After Camping Clean Up & Sleeping In The Sprinter For The First Time

Yeah, that's a mess. We need to clean this van. Putting firewood in your van is a very bad idea. We are going to fix that today though. Something I added to the van is a 20 pound propane tank adapter for my Juleka hot tap shower. So that way if I were to ever take out the hot tub again, I can go get myself a 20 pound propane tank and do it right this time. Four days of no showers. Y'all don't want to see what the bedding looks like. We're going to wash it all. No, it's the same. I'm tired of living with all that wood in my front room. You need a bigger van. How was your trip? You lost a pair of runners? No. Someone said my shoes look like Easter today. I'm like, oh crap, I like that. Oh, this is awesome. One thing fun about the shop, there's always people coming by. It's a pretty social place around here. I love it. Okay, let's get to this nut house. What I think I'm going to do is take the blower to it. It's been a long time since my blower has been a part of my home, and I think I might make that a part of my cleaning. So I used to have this little hand blower, blew all the dog hair out. Then I traded it in for a little Dyson vacuum, and I love that Dyson vacuum, but that blower gets rid of hair that in places that the Dyson vacuum can't get to. Today, I think it's that kind of day. In order to get into the shop right now, we got to walk the plank. That's fresh concrete down there. Don't fall in, Chrome. All right, we're going to carry a little less firewood, but we're going to fill up this back box. These spare tire kits are awesome. I wish I had the chance to use it the other day in the bush, and we would have been fine. When we were in the bush that day, I couldn't pull that piece out of there. I tried my hardest. It was so wedged in there, but if I did, we could have just plugged it, and we would have been good to go. It would have been great. My shoes are left in this thing. Oh, let's go. That's it. That's the end of it. Bummer. That is a good stress reliever. That didn't take long. Like 20 minutes, house is clean. And now we only have a tiny amount of wood in here, better than all the wood we used to have in here. Let's go see if inside the shop is my air compressor hose that I don't have in my van. And yeah, those spare tire kits, we have lots of them in stock here at Van Toys. Lifesavers those things are. Okay, air compressor line. Should probably turn the lights on. I'm wondering if maybe it fell out of the van at some point, because it was in the side door, and I never noticed it. All right, let's make sure this air compressor line works good. That way, next time we're out in the bush, we're not screwed. I got some Teflon tape. Come on, let loose. Now I get to put my table back. Amanda borrowed this for inside the shop because she needed a folding table. I bought her a new one. Now I can put mine back. So if you didn't know, my spare tire box back here has a table mount right behind it. Super freaking cool. This is from Welltech Designs. Right there. Table just slides in right there. Boom, one folding table. All right, let's test the air compressor. Oh, look at something else that happened. My rubber coating, look it, it pulled up. It's been pulling up here for a long time, but it officially just tore. So I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna clean all this stuff out, clean all that lip off, and just re-glue it, because that's the only option we've got. Some people ask me how come I'm not doing a coating like Line-X or this one on my Mercedes for this reason. Once these things start to break, matching this to the rest of the whole body gets to be really hard. It's wear and tear, right? All right, air compressor. Okay, this one's a bit bulkier than the last one I had, but it is a little longer. So that's not long enough for my air compressor. It needs to be longer, like that long. The one I grabbed from the shop is too short. Okay, let's go see if we got a longer one. If not, we may have to go buy that piece. Good point. Bummer. Looks like everything I got are all stubby ones. These are all stubbies. All right, that's okay. We're just gonna have to go buy some. Okay, this I'm gonna see if I can fit in my spare tire box, just because it's so much bigger than the last one. Well, maybe it'll fit under there. Now we'll try the spare tire box. All right, she's all in there. This box here came with an option for putting a bin up top, and it was a fairly big bin. I could have strapped some firewood in and strapped it in. I chose not to go with the bin because we get so much rain over here, and I figured, well, if I put that up there, then the wood up top's gonna get wet. But now, with all the wood inside the van, I kind of wish I would have ordered the box. I still can, but that's where people were asking about how this thing leaked. It's because these little holes here were in there to mount that additional box that I chose not to buy. So am I forgetting anything else? I have my airline stuff. We just need to stop and grab one more piece, and I think everything's good to go. Our tire is all fixed. Oh, and in that video the other day, when I had something wedged in my tire, the amount of people in the comments saying, what the heck? You have a spare tire. Why didn't you