Build my own a Camper Van? Sure, sure.

Do I have any experience with power tools? Nope.
Do I have any idea what I’m doing when it comes to building anything? Nope.
Have I built anything since that lopsided shelf in my high school shop class in 8th grade? Nope.
Am I building a camper van? Well. Umm. Yess. Let’s see how this goes!

The Background

In the beginning of 2017, I noticed a fun thing I was seeing more and more of on my social media feeds. People with vans. Everything from very basin minivans that someone threw a blanket down in the back of, to these state of the art $200,000 homes on wheels.
For perspective, my actual 1700sq ft house cost me $80,000.
Some of these vans cost over twice as much as my house.

I thought to myself, “sure, one day I would love to own one of these.” I love camping. I love road trips. I love love love seeing everything there is to see about the country I live in. I’m not someone who loves flying to big cities for a weekend.

I want to get down and dirty with the locals. I want to listen to grumpy old men have conversations about the new generation as they sip their coffee at 7am in the only café in a 30 mile radius. I want to wander into a dive bar and have a chat with the bartender. I want to take the dirt roads and find the views that no one else cares to get to. Go the extra mile on the trail where it thins of the rest of the tourists and you can breathe.

It’s tough to do that if you’re stuck in hotels on your travels. I thought “maybe someday” I could own a nice camper. I never even considered building a camper van myself. I surely couldn’t do one of these diy van conversions. I don’t build things, so it never crossed my mind! (Though I did think about getting an empty Promaster and paying someone ELSE to build it, I also knew I’d never afford that van conversion cost any time soon lol).

Finding “the van”

In April of 2017, I was scrolling through Facebook and came across a gorgeous van. The next day I was driving to Austin to buy it.
Yeah, that’s how fast I made the decision. Which was weird. I’m normally one of those people who has to research a topic to death before I jump into it. I research everything to the point of “oh, eh, nevermind. sounds awful now”.
Somehow this time, less than a week after saying I wanted to buy a van, I was going to look at one.

I think it was meant to be, as well. This van was 4 hours south of me. I called and spoke to the guy who owned it on the phone, and he had such a warm tone to his voice. He told me he had someone coming to look at it soon, but that if that guy didn’t want it… he was willing to hold off on anyone else (he had multiple messages about it he had to return.

It was a really good deal! Only $12k for a 5 year old van in perfect condition.) until I could get down there, as long as I could make it the next day! He was especially interested when I told him I was planning to take on building a camper van out of it.

Buying the Van

One scary test drive later, I was the proud owner of a 2012 Ford E250.
I may have had a mild freak out on the four hour drive back home though.

• First time driving a vehicle this big. Both by length and width.
• First time driving on a highway where the speed limit was 85.
• Construction for multiple hours on the way back, with those walls they put way too close to the lanes giving you zero wiggle room.
• This may have possibly also been the windiest day of the year.

I guess the universe said “if you can get through today, you can get through anything”.

The previous owner took amazing care of Vincent.
I should probably mention here that I named my dark blue slightly sparkly van Vincent Van Gogh. I’m hilarious, right?
The entire thing was gutted with carpeted plywood on the floor and walls. The only downfall was that floor was water damaged.

Starting The Remodel

Vincent did need some inside work. I was pretty lucky though. The previous owner of this van used it for his carpet cleaning business. He really loved taking care of his vehicles, so he insulated the walls, and then put up carpet wrapped plywood.
I wouldn’t need to touch the walls to change them at all! The previous owner did such a good job with them.

The Floor

The only thing I would have to really ‘fix’ is the floor!! You can see in the above photo the water damage I’m talking about. The carpet cleaner that the previous owner used was bolted directly into the floor of the van. You can imagine the type of damage it got from that, being a water based business. The guy did the best he could in keeping everything together though.

Over the next few months I managed to pull up carpeted floor.
Then the plywood. THIS was the hardest part. The nails that were holding all the old plywood down I had never seen before. It was the first time I had seen tamper proof screws!! They were also rusted, very rusted. We had to chip out the wood around EVERY screw enough to show part of it so we could cut them off.

