Woodsy van dwelling w/ homemade roof raise (so cozy)!

hey there welcome to my channel where i take you  on tours of unique homes and showcase stories of   people living alternatively we've toured  a lot of van conversions on this channel   but today's van dwelling is a real head turner  this guy comes walking up and he goes that's a   terrible idea for a car and it is a terrible  idea for a car a terrible idea for a car but   it's an awesome idea for a house but it's a great  idea for a house john and carly are going to take   us on a tour of their woodsy van and explain  how living nomadically doesn't mean you have   to skimp on some big home comforts and if you  like these kind of stories make sure that you   subscribe and hit that notification bell so that  you know every single time we publish a new tour make this house wooden walls in an air so cold pleasure's  not enough when you're on a roll   hi my name is john and i'm carly and  welcome to our funky little van what this journey with the van started almost  exactly two years ago that's through about   five interior rebuilds about three exterior  rebuilds a new member moving in right yeah   we joke all the time about what it looked like  before carly moved in well it's very obvious that   a girl moved in right and he was like the first  van lifer i ever met lucky for me because they're   all pretty cool so that was a close call i could  get rid of everything i own and be totally happy   before i used to have my own car and i would  follow the van behind and we would just kind of   caravan and i would get to see all the people  looking and turning and talking slack jaw   faces of just what is yeah so this one day i  was sitting in the front seat of the van and   this guy comes walking up and he goes that's a  terrible idea for a car and then his wife is like   honey honey there's a person  in there and i was just like   hi and he was like i like your voice your van  scrambles away and it is a terrible idea for a   car a terrible idea for a car but it's an awesome  idea for a house but it's a great idea for a house welcome to the outside of woody woody is  a 1996 gmc savannah 1500 it was originally   very classic 90s family  conversion van for road tripping   we took a lot of time to really modify it and  make it look nothing like a family road tripper obviously got his name from the very custom wooden  raise up here added 16 inches of height making the   interior 6'4 certainly wanted to be able to stand  when i was traveling around and just got sick of   hunching over i actually did that alone in the  desert which i don't know if i would recommend   i was pretty dangerous but quality of  life has been dramatically improved   the colors are definitely eye-catching and i  just picked a couple of colors that i thought   would work pretty well for wood stain when i was  bringing it out and doing the work and immediately   after putting it all together i realized  it perfectly matches harry one of our dogs the van has a 5.7 liter v8 engine we get  about 15 16 miles to the gallon right now   which is excellent in our latest round of  renovations one thing that we wanted for a   long time was a roof deck we knew we wanted  it to be the full length of the vehicle so   it's an 11 foot roof deck up there with 400  watts of solar on top that we actually built into   these wooden frames that pull out on wooden puzzle  slides so now we have all four panels extended out   winning back a good amount of space  about 12 inches in width on each side   when we built our roof deck obviously we  needed a way up there and we found a great   deal on these flipped down ladder steps four easy  steps with the bumper and you're on the roof deck   carly decided to do a couple little paintings on  the inside from here we have phases of the moon   and when we're in bed we can see those perfectly  in this most recent round of renovations we added   the skylight here we got the part for less  than 100 and it has increased quality of   life dramatically for sure we get a ton of  natural light when we're hanging out when   we're cooking when we're hosting and it really  really fills up the space so our latest addition   here starlink from spacex is high speed internet  pretty much anywhere we've been very dependent   working full-time from the road i work remotely as  an adventure coordinator and i also do full-time   photography i do a lot of digital marketing i  do a lot of social media stuff i do a lot of   graphic design branding web development it  has been a major form of sustenance for us one nice feature that we did add to the van is  our water fill so this feeds a 30 gallon water   tank that with two people three dogs it lasts  us about a week all of our exterior lights are   independently solar powered so none of the power  comes from our house batteries so at night time   when it gets dark they automatically turn on just  like that all right let's check out the inside welcome into woody this is  one of my favorite walls   in the whole van for christmas  because carly's a photographer   i bought her a polaroid camera and now  actually all of these all recent memories my guitar of course which i have set up here in  kind of an interesting way i think or at least a   simple way these little wall hangers are made to  hang a guitar perfectly vertically but i built a   very small wooden box down here that just holds  the body of the guitar too and this doesn't move   at all when we're driving next to me here this  comfy little stool looking thing is actually   our toilet it's a really simple cassette toilet  there's a little release on one part and the top   water tank and seat actually come off and the  bottom were able to walk into safe dump areas this front area up here behind me we reduced   our shelving up here really tucked it back and  now it's things that bring us joy more or less   the