not put the spare tire on? Well, it was pretty straightforward, I would think. If that tire was flat and had zero air in it, of course, we would swap the spare. But that tire was still drivable, enough to make me 15 minutes to the corner store to fill more air up in it. When I got to the corner store, it stopped leaking. Literally, I wedged that piece in there enough trying to get it out that it stopped leaking. So I'm like, cool, well, while it's not leaking, let's just drive it to a tire shop and get it fixed. So I could have swapped it all over and did all that work. These things are super, super heavy, by the way. That's a 35-inch tire. I could have swapped them all over out there in the back country to do what? To drive all the way back to that town anyway to get the spare fixed. So why not just drive while that thing wasn't leaking? That's where my brain was. I've seen some people in there going, Chrome, why didn't you just swap the spare and keep on adventuring? Do not drive in the back country without a spare. That is a bad idea. We got to get that muffler fixed. I got to talk to Daryl. He only works for me Mondays and Tuesdays and we may not be here. Whoa, Chrome just about fell off the plank. And I may not be around here Monday and Tuesday because, well, I don't need to be here. So I wanted to make sure the van was all cleaned up and everything's all topped up and fixed up because I want to go out and I want to play a little bit more. I work hard enough that I can go out and play hard enough too, you know? So maybe we should do these first. Maybe we should install those before we bounce out to the bush again. I won't be doing that one today because I'm going to need a second person to do it. That's definitely a two-person job. But we should be able to bang that out in a day. Chopping some holes in this thing and gluing and bolting in the new pods. Anyway, because I'm doing all of my bedding laundry right now, we are going to sleep inside of the Mercedes tonight. When one home is down, the next home is ready to go. We threw a bed in the back there, but me and Cruzy have not slept in here yet. Tonight will be the maiden voyage. Hello, buddy. We're going to sleep inside the big blue van tonight. Hey, yes, we are, bro. All right, we're going to need this big blanket. It's got to come with us. You too, buddy. He's like, Dad, I'm just going to sleep up here on the couch. Yeah, but where am I going to sleep? Come on, let's go to the bed. I feel like I'm a 50-year-old man building a fort in the back of a van. Oh, it's going to be fun to sleep in this thing. Welcome home, baby. We're going to need a pretty big step to get in. We're going to sleep in the big blue one tonight. Okay. Cruzy's a little unsure. That's where we're going to sleep, buddy. That's our home. Hey, Cruzy, what's happening, buddy? What's happening? Are you a little unsure? Hey, Cruzy's a little bit unsure. Hey, this is where we're going to sleep, pal. Cruzy. You don't like the lights? What's wrong, buddy? He's not sure about the big lights. It's a light, buddy. It's okay. Here, come on. I got you. Watch this. I'll touch it. It's okay. Look at it. I'm touching it. It's okay. It's okay, buddy. You're safe, bro. It's just a light. Good boy, buddy. That's a good boy. You're so brave. You're so brave, buddy. You're so brave. You know what's funny? Cruzy would be scared of something like this, but if someone starts a chainsaw, she's going to chase it. He's tried to chase the big, huge forklift that the neighbor has over here. He ain't scared of those big things. When it comes to stuff like this, oh, or like something weird, like, I don't know, a pencil. Hey, buddy. You're so brave with so many things, but little things like this, you're just not so good at. Okay. You're so silly, buddy. It's just a light, buddy. It's okay. Look at it. You're so safe. Touch it. That a boy. Good boy. See, it's cool, buddy. It's cool. He's cool. You're a good boy. You're such a big suck. You're so brave, buddy. Now he's going in front of me. Look at him. He's protecting me. That a boy. Look at you, all brave. That's my big boy. Hey, my big boy. Dude, this thing is so big. When you actually start lying down in here and realize this space is nuts. So some of my thought here, like now that I'm like standing in this space, I'm wondering if doing like an actual table, like an editing table where my editing gear just stays there because I spend a lot of time in front of my computer to make videos. You know, maybe doing just a little bench with a pullout. So a couple of people can sit and dine. But yet maybe on this side have an actual legitimate like editing desk. That's where you probably can't see me with the lights are back here. Doing like a proper editing desk where like my microphone stay set up. My laptop is there always set up, ready to go. That way, anytime I want to edit, I literally just sit down, offload my footage and go. Problem with that is it definitely takes up a chunk of room. Like we'd have to devote about this much counter space in one area just to edit. I'm still back at my initial thought with doing two seats here and here with a pullout table. So a couple of people can sit and hang out and then a couple of people can hang out up there in the swivel front seats and doing this bench a little longer. So