The REALITY of buying a self-converted van

How's it going?

So I was just reminded that we're supposed to be leaving for a little test run tomorrow.

We're Karen Nate, and we've spent the last four years traveling to a hundred countries. Although we've seen a lot of the world, we've seen very little of our home country. So when 2020 threw us a curveball, we decided it was time to start exploring the United States. So we bought a converted sprinter van. It's almost perfect. There were just a few changes we wanted to make before hitting the road. Even though neither one of us are necessarily handy, we figured, how hard could it be?

I've already opened half of it.

It's a shelf for more storage.

Phone mount, backup phone mount in case that one doesn't work.

Kara decided this was a necessity for the van and whatever that is. So far, this has not been very exciting.

Yes.

It'S gonna be a game changer. Foam cord, shower hose, and the curtain. And, yeah, I think we still have a lot of stuff coming.

All right, we have spent way too much time researching online. We've purchased a ton of stuff, and it's time to get to work.

Starting with figuring out how to install this headliner shelf.

Whoops. Don't break. That wasn't that bad. It is hot. How to install headliner shelf.

Seems right.

Come on.

That's not right. Can this screw even fit through? The answer is yes.

Hey, I think it took. Nice. All right. Brackets are in place. It only took 30 minutes.

Uh. Oh. Oh, please fit.

Yes. What is happening? Can you imagine if I would have tried to build a whole van?

You mind to help me first? I don't think this is gonna work.

Oh, no, but I love it already.

All right, you hold that side to make sure it doesn't fall. Yeah, so, like, you're.

This wall. Doesn't help.

That works.

Okay, so we need. So you got it. Let me out. All right.

Don't worry. I got this totally under control.

Aha. Yes. Oh, come on. What happened? Oh, man. Ah. Can't be easy.

Is it in? Is this how it's supposed to be? I'm so proud of you.

I do still need your help. My orange. 2 inches short. Now I lost the screw. Where did it go? Oh, it stuck to my arm. When I was first putting this together, I was like, oh, this is so nice. Just like, a break from being behind the screen and. Oh, my God. Yes.

Yes.

Man, who knew installing a shelf was going to be so hard?

My work here is done.

Feels good.

We rarely ever watch tv and this thing is taking up a lot of precious counter space.

It's just awkward because I have to hold the TV with one hand while I try to.

Plus, if we ever really decide we want to watch something, we always have Kara's computer, which is pretty much the same size. Wow. So much space.

All right, next, I need to figure out how to install a little barrier in this compartment. You see, I really want to be able to store stuff in here because it's a lot of wasted space. But it can't be banging up against the battery. So I need a barrier here.

14 by 18.

Is there a. An on switch? Ah.

Sweet.

How did I get that so wrong? Embarrassing. Hey, Siri. Facetime. Dad.

Hey. Hey. I got the shelf installed. Oh, how'd it turn out? Looks good. Show it to you real quick. Well, I was gonna try to move this battery connector thing over to have more storage space, and I just wanted to know if there was anything I needed to do not to electrocute myself. You just need to unhook it from the batteries. All right.

All right.

By chance, it looks like I know what I'm doing. I do not.

Why?

All right, I scooted that. Whatever that thing is over so that now hopefully I'll install this board here. So all this is now good storage space. I'm pretty proud of that. All right, this is the next thing I'm hoping we can fix. I'm sure we're going to be spending a lot of time working right here, eating right here. And this.

There's got to be a way to make this better.

I think the problem.

Is that this piece right here is just really wobbly. There's just nothing. That's a really thin piece of wood. And then I don't know if you can tell, but right here, it's. It's almost on an angle, so that makes it slope down. So I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to take it out, reinforce it with some two by fours on the back, and hopefully that'll make the table more sturdy. But first it needs to come apart.

What are you doing?

I'm taking this apart to try to reinforce it.

See, it was like it was mounted at an angle, and then that made the table sit like this. So everything just slid this way.

Positive. Yeah. So we gotta split our wire. One of them goes up here on the negative. I've enlisted some professional help.

So I've learned that I don't have many skill sets that contribute to a van renovation. I'm not really good at doing Anything with tools. Nate and his dad have that covered. I don't know how to sew. Nate's mom has that covered. So I'm kind of like the cheerleader. And make sure everyone's hydrated.

Here you go.

See if anybody needs a snack. Make sure we're listening to good music. All very important things. And I'm really good at shopping on Amazon.

Yay.

Three more packages.

Got a fourth one.

Nate's parents garage has kind of turned into our storage area. It's really fun opening packages because I never know what it's gonna be. Nate and I are both buying things on Amazon left and right. I don't know if it's something functional that Nate bought or something fun that I bought.

I am skin irritant. Ah.

Pepper spray. Nate bought this.

Power strip with USB port on. Also Nate.

I should not be using one of these by myself.

Yay.

This one is definitely mine.

Oh, I got us a garland with lights. This is gonna make our van feel much homier. And last one.

I don't really know how much cooking I'm going to be doing in that tiny kitchen. Normally when we're traveling, we eat out a lot and I do very little cooking. But for some reason, I feel like with a van, life that's gonna change. We'll see if I actually put these to use. And thanks to our friends Avon and Beck, we have a beautiful chai set up. Now let's see what the boys are doing.

My dad works in construction. Probably ashamed of how unhandy I am.

I think we're gonna be able to run.

That wire through that hole that we've already drilled in the bottom of this cabinet. It is now 7:30. We started working at 6, and we've pretty much managed to get this fan installed.

