Whenever we’re chatting with folks about our campervan, they inevitably say to us, “I bet you guys watched a ton of YouTube videos!” The disappointment on their face is obvious when we say, “No.”
“Well, you must have done a lot of reading up on it. I hear there are a lot of great online resources.”
“Yeah no, we didn’t do that either.”
“So, you guys already had experience doing this sort of thing?”
“That’s a negative.”
The conversation quickly moves on.
Like a lot of folks contemplating vanlife, we looked at some Instagram posts, mainly to get an idea of the different layout possibilities. Next, I found a free 3D interior design program, made a room the size of Mark’s interior, and put some shit together. And then we started building!
Okay, I did a wee bit of research beforehand about building out a van, I’ll admit. I glanced through FarOutRide, thought the plus-nuts were cool, and ordered some. Research done! Well, I also researched big van build items, like batteries, vent fans, stoves, etc. But this happens before I make any major purchase, whether van-related or otherwise, so researching big van build items wasn’t something special I did for the van.
Let me tell you what, our we’ll-figure-it-out-as-we-go approach was not ideal. Let me also tell you why, which I’m sure you already have a pretty good idea, but let’s get specific.
Construction
With just a bit of research, I would have discovered so many ways to build a bed platform without putting vertical supports down the middle of the platform. Instead, we have 2 x 4s going down the middle of the garage, getting in the way of efficiently packing our mess of crap in our primary storage space.
Have you ever heard of a Kreg jig? Well, if you have, good for you. If you haven’t, then you’re in the same boat we were in when we started building cabinet frames. We split so many boards trying to put screws in at an angle to join two boards at 90-degrees. When we managed to get the boards screwed together without destroying one or both boards, about half the time, they would be a bit wobbly. Despite our incompetency, our cabinets are still standing, even after many miles of jostling down janky dirt roads. Probably because the plywood sides make them sturdier.
Speaking of the plywood cabinet sides, our upper cabinets also have a plywood bottom. For all the other cabinet sides, we used finishing nails instead of screws, specifically brad nails, because they were more aesthetically pleasing than big screw heads. This worked well enough for the cabinet sides (mostly, but I’ll get to that), but not so well for the bottom of the upper cabinet, which separated from the frame a few months after we moved into the van (the first time). We put aesthetics aside and screwed that shit back together.
The cabinet sides appeared to be holding on strong with the brad nails and some wood glue until the van renovation. The cabinet with all the electrical goodies has one side facing the living area, so we put the battery monitor and some switches on it. No big deal. During renovation, we added another switch and a solar charge controller on one side, and two breakers on the other. Whilst opening a breaker, the cabinet side popped right off! Well, one side of the cabinet side popped off. Screw you, cabinet side! Literally.
Electrical
You know when you look up a recipe and bring up the webpage and have to read about the cook’s entire life story from third grade one before you finally get to the recipe, which is all you wanted in the first place? Well, scrolling past all fluff is fine when it comes to recipes. This approach does not work out so well with complicated stuff like electrical, unless you already know a thing or two about electrical, which neither of us did.
Just like a recipe, I scrolled right past all the words on the van electrical webpages to the wiring diagrams. They all looked like schematics for an alien spaceship. Nothing made sense. Jeremy and I were both scared we’d fuck something up and light the van, which we hoped would one day be our home, on fire. As a result, we found a guy who did 12-volt work on vehicles.
This guy didn’t specialize in campervans, motorhomes, or anything of the sort. In fact, he’d never done anything remotely close to what we were looking for. But we figured there was a smaller chance of our van/home lighting on fire if he did the electrical, so we turned our dear Mark over to him. We did not choose wisely.
The 12V loads were hard-wired to the battery. No breakers or fuses in-between. One overcurrent away from flames. As soon as we turned the van on, the van battery and house battery were in parallel. Seriously? So, if one battery becomes fucked, it’ll suck the power out of the other one, and completely fuck us? The shore power cable was dangling under the middle of the van with absolutely nothing to protect the plug. He cut every cable just long enough (which you should never do with electrical anyway), and the motherfucker screwed the box everything was mounted on to the van wall. We realized we should have done the electrical ourselves because that way if the van caught fire, it’s not because we paid somebody to catch it on fire.
More electrical stuff, but not having to do with potential fires
Like most van electrical setups, we have an inverter that turned DC into AC power. Since we had an inverter, we only wired and installed AC outlets. The primary loads were charging bricks for our electronics, and the fairy lights we used as the primary lighting in the van (that’s another story). It wasn’t until I was hanging out in a friend’s truck camper and saw he only had DC, USB outlets that I pondered our decision.
All a charging brick does is turn AC into DC to charge your device. So, we were taking the DC from the battery, turning it into AC with the inverter, and the brick changed that AC back into DC. Talk about in-a-fish-in-the-sea*. During renovations, we added a crap ton of USB outlets to rectify the situation**.
Thank goodness for Chuck
The only thing that saved our self-conversion from turning into a total disaster was our good friend, Chuck. This guy has a garage full of woodworking tools – lathe, all the fancy saws, jigs, planer, CNC machine, and other tools and machines I don’t know the name of. Throughout the van conversion, he generously contributed his expertise, time, and tools to us. He made the cuts we were too afraid to make (like the expensive-ass butcher block). Whenever anyone compliments the inside of Mark, we immediately tell them about Chuck. Thanks, buddy.
*Inefficiency. If you’ve seen Christopher Robin, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
**That’s almost an electrical pun since a rectifier is used to go from AC to DC. But since we’re no longer using a rectifier (brick) because of the USB outlets, it doesn’t really make sense, which I why I said it’s almost an electrical pun. I’m not funny. I know.