Full Van Tour- Self-Converted Transit Van – Ultimate DIY Camper Conversion

After two years of living and traveling full-time in our self-converted transit van, we are finally doing a full tour of our tiny home on wheels. So if you're new here, we're Emma and Nick. We've been traveling full-time in this self-converted transit van for almost two years now. From the tip of Baja up the entire west coast and cross country multiple times, this baby has taken us all over. She is our trusty vehicle and we love her so much. I actually built out the van by myself before ever meeting Nick and convincing him to move into 70 square feet with me. I had been dreaming about it for years. It took me about six months of literal blood, sweat, and tears to bring this vision to life and created my dream home on wheels that we now work, live, and travel in full-time. It's about dang time we gave a tour and showed you guys the inside and all the specs on our beloved home on wheels. So let's get started. So she is a 2018 Ford Transit, diesel dually, HSLD, high roof, 148 extended wheelbase. That is such a mouthful. I knew I wanted a diesel engine. I knew I wanted a dually wheelbase for more of a sturdy chassis to build on. And the Ford Transit is the highest roof of any of the commercial vans, which is great. I wasn't dating Nick at the time when I bought the van, but thank God I did go with the Transit because the interior height is 6'7 and Nick is 6'4, so it is probably the only commercial van that he can actually stand and move around in. Another great thing about going with a Transit is these things are pretty easy to work on. I knew if I went with something like a Sprinter, it would be more difficult to find parts and actually get worked on in a shop. Most shops will work on it. So on the roof, you can see we have a roof rack. This is Unaka Gear Co.'s 148 HSLD roof rack and it houses 620 watts of solar. I went with the Unaka Gear Co. rack because it has customizable cross rails and I knew I wanted to do different size panels to fit around my two Maxxair vans and Unaka Gear Co. has a really, really great roof rack for that reason. Also on the roof, we have our flat mounted Starlink, which is probably our favorite upgrade that we have done on the van. We actually went to a company in California called Starmount to professionally basically cut our Starlink in half and flat mount it to our roof and it's been great. We don't have to worry about breaking it down, setting it back up. It's a little bit more stealthy when we're in cities and probably the best part is we get Wi-Fi while we drive, which is great on long road trip days when we're in the middle of nowhere or we want to work while we drive. So here in the back is our garage space. It was really important to me to have enough storage for all of our outdoor equipment. So up top here is what I like to call the snowboard shelf. This houses both of our snowboards as well as our outdoor chair and our Nesso. We have our two tool drawers, great for storage. They're pretty deep and over here is our electrical cabinet. So you do have access to the electrical from here as well as inside underneath the dinette. As far as electrical specs go, we have 620 watts of solar, four 100 amp hour batteries from Dakota Lithium, a 3,000 watt inverter, as well as a Lynx distributor. We have three different ways of charging. We can charge via solar and we can charge with our DC to DC charger. We did just upgrade to the 12-1250, which has been so fantastic, as well as a shore power outlet on the outside if we ever do need to plug in. On this side we have our diesel heater. You can hear it going right now. We have our diesel heater tank, an auxiliary tank for extra diesel if needed, and our outdoor shower. Now that we've gone over the exterior, let's move inside. When I was designing the van, I obsessed over every single inch of this thing, from the design to the functionality of it. When you live in such a small space, it is so important to have division of space and multi-functional use spaces. Alright, so I want to take you guys back to where we spend most of our time. So this space serves as our dinner table, entertainment area, bed, and a second working space. The table is on a lagoon mount, so we can kind of turn this every which way. It's super diverse, so we can sit like this when we're playing cards or eating, and then my favorite is when we turn it like this to watch TV on our monitor up front. And I just absolutely love the design of the table. It is made out of poplar wood. My sweet angel of a mother actually made this table for me, as well as all the couch cushions in here. She did all of the custom sewing. So shout out Linda, you're the best. So at night, this actually drops down into this space here and becomes an almost queen-size bed, which is super cozy. These cushions do fold down, and then our bedding is stored in this side of the bench. Something that was really important to me whenever I was designing the bed was storage. I wanted everything to have a place, which is why I ended up going with an elevated dinette. It allows for a lot of storage in both sides of the couch, as well as two pull-out drawers, which are absolutely massive. For clothes storage, we do have three pull-out drawers here that are super deep. We can fit 90% of our clothes. For any overflow on the clothes storage, we do have these two massive drawers under the steps on the dinette. Right here is our pull-out pantry, which is fully stocked. As you can see, stuff just fell out. Not the tea! All right, moving on to the kitchen, I installed this massive farmhouse style sink with a gold faucet that has hot and cold water, as well as a water filtration system with its own spout, and my favorite new addition, a bar-style cup rinser. Under the sink, we do have a drop-down cabinet that houses our water pump, along with most of our cleaning supplies and an on-off switch for the pump. Over here on the left, there is a vented cabinet with pull-out bins that were originally planned for fruits and veggies, and now house our Ziploc bags and silverware. Over here on the right is our small trash can. This here is actually our 35-gallon fresh water tank. I ended up