Van Tour Solo Woman Living in a Cargo Van with a NO BUILD BUILD

[Music] hi everyone welcome back to my next video today we're gonna make AC who is my new assistant today we're going to take a tour of her her van build you didn't even have this van when we first started talking about you working for me no I did when we do the tour you're gonna see the best thing about it is it is super cheap and super easy yeah because you didn't have much time no I had two weeks so this is I can't really say it's a build-out it's more like a put things in it I'm a total believer in that and I recommend it to everyone and then later when you have more time if you want to tear it all out and build this cheap beautiful thing you can't and you won't have lost anything practically okay well we'll take a quick tour around the van then we'll go inside the van and you'll know a little more about it let's do that now so let's we'll start here at the back of the van and you've done some unusual things already here go ahead and tell us what you've done okay so we already did a video on the fantastic fan being put in the rear window of the van so since that video I've painted the metal white and I've put on a cover for the fantastic fan so I really appreciated everyone's suggestions they were excellent so yeah I have a fantastic fan in the back and up on the above us now you'll see a eye you can click on that and see that video right yes and what else have you done back here okay we just shot a video putting installing perforated vinyl I had previously had black perforated vinyl back here perforated vinyl is one way you can not see in but you can see out so we'll show you that from the inside as well and also your solar back here okay so um I have the wires coming in for my solar and they come in at that corner there this is 305 watts I went to Arizona northern Arizona wind and Sun in Flagstaff and James was the salesman and I have a 600 watt inverter and charge controller and I also installed a battery isolator which we'll show you inside and I have 250 I have two golf cart batteries 250 amp hours mm-hmm and all all second dad I think that northern Arizona wind son is one of the very best places to get your solar so I'm the fantastic fan here's the inside of the fantastic fan and I usually just keep it open because now it has a cover on it and I painted it white so it looks a little bit better and on the inside of this window this is what the interior looks like of the perforated vinyl where you can see out perfectly but you can't see it at all then this is just a shelf unit that I have in the back and this set of drawers faces in for my little office back here and this is my garage my garage is just two doors now we should say now this is the base of your bed yeah this is the base of my bed and I have some wood on here that pulls out which will show you from the inside and this is just all all tools extension cords power to little stuff like that so as we go through we're gonna see other than the desk everything is just something you is something you bought and threw in here so you needed a base for your bed and you just went and bought a bunch of these two drawer cabinets and laid them and set them down great well this was a two-door cabinet I only wanted drawers that were on rollers so that they were easy and they weren't going to like get stuck from pressure on top of it so this was actually part of a three drawer I bought three three drawer pieces that I had to actually break apart into two sets which I'll show you because they were the more heavy duty ones on the rollers for the drawers so I'll show you inside what I mean yeah but that gives you an image that no building the bed no frame no nothing just plastic drawers and the bed set on top of it yeah really really clever Oh okay and you just have that drawer piece the shelf piece just happened to fit perfectly I mean it looks like it was looks like it was made for it yeah I do actually a lot of searching for this at like home goods stores and places like that because I Ron it I mean yeah it did just fit perfect I would measure I'd bring in my tape to the home goods stores and just measure I knew this was perfect at the bottom and as it turns out it it angles and it fits perfectly with the fantastic fan when the door is shut so yeah just like this is the dog bed or the dog sleep gotta have a dog bed yeah okay let's go ahead and go on inside then okay so everyone now we're gonna go inside and see Casey's really nice super cheap super easy build right away you'll see its plastic drawers and plastic drawers really simple really cheap really easy and we have high top so you're standing full height yeah so I'm standing full height I'm five six so I think this is five seven and it has these windows here which I really like I do too yeah and that way I get a lot of natural light and I don't have to use as much of my lay off the solar panel right and your five six I'm five eight and my head doesn't touch and this is a fairly low high top these are more commonly called I think turtle tops because they're not really but it's still really great for you it is great in fact this is storage and of course behind you is storage so you only have walking distance in the center mm-hmm it was a custom interior that was done before I bought it so I didn't have a lot of width here even when I measured the the largest width and the center was only five feet four inches and I could not put my bed across like I tried it and I was just too cramped so I had to figure out how to without being able to do that right but this works fine this works great for you it doesn't yeah this works great the main focus of the van was to have a desk right be able to sit and work at a regular-sized desk and this desk is 41 inches long and about 20 inches wide so it's it's a pretty big desk and I'm really happy with that there are a lot of digital nomads now that really just you know they work from their van and they just kind of have to have a place to work and now you've got a great one yeah this is great and I just keep a power station here for USB and regular plugins and you know this just works great for me this whole drawer set is just for office stuff which is why I turned it around instead of having it out towards the back of the van and then you asked me how many of these two drawers it took for the bed and so there's four here and I had split he's three into two drawer sets they came in three drawer sets so I just have my clothes in here and I put these on to lock the drawers so they don't just a couple of screw eye hooks top one top one bottom and a dowel that goes through it and you can't open I had seen this done in another van and it was a dresser handle they and they did a flat piece of wood and I thought that was such a cool idea they put a like a drawer handle up here and down there with a flat piece of wood and so the way that this opens is you just come up with it and then you can even turn that yeah so these are heavy-duty they're made by Sterilite you can get them on Amazon or at Walmart and they have rolling drawers so everything in here that all the drawers are on rollers which I prefer right and your friend had the idea to just paint paint these the trim weight so I just did that to kind of brighten it up this stool has a box inside it that I used to put a lot of stuff in because it's not a storage Ottoman so I kind of made it one by just putting a little wood box in there so I feel like it's kind of roomy and I have a huge drawer here oh yeah let me see that yeah that's what I wanted I wanted just to be able to have a lot of things at my fingertips in a drawer you got it