that'll be from my desk when I edit in the morning. Cruzy in the next few days, if I can get some help, we're gonna cut holes right there and put the pods in. Yeah, definitely. All right, Cruzy say goodnight to everybody. Say night. Oh, good morning, everybody. It is six o'clock in the morning. Cruzy's passed out of my feet, just snoring away. You're awake already down there. Morning, pal. I don't think I hear that noise. A little squeak, what the heck? That makes sense. It's probably this rubbing on the back of the board there. When they were doing the concrete, they put these things here so nothing got onto the van or... Man, it was awesome to sleep inside this thing last night. Right, Cruzy? It's here to see if she's squeaking back here. No, it was definitely that. Good morning, handsome. So what would our morning routine in here look like, buddy? That? Where would we go from here? Hey? This is the fun part about being in here is now we get to think about what would my morning look like in here? Like, what would I step into and sit down on? Where would I think the kitchen would be properly put into? Do we go with my standard four-foot-wide bed, which is... Or do we go with a full-size double bed? Yeah, no? We could go full-size double, which would bring me smack dab into the middle of this wheel well. Because mine's a four-foot by six-foot. And I think a standard double is 50... 52 or 56 inches wide. I guess that would depend on the pod, too. I wonder if we got to buy custom mattresses for here. That's something to think about. Because the pods... Because the pods will give me an extra stack of extension on each end where the mattress doesn't go in that section. I wonder if they make like a mattress extension. It's a mattress. They put an extension in where the pods are to extend the bed. So maybe we make something afterwards? It doesn't have to be the mattress. It just has to be where your pillows would go. And my bed's not going to be that wide. It'll probably only be just a little bit wider than the pods. I like the idea of having a dining table set up there. That was my original plan right out the gate. You know, not doing a little table like that. Doing a nice big fat table that slides underneath the bed. So you just grab the handle and you pull the whole thing right out. It's kind of integrated in with the bed. And then my thought was to put a drawer right where those pillows are. Put a drawer that pulls out. So that creates another step for crews to get on top of the drawer. And we'll put a big flat lid on the top of the drawer. You know what I mean? And you'll build a little wood piece that slides into the top of the drawer with a texture on the top. And you just pull a drawer out there. There there'll be a drawer that'll pull out, giving crews a step up into the bed from there. And then do the same thing down here somewhere. Whether we do another level down from the bench before it goes down to the ground. So crews can go boop, boop, boop, boop. Or another drawer that slides out into the walkway there from the bottom of one of these cabinets. So crews could go up, turn a little bit, go over there, up, up. That way crews can kind of come down in the middle of the night. Because that's the key, because the bed's going to be high. I'm still kind of thinking maybe the benches go there. I've seen so many different layouts, man. I don't know what I'm doing. But I seem to always come back to this concept and idea. Look at all that extra space those pods provide. These aren't the pods that I bought. The pods that I bought are actually wider than these ones, I think. So yeah, then from here, because my bed's high, I would swing my feet out. I'd step on the seat here, because that's too big of a drop to drop down on. Step onto the seat here, and then I can step down onto the floor. Then I would be in my seating area here. And then you grab the table, pull the table all the way out, and there would be a bent seat there. So that would consume a major part of the back of the van would be seating and bed. So if the bed stopped at the pod, seating goes to here, and then some space. That leaves me pretty much from this line forward to do kitchen. A little seating area there by rotating those around. So maybe we put a lagoon table mount here. And then this seat has the end of the countertop there. I just, you know what? It's happening here. I'm back to the first design thought that I had in here. And I think that speaks volumes. Like I've got to remember too, like I want to put my DJ gear in here somewhere. Yeah, that sound deadening material is pretty damn awesome. So I wanted to take this thing out and do like a camping trip in it, but then the temperature dropped outside. It went freezing. So we never got the chance to do that because I didn't want to freeze in there. I did throw the mattress in the back. I'm like, I'm going to do it. And then the temperature just went below zero at night. I'm like, I'm not going to sleep in a freezing van for what? But now the temperatures are back on the rise. I think overnight we're getting temperatures are like five degrees Celsius. So that is great to live in a van in. We'd be super cozy underneath a blanket and I'm down for that. So as soon as we get the chance to get this thing out of the shop, because we can't take it out right