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You may remember a few months ago, we had the perfect setup illustrated. A van that would take us to all our favourite places, and house all the things we need, to do the things we love. It represents letting your hair down and just doing what you wanna do, when you wanna do it.
But we already have most of it, the glaringly obvious bit that’s missing is that massive metal thing.
A van build at first seemed like a tall order, perhaps too resource heavy, or a black hole to throw your money in to. But we sat and broke it down, and now it quickly became more and more achievable, and now we’re just getting more and more excited.
We’ve always owned vans, but we’ve never done a complete rebuild, so the van life isn’t completely unfamiliar to us. Being able to just pack up and go, any time, whether it’s for a weekend or for weeks on end, this will help us never miss an opportunity again, saying yes to more in a world full of we’ll sees.
We wanted something different, not just your typical VW Camper Van, something a little bigger, something more functional, and something that will hopefully inspire others to get out and do the same. A VW Camper can seem like the obvious choice sometimes, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but when you can’t fully stand up or use the oven when the bed is folded out, it definitely comes with some compromise.
Like everything we do, we definitely don’t want to cut any corners with this. Although it’s our first custom van build, we don’t want it to look like it is. A DIY conversion that looks like it’s been done by the pros. Don’t get us wrong, there may be a few mistakes along the way, but we just see them as cheap lessons (well, hopefully cheap). We want this to be fully functional, extremely comfortable, and something you can’t take your eyes off.
After starting our research, we realised there is a hell of a lot of information out there, it’s hard to know where to start, but as you sift through the mess (there’s a lot), you can find little nuggets of knowledge that would have saved a lot of headache.
So, at the moment we’re just gathering our data, drawing loads of sketches, creating lots of mood boards, and getting our planning hats on. We don’t want this to be hippie, boho chic, not even rustic. It will have an overriding sense of minimalism throughout, achieved through traditional wooden methods, but with modern elements to ensure ease and functionality. But the thing is with projects like this, things can change day by day, so although we’ve got a picture in our minds, it could end up looking completely different.
We’re definitely not rushing any decisions, there’s really no reason to. To be honest, that’s the key to avoiding mistakes, do it at your own pace, be consistent, and just try a few things. Anything that we don’t consider, may become a massive pain in the arse further down the line. Just think, solar panels, batteries, water supply, heating, where does it stop? Anything and everything needs planning, and we’re loving it.
Of course, picking a solid base will pave the way for every future decision we make, and at the moment, we’ve got our eye on an ex MoD, 2004 Mercedes Vario 814d that looks pretty much perfect. The thing has only got 50,000 miles on the clock and these beasts are built to do 1,000,000.
Loads of life left in the tank, and we’re just getting started, checkout these concepts so far!
Keep an eye on the lowdown to see our progress.