that's a nice drawer yeah and got two pops yeah I've got two puppies tanka and Kona pretty cool their size is perfect for a fan to you know the two of them are smaller than my Cody who has to be in the middle of things to decode so I'll show you the bed this is that blue cooling gel mattress pad that's just folded in half and then I keep wood so that I can push it over the wheel well so I keep a piece of wood that I can and then and then I can have storage here and I store our the shelter that we travel with a pop-up shelter that we work in it fits in here perfectly the clamp yeah the clamshell mm-hmm we have a video on the clamshell and that's where you hide it yeah and over the wheel well the wheel wells are a big deal aren't they they're what a lot of us struggle with yes and I had to think about that because it was almost like things could not go anywhere else except for where they are these fit perfectly then I have a huge wheel well under the desk and then I had a wheel well here and I had to figure out you know these can't push flat against the wall so I just put the wood pieces in so that the bed can sit flat so it's like a little storage area so a desk is perfect for over a wheel well that's good for people to be thinking about and the individual drawers too drawer units work allow you to work around the wheel well equally well right so then I have this piece of wood that just comes out a little bit and when I sleep I just put the bed down flat like that and I move their dog bed over a little bit and and it's super comfortable I think it's about all I need but I know people are gonna say that I should have gotten the four inch foam and then cut it into two cushions but what I like about this is that I can I can move it to be way up here or you know have it lower I don't know it just works for me I don't it becomes a couch in essence yeah it's really easy to deal with it's just ideal you got your work space plenty of storage plenty of shelving and nothing other there's some screwing into the desk other than that there is no construction this is a no construction zone I just didn't have the time or the skills to create a build out I had ten days including buying the van so this is what I did in ten days that includes getting the fan put in and getting the solar put on and furnishing it so it was a really fast I mean that's why you know it's not a build-out it's just a put in it's a wonderful home you know I I you know we traveled together might be in my van you and yours and I can attest off' I this is a wonderful home okay I have to ask you this is rules of van dwelling I have to ask you how do you how do you take a shower so um on the front seat I just keep one of these water coolers and and I have these bowls and I just washed my hands here or fill up a bowl and and do a what do they call that a bunch bath a sponge bath yeah and I just keep this in here for cleaning my nails and stuff so I have a couple bowls that I use for washing up and then I don't use like a shower pump or something like that I just do the best again and then I shower I can shower in town at gyms or go swimming one where we are now we're near Lake yes so actually I did go I went swimming in the lake and so that was how I I got clean this week oh we got to tell us how you go to the bathroom oh right okay these are the rules okay I don't make them up yeah so bucket just like anybody else just the standard bucket nothing yes yes okay and now yeah show us what you're sitting on okay so this is a winter 65 quart 65 quart refrigerator with a digital where you can change it the temperature here digitally I keep it at 44 which has been fine and then I keep some reflectix on top of it and I'll probably build a little reflectix box for it that's actually a video we're planning on doing very soon yeah the reason the fridge is so big and everyone says oh my god the fridge is so big 65 quart with memory serves 65 quart yeah I mean this huge it's bigger than most what most people have in their van I love to go to farmers markets I go to the farmers market every single week and I just fill it up from one trip to the farmers market so I can bring as much fresh food with us as possible the winter has a pretty thick wall around it it is one of the best made fridges I've ever seen yeah I really like it yes pretty quiet so I took the front seat out and put the fridge in and that's kind of a tough decision when you unbolt the seat and especially if you don't have a storage unit and you're gonna just get rid of it it's tough when they you give it to a guy and he drives away with it yeah that was a really tough decision because the seat was like in brand-new condition but I knew from having a minivan I really liked it without the front seat it gives me a lot more space oh well actually I was gonna point this out I used this best tech inverter when I was living in minivans the whole time and this was like the best thing ever because you can plug your computer in and right now I have this fan plugged into it so I just really highly recommend this best tech 300 watt power inverter for people who are in minivans who don't have solar or or if you're in anything and you don't have solar I could keep my and this isn't even on the fans running just plugged into the USB but when it comes on there's a green light so in the back is the charge controller it's an MPPT a Morningstar charge controller this is a Sam lek 600 watt power inverter in the back on the floor under the charge controller which it's hard to see it but I have a stinger sgp 30 to 200 amp battery relay isolator and that is hooked up to my battery in the van it's better to do it to the solenoid which I now know but that keeps my batteries charged if I can point to it it's back there is the isolator so the isolator in my van is actually inside the van with the cord running under the floorboards to the into the engine to the battery so you had a professionals at northern Arizona when its uninstall your system 305 watts and how's that worked for you fantastic and the 305 Watts has been enough for you plenty 5 watts runs the fridge runs the fan runs the fan the portable fan the fantastic fan all the computer stuff and the lights and that's pretty much all I run ok I think we've pretty well covered it I love that you did it without really a build without a build yeah super cheap super easy super fast yeah and and have you figured out about what you have in the build not including the solar or the fridge the most expensive thing there's probably that bad so I would guess between 4 to 500 total we don't everything and the desk and everything right where did you get the desk at the home goods store in Medford right it was the only thing you really had to do any construction well yeah that was the only thing so two screws and then I'd pre drilled these holes right and that that's it for carpentry no carpenter this is the non build folks I just think you can learn so much from this it doesn't take much to make a van livable not much money not much skill not much time you can do it yes absolutely okay folks thanks so much for joining us hope you got something out of this Thank You Casey for sharing your home with us I really appreciate it if you got anything out of this folks like us on youtube subscribe to the channel hit that thumbs up button and we'll talk to you later [Music]

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 807,077

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, snowbird, caravan, tiny, house, tribe, RTR, adventure, cheap, easy, build, conversion

Id: SZObgbXOgHM

Length: 18min 59sec (1139 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 21 2018