now because the concrete out there was freshly poured. So they said 10 to 14 days before we can drive a vehicle on it. And after that, we're going to take this thing out and do some little camping trips because I need more mornings like this. I need more mornings to kind of feel like, how would I want to stretch out? Where would I want to sit? Where would I initially reach for coffee? Because you need to learn these things in a van before you build it out, because you're going to start realizing, well, I'm always reaching here for this in the morning. My thought is reach here for coffee. Well, then that's where you need to put your coffee stuff. You know what I mean? You need to figure out your space that way. So I think we're going to take off and do some camping in this thing for for probably two solid weeks or more and really get a feel for it. And during that process, somewhere we'll probably do floor ceilings, walls and get in roof vents, figure out if we're going to do skylights and stuff. That'll all happen within that time frame of me spending a couple of weeks inside this thing. Maybe we'll take it out to the back country, see how it fares for traction and stuff like that, which would be rad to get the thing a little dirty for the first time. I think it's funny that this morning I started to explain the very first layout that I brought up on this channel with the seating over there, the drawer system to get up into the seats. I think because I seen that in a van. I should pull up that video. Hold on, let me show you. But the inside of this thing was awesome. And I loved the way her seating was done. And she hid her toilet underneath those seats. 140 square foot storage. And I love the help of a lot of people because I don't have an apartment. I close everything. I have like a little table that I have right here. The table is here. And I just it's a lagoon table. Pretty much standard in the van life. And you can put it like this. You can put it like this. So usually if I have to do some work, if I have to eat or prep things for my job, this is where I sit. It's also my toilet. But that's another story. Underneath now, we have her toilet was awesome. Right there. And it's thanks to my cabinet maker. So I wanted this set up. The design, I knew exactly what I wanted. So he designed a system where you just lift. Boom. Genius, right? And you have the composting toilet, which is a brilliant system. Because you don't have to use water. You don't flush drinkable water with a composting toilet. Like her seat system there is very small. I was thinking more of like a bigger bench. And it could be one long bench on one side and no seat on the opposite side. Because it's a narrow van. You don't want to rub the knees of the guy with the person across from you. Like we could even just do one longer bench system. There were a couple people could sit there. That's possible. And then this side is just a long running cabinet with my DJ gear over there. I'd be cool with that. I know we've been babbling a lot about this thing and not enough building. But that part is coming. I got to get through this stage. And because I try to produce so many videos around here, you guys are going to be here through all of these thought stages on putting this thing together. Because I feel like if I don't share this stuff, then you guys don't realize that this is not an easy process. Deciding on how you lay out your home is not easy. Because that's a lot of money to be putting out into something that just might not work for you. That's why you need to go through the process and figure out, well, where do I reach to put my keys when I get in the van? Because you got to think about those things. You know what I mean? Little things like that literally honestly can change the game inside of your van build. If I'm stepping in from outside and I feel like I always want to reach up here to turn on lights for the house, then that's where the switch panel for all of your lighting should be. Or if you feel like you're coming in here and you want to reach over to the top of this cabinet, go click, click, click. That's where that needs to be. And when you're lying in bed, you find, you know, you're reaching up over here to hit a light switch, you know, to turn on your heater, something like that. Then you got to remember to put those kind of things there and not block that from where your seating is to have a control panel for controlling things in here. Those are mindful things you really got to process now. So going through this is really, really important. And I know you guys want to start seeing the build. And I know I want to start seeing this thing come together. But the pods, those are coming soon. Because cutting those metal pieces out, someone's got to hold that metal up there. And we can't get this thing off the lift. So we have to do it this high, which kind of sucks. So we'll put some kind of a standing box system here so we can hold it. Because I can't move the Mercedes. She's, she's locked in here. And then, uh, and we'll never know if I can find someone to help me out. That is getting done on the next video. If someone's available. Those are the van speed capsules and they are beautiful. But we'll dive into that when that happens. So you never know, guys, you never know. Maybe tomorrow.