VAN TOUR | Solo Female Engineer Van Life in TINY Ford Transit Connect

[Music] hey guys welcome back to my channel you got it yourself sit in my van murphy that i built out over the summer i had so much fun doing it and although i'm now back in school full time i'm really proud of the build and just wanted to show her off a little bit and show you guys around when i approached the van build i really wanted a small car because i didn't want anything really overwhelming and i only had a couple months to build everything out and the ford transit connect is like just big enough to really create a build on the inside but really small enough that you're really driving around as if you just have a normal vehicle and i love that flexibility but it does make for a smaller than normal space a lot of times when my friends see the van for the first time they're like wow it's a lot smaller than i anticipated but that served to be like a challenge that i really loved and embraced when i was approaching any of my design decisions so murphy right like murphy bed being something a bookshelf that like collapses down into a bed but then when you pull it back up it's a bookshelf that's kind of like the theme surrounding all of my build items in here that everything needs to serve a second purpose because of how small it is and the more that i can collapse and fold out and expand the better it can be because i have such a small space that i'm trying to trying to make work all right so the kitchen on the right-hand side of the van i just really wanted to have everything i needed with me to be able to cook and just feel good about the food that i could make and so i've got a nice big countertop made it myself with some friends out of some walnut it's some really high quality stuff and i it's one of my favorite pieces of the van so beneath the countertop we've got everything in the kitchen so i wanted to make sure that i had space for a fridge and a grill or like a stove for cooking everything even though the van is small i knew that was my first decision i was going to get these big drawer slides 500 pound rated slides that i can just pull the whole thing out my fridge my stove whatever utensils and that just opens up the space so much more and makes the small van just when i make use of the tailgate space it just feels so much bigger are you ready so it's oh yeah it comes out here it's a little cutting board and then it pops down like a sink taken that's where i put my dishes in the kitchen area up top i've got all my food snacks i really call it my pantry it it's a nice honestly way more space than i need but then i've got all my spices here just really accessible from the outside when i'm trying to cook a nice little magnetic strip here just to keep all my utensils nice and organized below the countertop here we've got two drawers they've we've just got these finger holds right here and i've got like my oil and just kind of some essentials here for cooking and then in the second drawer here this is all dedicated to my tea and coffee so for those of you around from my mud water videos we've got a nice little mason jar here of mud we've got thai team matcha hot chocolate some nice just straight masala chai instant coffee you know if i'm really needing a caffeine kick this is just dedicated for those mornings when you just need a nice cup of something to get get you going in the morning i've got my clothes drawer where i keep all my t-shirts and shorts and then below here i like to call my garage i've just got all of my tape and kind of like repair stuff like to keep that down below then i kind of came over and i said okay what kind of space do i have for my bed i knew that i still wanted a hallway between the kitchen and where my sleeping area was because when i'm trying to stealth camp and really not let anyone know that i'm in here i travel with my bike so i need to be able to have my bike in the center aisle so if i have the ability to collapse my bed i can keep my bike on the center aisle and then when i'm more relaxed i can take the bike out and really wanted to be able to expand the bed [Music] i knew that i wanted the slat system to be able to expand and collapse the bed but i also wanted a space that i could work and could eat and feel like a kind of like dining or working space area apart from just the kitchen so i actually eliminated the center slat area and made it into like a table that you can pop up you just put a little table leg underneath a lot of times people have these in boats or rvs and i just purchased this um off of amazon just like twenty dollars and was able to take the center part of the bed and be able to make it pop up like a little table so that made it really modular that i can have not only my sleeping area but also like a dining and working area as well all right so then on this side here is where i've got my battery so i've got a pax s 300 which is just under 300 watt hours it's really all that i needed when i was really thinking about how much electricity i was going to be needing it's really just my lights and my fan so i didn't need anything to over complicate but i did want something that could charge my computer and my other electronic devices so the thing i love about this i've got all my usb ports up front here and i've even got an ac outlet to be able to charge my computer in a pinch and when i'm stationary somewhere for a couple days i wanted a way to be able to charge everything up so i'll show you how that works so i just laid out like this and then all the magic happens over here in the little electrical box so it's just got this these outputs right here so you can see green it means that it's uh generating power right now in terms of the electrical system that i have the main elements that i'm powering are the puck lights i put one right under here on above the kitchen and then i've got three more in the ceiling um plenty of light and i i really love it these ones dim so i've just got this little touch lit touch switch here so i click and hold and the lights dim down so i can set that to however i need and then i can just tap it and they'll go off like that tap on and click and hold and they'll brighten up so i love that because then i don't have to deal with a little switch or anything it just it's really simple and intuitive so we got the max air fan up here you just pull this guy down and just rotates open like that so it's real nice because at night i can pop this open and then i just press the power button right here that gets the fan going and the nice little cross breeze and the thing i love about the model that i have with four transit with the windows in the back actually the windows kind of pop out here so i can have both sides open and that gets like a nice cross breeze going at night the breeze just feels real good and kind of keeps things flowing and not a lot of other vans have as many windows as this and i just love that aspect of the passenger version of the transit connect and then the only other thing that i have running on electric is my fridge but i actually have that plugged into my car battery and the really cool thing about the isco fridge is that the it'll actually turn itself off when it senses that the starter battery is running too low so it'll actually just disengage and that way i don't need to worry about it draining all these curtains i sewed myself and i actually put these little magnets on here so when i'm trying to go to bed at night all of them just snap right onto the edge all right and then the cushions that we have going here both the base and the back of the sofa i sewed all these cushions myself some things that i made sure to design in i've got zippers back here so i can take everything off and give it a nice wash and then really thought through all the dimensions of all of them of how i wanted them to be able to be repurposed for sleeping and then like the seating area and everything so the chance to get to sew everything myself and really design it really made me feel like it was my own little fingerprint of uniqueness that made it my own so up here on the right i've got all the stickers of people that i've met on the road kind of like a van life thing is you have like a sticker version of your van that you like hand out to new people so i like to keep those all up here my vision is since i'm full time right now as a student i really wanted to have a means of exploring the coast and being a little bit more mobile on the weekends take my work and my homework with me and just work from the van but really get to explore and enjoy the west coast because i grew up and i've lived my whole life in the midwest and so i felt like this was a really good chance and kind of like the vision that i have at least for the coming year and after i graduate you know who knows we'll see where things take me thank you guys so much for following along i had so much fun getting to show murphy off a bit uh follow along this is just the beginning i am really excited to take her on the road you know i've got so many other ideas about things that i want to add or build and i would love to hear down below comments or questions you guys have about how i did things or just anything else about the build or you know throwing your life together and getting on the road so don't forget to subscribe like put some comments down below would love to engage with you guys and i'll catch you guys in the next video you

Channel: Jugaad It Yourself

Views: 113,522

Keywords: solo, female, van, life, ford, transit, connect, engineer, student, tour, vanlife, travel, build, sprinter, ram, promaster, DIY, engineering, built, conect, frod, ultimate, tiny, full, time, living, home, house, murphy, murph, murphy_mobile_, mobile, gutted, gutted 2021, 2021

Id: _M6Lwx-GkZA

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021