It's been a bit of a mess. We have a lot of half finished projects. I managed to. I screwed this wonky hole, which wasn't really my fault. And then we tried to fix the wobbly table, but we kind of made it worse. So this made it a lot stronger. But we mounted this too low and now this screw is stuck. So we essentially spent a couple hours this morning making that worse than it already was before.

Progress is being made. It just doesn't really feel like it right now. But I think this is one of those things that, like, it's all going to come together in a matter of a few hours.

After working on the van for about 15 hours yesterday, we thought we were going to end the day with a win and have Two working fans installed, but.

We connected the fan wires to this white wire right here, then ran it.

Up through this tubing into the cabinet, ultimately connected it here, tried to turn it on, and.

Turns out that that white wire that we connected it to isn't hooked up to the batteries, and we can't find the end of it. So the plan for this morning is to hook the fan into this wire that powers the water.

Buying a van that was already built out has been great. I honestly can't imagine trying to do this from scratch, but at the same time, it comes with its own set of challenges. There's no user manual for how everything works in here. Some of the wires like. Like this one are labeled, but the majority of things aren't labeled, and we're just kind of guessing. And a lot of it's hidden behind this wall. So every once in a while, we have to do things like this.

Put a hole somewhere, and hope you find something. In that case, we didn't. We were trying to figure out a way to run a wire up through the wall instead of having to go through the cabinet. But it's. It's honestly been a challenging process so far. But at the same time, I am learning a lot about building, a lot about electricity, a little bit about plumbing.

It's been a fun challenge.

That's my job. I think I can handle it.

Mission accomplished.

Why are you not working?

We rewired, we tested it, and the process of the rewiring it worked. And now, as I'm putting the final wires together.

What is happening?

Come on.

We tied this new fan into the same electrical line that the water pump runs off of, and.

Now the sink and the shower don't work. Ah, we blew a fuse.

Thankfully, we bought a lot of these yesterday. Oh, that sounds good. Shower works. Now does the fan work? Ew.

Making progress. All right, now all I need to do is connect the fan wires to these wires, make everything look a little prettier, and this job will be finished. These are called butt connectors. Just squeeze it tight like that, and then you do it on the other side, and then you've married two wires together. I'm going to be honest. I. I didn't know anything about electrical or solar power until we bought this van a week ago. And this has been one of my favorite parts, is learning about how all this stuff works. Still, by no means an expert.

91. There were times when I was wondering whether or not this van was going to be worth the work. But as hot as it is today, Glad that's over.

Looking good.

Alright, on to the next project.

Hey, Kara, do you mind to help me?

Blue def fluid. Something you have to put into cars with diesel engines. You're in charge of the nozzle.

Use that rag. Pull it out.

Can we get another rag?

Can you take the grill off?

I've gotten it all.

The one thing we were told not to do was spill that. He said whatever you do, do not spill it on the engine.

If this seat goes back on as easy as the swivel went on to the base, this is going to be our easiest project yet.

I'm blown as a bat. I can't see nothing.

It's supposed to do that.

Catch the van on fire. Just. Just when we think something's easy. The bolts are too long, so we've got to cut those off. And now a little piece of plastic hits and we have to cut that off.

When this is done though, it's going to be done right.

All right. Appreciate you let me take the credit for that.

Man. Sure helps having the right tool for that. Yeah, not exactly a straight line.

Nice. That little extra effort was so worth it. Now for the rest of forever, that's going to be so much easier.

All right, this table is about to get fixed once and for all.

Let's do it.

I think you melted it. Well, if nothing else, it melted out the out the stuff.

You do it.

You melt it together. I don't know.

Hey.

Man, good job.

Cold, you know, inside.

All that's left to do is clean up and put the table back together. And we finished our biggest project so far. Should have taken 30 minutes and ended up taking about a day.

So we haven't cheaped out on anything really with this van so far. But to get proper window covers for the whole van, it was going to be over fifteen hundred dollars. So this is what Nate's mom was working on this morning. Nate found these online that were much more affordable. And we just sewed, or not we, Christy, just sewed little magnets and they fit perfectly.

See, it's also on the windshield and that door.

And in the back. The previous owners of this van made the back window coverings by hand, but they used velcro to attach them. So instead we put these little hooks and they just slide right on. However, we do need to come up with a solution for the bottom.

But.

It'Ll do for now.

Well, we were hoping to accomplish a little more than we actually did, but as you can see, we made everything a little harder than it actually needed to be. But that's going to have to do for now because tomorrow we're supposed to be meeting my brother and his wife in North Carolina for a four day test run.

So the plan, the next few days is to figure out what we really need. And then we'll come back here, here, do the final renovations and buy all the things that I know we already forgot. And then we'll hit the road for good. Also, look how pretty the sky is right now.

Got my old guitar when I was 14.

40. Ow. Gosh. That's the second time I've hit my head.

My theory with decorating is less is more. Mostly because I'm lazy. So before we travel full time, we did have an apartment with normal house stuff.

So we went to our storage unit, where a lot of it looks lives now to get a few things like pots and pans, stuff that's not that fun to buy that we already have. But all of it was so gross from sitting in there for four years. This one has sticky stuff in it still. Probably from the last time I used it in our apartment. I've been soaking them. Hopefully that makes the smoke go away.

I hate being hot when I go to sleep. So that was, that was what these were for. Soft inside. I watched the video. See, you're wondering. I didn't know that solar panels broke. That's not a true statement. A wire came loose and the solar panels weren't working. Can't tell if it's like stuck. Like I can't get that. Called the guy and he was like, well, there's four wires. Sometimes they get a little loose and one of them was just hanging out like this. So surely this is the issue. Didn't know I was buying a constant project.