shelving up here and trim throughout really a  lot of the interior wood is just found pallet wood   so being able to find wood and rehab it and really  bring character into each piece and use different   stains the wood is very homey it's very natural to  us it makes us feel connected to nature it keeps   things really bright it's obviously also very  durable and pretty practical and a lot of this   being pallet wood that's often cheaper wood  so it's lighter wood it's not very dense this is our kitchen where i made the first meal  i ever made for carly where i made the first meal   for a lot of new friends that i've met out there  i'd love to cook love to share things when i met   carly i didn't have a countertop in here at all uh  it was just the frame of the top of it and i lived   that way for a long time i like a lot of stuff  in here when a girl moves in you gotta step it   up a little bit you know you gotta up your game  you gotta get the butcher block our pantry that's   really massive tons of spices and little smoothie  additives carly wanted a full-size mirror because   i was totally living bachelor life really  before that and i think this might have been   my mirror before she moved in but now we have  a big mirror that i intentionally tilted down our sink faucet was 30 bucks online it's usb  rechargeable it doesn't go down to a pump an   actuator a foot pump anything like that it's  plumbed into our 30 gallon fresh water tank   and it just turns on with the click of a button  relatively quiet in the grand scheme of things   definitely quieter than most sink pumps we use  this middle space for most of our cooking we   have this little tiny stove just runs off of  one butane canister here no other moving parts   we swap out a single can of butane maybe every  week or so and that's cooking every single meal   getting up making tea in the morning it certainly  gets plenty of use and we don't really blow   through fuel for that as we come down the counter  top here we have this handle and these hinges the   countertop actually lifts up and we have our  top loading fridge nested underneath there   it's a 54 quart aspinora fridge half the cost  of your average dometic when we're not using   the fridge we don't need access to it we  have all of this additional counter space   all right let's check out the  back the bed area the lounge area we built this table out of this is a terrible  start come here this table functions as   our office our dining room table it's also part  of our bed that fills in the gap here it sits on   one leaf that comes out on hinges and actually  slides in between two pieces of wood that act as a   sort of counter weight when we're done working or  hanging out in lounge mode we switch into bed mode   we take our table and that slots down our pillows  that act as backing here actually fill in the gap   it's a full size mattress you can use a  bread knife to cut your tempur-pedic mattress   the lines came out really really clean and  we actually upholstered the whole thing   with velvet curtains that we found we just thought  it would be comfy maybe durable they were pretty   cheap and affordable we absolutely love watching  movies watching tv it's something i avoided for   a long time on the road feeling like like it  lessened my connection to nature or something   but being a couple and wanting to just hang  out we prioritized in this rebuild a nice big   tv that we would be excited to watch here we're  up above the bed in the lounge area and this is   our clothing storage also built out of pallet  wood here this is basically all of the clothing   that carly owns and then this little one  basically all of the clothing that i own   some of this was the first pieces that we built  in this whole rebuild we did the back pallet wall   here that we loved and really set the tone for  the rest of the build so as we're looking around   there's inspiration coming from that everywhere  for sure we use the same wood stains we used a lot   of the same patterning uh to keep things kind  of cohesive related to clothes storage uh one   really cool kind of diy hack we saw on instagram  was to take your pillowcases and stuff them with   your extra clothes so we keep our winter layers  in the decorative pillows on the bedding here   so this area down below the bed here is where we  have the majority of our storage that's where we   keep our bedding during the day where we keep a  lot of our tools extra things that aren't quite   daily grab things and everything under here flips  up on a hinge and we can get into our storage   one other thing we keep down here below the bed  is our power system we actually have a portable   power station it's 1 260 watt hours it's really  really more than enough to keep us powered here approaching 30 at the same time as my lease  ending and my career changing dramatically   i sort of took a good hard look at  my time on earth and realized that   i want to travel and i want to be in nature  and i don't want to be up all night bartending   i definitely knew like one day  i will live on the road one day in an air so cold pleasure's  not enough when you're on a roll can bear the weight of where i've  been of where i'll go of where i'll gold but i'm here with you you're here  with me so much world we've yet to see you

Channel: Tiny House Giant Journey

Views: 108,082

Keywords: tiny house giant journey, tiny house, Tiny houses, tiny homes, tiny house tour, vanlife, van conversion, van dwelling, van life, roof raise, rooftop deck, off-grid, nomadic, starlink, nomadland, nomadic movement, tiny house movement, woody the van, rustic van interior, van life with dogs, van life with three dogs, simple van conversion, cheap van conversion, van build, diy van build, simple van build, campervan, bus life, tiny houses

Id: JrXxh_viMyU

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2022