At this point in the journey I got online and googled “how to build a camper van book”, thinking SURELY someone else out there has already written about this to help. This was 2017. No one had yet. Or, if they did, I couldn’t find it lol.

Camper Van Floor: Before and after

On the left you can see the old plywood. Heavy amount of water damage.
Lots of bigger pieces were warped. There were plenty of soft spots if you stepped in just the right place. This had to be ripped out and there was no way around it.

After getting it all out, it was time to put down new plywood.
I went to Lowes and bought a few sheets, as well as a couple sheets of foam board insulation.

How to get around the wall curves with flooring

I made a jig to go around the wheel wells by using cardboard. I just kept cutting it bit by bit until I could get it as close as I could to the shape of the walls, then traced that onto the foam board and wood. It wasn’t an ideal method, or maybe I just wasn’t great at it because there are definitely still gaps around it. But again, I’m a beginner at this so I deemed it as “this works”.

You can’t have to have it PERFECT, you just have to do SOMETHING. Especially if you don’t want to shell out the money to pay one of those camper van conversion companies. (though, I did come across in my searches some pretty flippin cool camper van conversion kits that are sold oversees where you can just toss individual fixtures in that have a sink, stove, storage, etc. I couldn’t find anything like that available here.)

Maxx Air Fan

Next step: Cut a giant hole in the roof.
I’d like to say I’m a super badass and did this all on my own.
That would be a lie. I did not.

After doing some research on the best way to get ventilation, I landed on using a maxx air fan. They seemed easiest to ‘set and forget’. It could also be wired directly into the main van battery so if it takes awhile to get any other electric (like solar) going, it’s still usable.

Cutting the hole

I asked someone who is a wee bit more handy than I am to slice and dice that roof. I walked away and prayed to the gods of metal and Fords that when I walked back, it would be done. I did help to install the fan that went into the hole.

He also wasn’t quite sure how to do this. The solution we ended up coming up with is to attach a garbage bag under the roof to catch all the metal pieces, and then just hop right on top and start cutting.

To be fair, I let the friend who helped me with some of this work go on the first week long road trip with me through Wyoming, so it technically wasn’t all ‘free labor’.
If you’re interested in a side quest, my favorite camping spot on that trip was over here at the Grayrocks Resevoir, but we also had an amazing time boondocking on the side of a mountain right outside the gates to Yellowstone.

OK back to the build!

Boxing in the Wheel Wells

I wish I could tell you what type of wood I used for this. Is that 1×1? I think so? maybe? Anyway. Back to Lowes! I found long thin tube squares of wood (you can see how technical I was through this process, right?! hahahha) that could be cut down to create a box. And they say there’s no need for the basic geometry later in life!

This part was actually a little fun, figuring out how to piece these together like a puzzle and have them cut to the right size.
Then I bought SUPER thin plywood to cut and screw right onto the boxes.

First Road Trip!

What? That’s it?
Well. Sort of.
I knew I needed a bed… but ain’t nobody got time for that!

Kidding. Ish. We (myself and the friend who helped me build this) decided to take the van on a road trip without building the bed into it first, so we could bring his motorcycle. So the next step was figuring our where to take it!

Wyoming, in August, during a solar eclipse. I’m clearly a little crazy because I decided hitting one of the most populated National Parks in the country during their busiest month of the year was a great first trip.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to do this and take the motorcycle. It had to be wheeled in and out of the back every night so we could blow up an air mattress to sleep on.

Three. We went through THREE air mattresses on that trip. Turns out, air mattress + splinter filled plywood isn’t a great mix.
Who knew? hahahah

It also made the back a complete mess. There is no good way to organize anything and absolutely no “chill” space inside at all while the bike was in the van. You can see from the above photo how crowded it was. We just brought essentials on this trip. Clothing. A cooler. Food. A little portable bucket toilet. The end! That was iiiit.

A week in Wyoming

It was an amazing week long trip though. Our first night was boondocking in northern Colorado.