installing an over-the-wheel well water tank from Northwest Conversions, which was an absolute game-changer for opening up storage in our garage, as well as the storage in our couch. Over the sink, we have a massive overhead cabinet. This really serves as just overflow for our pantry, as well as for cups and our, obviously, box of wine. On both sides of the kitchen, I did build in these bump-outs that house the drinkware, our wine glasses, as well as our coffee mugs, cutting boards, and even a hidden knife block. Over here, we have our stove-oven combo. It has a three-burner cooktop on the top, as well as this cute little oven down below. It is propane, and there is a fully-sealed propane locker down underneath to activate the propane, and for an extra safety measure, it is connected to a solenoid valve. So you just hit this here, and it activates the propane. Up above over here, we have another massive overhead cabinet for our dishware, our kettle, coffee supplies. I also, this is probably one of my favorite things that I added to this van, included a little spice rack. Originally, we had had like 40 of these guys, but they all fell out, on washboard roads, so now we have a lot of plastic spices. That was probably the first lesson I learned in van life, is don't get glass spice jars. Over here, we have our 12-volt fridge. It is the Isotherm 130 Cruise, which is a really great-sized fridge for a van. It also has a tiny little compartment for a freezer, which we can fit like one bag of frozen Trader Joe's orange chicken and an ice tray. Up here, we have more storage. This is where we store Marley's dog food. We used to store it down here, but he figured out how to open up both of the cabinets, so now his food lives up here. This also holds both of our toiletry bags, and then down here is another set of cabinets. This is extra shoe storage, as well as a home for our four-gallon Bosch water heater. So this is one of my favorite parts of the van. This is the designated desk and workspace. There are three really deep massive drawers on this side, as well as two smaller pull-out drawers. It also has a charging compartment in the back here with a strip 120-volt outlets, as well as two 12-volt outlets, and this massive monitor is great for editing, as well as it is on a swivel, so we can watch Netflix and movies at night. And underneath the desk, I also included a pass-through, so you could make it from the living space up to the cab for safety. Above the desk, we even have more storage. These slide open. There is a shelf that goes over the driving cab, so a great another option for storage. And back over here, we have our adorable shower and bathroom. We do have a fully operational shower with hot water. There is a rainfall shower head up here, as well as a detachable arm. And then back over here is our Lebao dry flush toilet. I went with dry flush toilet because I wasn't crazy about the idea of having to change compost, and we have been absolutely loving it so far. I also fully tiled the shower. I went with these really cute 5x5 Moroccan tiles, and there is a bump out for all of our soaps and conditioner and shampoo. For lighting, we have a puck light in the shower, as well as a 12-volt light strip for each different section of the van. We have one that goes in the kitchen. They each have their own switch, as well as a dimmable set that go around the back here, and one that goes over our office space. For temperature control, we have two max air fans, one in the front and one over the bed. Creates a really awesome wind tunnel to keep it cool during the summer. We also have a 12-volt Sirocco fan here in the back for additional breeze, which can kind of twist in any direction. So over here, we have a 12-volt outlet here. It has a USB-C as well as a regular USB. We have a 120-volt outlet here, as well as a switch. So this switch is connected to our 4-gallon Bosch on-demand hot water heater. This turns on the outlet that that is connected to. That way, it's not on all the time, powering the hot water heater. So whenever we do want to have a hot shower or hot water for our sink, we just hit the 15-minute mark on this outlet and it turns on the hot water heater. And then in 15 minutes, we have hot water. Over on this side, we have another 12-volt outlet, as well as our Servo GX. So this screen allows us to have an in-depth view of our battery capacity, turn our inverter on and off, and see what we're bringing in for our solar power. We also have a monitor for our freshwater tanks. We can see how much freshwater we have left. The really cool thing about this is because we do have a flat-mounted Starlink, and it is connected to our 120-volt system, whenever we wake up in the morning, we just turn our inverter on and it turns our Wi-Fi on. So we don't have to set up and break down our Starlink every day, which has been super awesome. We absolutely love the Servo GX. It is like the brain of the entire electrical system. A couple other features I wanted to make sure I pointed out is all the windows in the living space are awning-style windows from Arctic Turn, which have their own bug screen and shade. We upgraded the tires to larger all-terrain tires. We have a portable awning from Nesso that attaches right to our roof rack for shade. And we installed these custom bug screens from the bug wall on the back and side slider doors so we can have indoor-outdoor living without having to worry about bugs. And that's about it. She might be tiny, but she is packed with upgrades and has taken us to so many incredible places over the last two years. If you have any questions about the van or tiny living, drop us a comment. We would love to hear from you. And if you're interested in any of the components or products, I'll be including links for you to check them out in the video description below. And as always, thanks for watching and we hope you stick around to check out some of our adventures on the channel. Today is the day. Listen, we're giving a tour of the van. Are you all in? Don't yawn. We're never getting done with this tour. Cutest little oven down here. Perfect for baking little pizzas or bread. What bread have you made in that oven? I made banana bread. Okay.