us cool when it's like a little bit hot um and also removing cooking smells which is why we placed it above the kitchenette so again a fantastic product can't rate it enough we opted for the tongue and groove cladding for the roof proved slightly tricky but we got there in the end and we're really pleased with the result it looks homely and cozy when the lights on in the evening and first thing in the morning when the sun hits it it's just really made the inside of the van feel like a home from a home so this is our um double bed it's just under six foot which is really handy we got it from um e-foam direct we opted for four inches of hard foam and a three inch memory foam topper for added comfort and it works how we make the bed is we simply just slide this out this piece of memory foam pulls forward and then we have two extra pieces which we drop down at the back and then our pillows and our duvet so for extra storage we also wanted some shelves to be fitted so we have one either side of the bed also have dropbox which is where we store our pillows and excess duvet or blanket if we need it and also showering materials and our towels so really handy and that runs from all the way here down to the floor of the van so it's a really good size storage area it's me it's better than caribou i know it is all right we decided to along with having extra storage here um mount our carbon monoxide alarm to keep us safe when the heater is on and then we also mounted the remote control for the max fan just handy when you're asleep and if it's a bit hot on it goes okay so moving around to the back in our first compartment we've got 140 amp hour battery all of our fuses sit on the top there we also installed a split charge relay which connects to the engine so when we drive about this thing is competing at 100 create quite a big area for that one there's actually tons of room for extra storage and we've just not actually been able to fill it yet so in the middle compartment is where we keep our pump shower it's from hosey lock and you might have seen them where a lot of gardeners use it to pump up and use to um spray fertilizer we fill it up and we both get a shower out of it we use a duck board to stand on so our feet don't get dirty and then literally keep pumping and pumping the pumps it builds up air pressure and then we can literally both have a warm shower of it we bore the kettle fill it so far i'd say about a third with hot water and then fill the rest with cold and that's enough for both of us to have a perfect shower so in the third and final compartment on the right here as you see the back we've got a diesel heater which has literally been absolutely fantastic has an air intake at the back and the exhaust goes down out through the bottom of the van so we don't get any fumes alongside of that there's always been plenty of room for our table and chairs set out underneath our awning [Laughter] i was just thinking of the first time we did it we fitted a brand new air b yeah cannot fault it enough cannot rate it stop just do it again just set everything out like a new dining area a new dining area 35 liter fridge can't can't rate it enough not fault it rate it no start that again keep it rolling people yeah uh we sort of we installed a black we painted so that was the end of our ah okay just a minute and please please if you haven't and you've got this far please subscribe hi guys so um i hope you really enjoyed our van tour video we have worked really hard on this conversion and put a lot of love and effort into it there's been some highs and some lows i hope you can hear it as well because we park right next to a river and it sounds quite loud here it might be fine we don't know until we get back but um yeah hopefully you've heard it hopefully you've learned if you think no stop saying learn a few things who are you some sort of teacher i'm not leave a comment below have you learned anything yeah if you've watched this far please consider subscribing it's free it really really really really really helps us out more than you know um give us a thumbs up hit the like button and please please please subscribe to our channel if you have any questions on the conversion if there's anything that you've seen that you think or i'd like to know a bit more by all means drop us a comment below or follow us on our instagram um and we'd be happy to try and help where we can hope you enjoyed the van tour hope you enjoyed the van tour thank you so much thank you so much and we'll see you on the next one bye guys you

Channel: Lee & Sarah Vanlife

Views: 651,466

Rating: 4.9199157 out of 5

Keywords: van life, van life uk, van life couple, van conversion, diy build, adventures, explore, travel, van living, van life tour, van life build, van tour, how to convert a van, travel couple, camper van, van tour van life, van tour with shower, tiny house on wheels, van builds ideas, digital nomad 2020, travel couple videos, travel couples on youtube, van life couples youtube, home on wheels tour, travel couple vlog, selfbuild camper, self build campervan conversions

Id: hNwd-mRCFoU

Length: 15min 15sec (915 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 18 2020