We managed to get right up over the border pretty early the next day and spent the night at the Grayrocks Reservoir. The next day was the eclipse and we stayed there for that, knowing we needed to pull in a night early to get a good spot. We actually got lucky here.
We had NO plans on how and where to stop for this. Thankfully, the Drivin n Vibin was still a lil down to earth website where they interacted with followers. I saw that they had mentioned a spot they were at, and I reached out to find out how to get there!

From there we went north, stopping in Casper for lunch before heading further on.
We spent a night in Thermopolis, one in Cody, one just north of Yellowstone in Gardiner, and one in the Tetons near Mormon Row before turning and heading back home.

Back to the build

Upon getting back home, I found some bed ideas and opted to build a bench to bed pullout, with a thick futon mattress.
Now back to building a camper van!

Bed Build

I would tell you exactly how to build this, but I’m still wondering how it got done. There was a whole lot of “oooh yes, look at this photo and see how they cut this one here”, followed by “OH NO IT ISN’T EVEN” and “OH DEAR THIS WONT STAY UP”. Adding bits of wood piece by piece until it held together.
Then, chopping the legs at different lengths because as it turns out, the center of the van floor sits higher than the sides.
Let’s just say I’m glad no one was recording this.
It was a heck of a process. You can do a web search for “pull out slat bed” and probably get a lot better posts than what I could describe.

This set up got me started.
This bed got me through a week long trip over to Tucson for the gem and mineral show. A few overnight camping trips. Another week through Utah doing the Mighty Five.

The plus side to this set up is being able to fit a full size mattress length wise for lots of room to sprawl out.
The down side to this set up is storage.

It nicely fit a few of those plastic stackable 3 drawer cheap systems in the back, and a cooler in the front. I set the bed at the perfect height to still be able to use it as a bench to sit on without hitting your head on the ceiling. To do that meant that there wasn’t very much storage under it though.

The above method works well. Really really well. It ALSO means I had to “make the bed” every single day, and I am not about that life. I would much prefer a stationary bed.

***2020 update

This update was done in 2020.
I got tired of having to haul the bed out and make it every night. Then, if you had it out, you couldn’t move around the van much at all!
Soooo time to, again, get back to building a camper van I thought I was done building. hahaha *cries*.

Bed Remodel

Pulled the bed out.
Cut the end off.
Cut it in half (so it would fit back in. you can only guess how I discovered this needed to happen).
Doubled the height of the legs.
Shoved it back in.
Added a bunch of cargo netting to the walls.

BOOM. Lengthwise bed was now widthwise. The mattress sort of fits… if you’re cool with the natural raised ‘pillow’ at one end.

I finished this bed conversion about 3 days before leaving town to do a road trip through South Dakota. The change has it’s downfalls. For example, you can’t sit up at all in bed. Your options are pretty much to either lay down or get out of bed. The ceiling is just way too short for that.
The wheel well boxes turned into seats to make up for it. Just enough of them sticks out that you can comfortably sit down on them. Plus, doing it this way added the ability to add bigger totes under for more storage, and that was a lifesaver!

Looking at all the popular photos for the #vanlife movement, it’s really easy to get swept away into a comparison trap. Many of them have vans that cost most than my brick home. Loaded with the newest and fanciest toys. That’s a far far into the future dream for me. For right now, a low roof cargo van, bed, some plastic totes, a cooler, a camp stove, and a bucket that doubles as an emergency toilet is a fancy enough amenities list to get out there and enjoy traveling.

Build out cost

Van: 2012 Ford E250 : $12,000
Maxx Air Fan: $200
Wood, floor insulation, screws, etc: under $300
Road tripping without hotel fees: Priceless

(That last one was a little cheesy. I’m not sorry for it.)
Also, as I make this update based on the bed remodel, I am aware the cost of lumber is currently through the roof. I’m sure that’ll eventually settle down once we’re not in the middle of a pand3mic, right?

Oh, and yes, My face really does get that red if I spent a wee bit too long doing work in the sun. That isn’t a light trick. hah!
Interested in places to camp? I have an entire camping section where I review everything I’ve been up to! Since I currently live in Texas, that section has the most information so far.