The van life community keeps growing, with more travelers making the decision to buy a van and convert it themselves. But how difficult is a campervan conversion? We talk to travelers who've taken the plunge.
Search the #vanlife hashtag on Instagram and you'll find millions of posts from travelers on the road in tiny homes on wheels.
But interest went through the roof as many people found themselves stuck at home with little to do as borders shut down and restrictions were put in place in many destinations around the world. Investing in a van was a no-brainer for Comley and Low who met on a climbing trip and have been together for almost six years."We're both from a climbing background, and climbing and van life are fairly synonymous. If you go to any climbing areas, you'll see lots of vans. We decided to take the plunge in June 2019."
"I'd say the most common mistake that people make is, if anything, is spending more time converting the van than actually using it," says Comley."We're both fairly practical," says Comley."So we spent a long time designing so that we essentially got it right the first time." They then built their bed, their kitchen, with a Belfast sink, overhead cabinets and other necessary structures, before installing the water and gas systems.
If in doubt, travelers have the option to hire professionals to help with parts of the build they're less confident about.The couple say it took just over a year, or the equivalent of around 1,000 hours between them, to complete the van. The couple, who also have a van conversion blog, were finally able to go on the road when travel restrictions eased around the world, and have since traveled to France, Switzerland, Spain, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Croatia.
"But if you break it down into all of the different things you need to do, and then you kind of learn about each individual thing, it makes it feel a lot more manageable. Jennifer Mckechnie from Northern Ireland bought a minibus for £2,300 in 2019 and spent around £3,500 converting it into the campervan of her dreams. The former fitness instructor has since set up her own campervan conversion business and completed six conversions last year.
While Mckechnie had planned to work on the van on weekends mainly, she found herself with a great deal of time on her hands when the pandemic set in and she was unable to work.She began by stripping out all of the seats in the van -- there were 17 in total -- before removing the walls and floor.The next step was covering corrosion on the floor with rust converter, then filling in gaps in the walls, floor and ceiling and insulating the van.
"I had my dad help me put the ceiling up, as it takes two sets of hands to do that," she explains."But I did all of it myself." "The last time that I used my van was August of 2020," she admits."I'm fully booked for the next 12 months. It's madness." Mckechnie occasionally helps her customers find a van before beginning a conversion and has noticed that prices have shot up in the three years since she converted her own van.'Our partition wall is quite controversial'
Once they began investigating the different ways they could travel Australia, they decided to go down the van route. They were working out the layout and some of the finer details when the pandemic hit, and Melbourne went into lockdown in March 2020. "When it came to color schemes, she wanted it all white, beachy and quite premium," says Morris, who own and runs eco-friendly accessories company Wild Wood.Luke Morris and Claire Falconer
"That was a bit of a nightmare for a couple of days, just because it was so time consuming," says Morris. "People in the van life community are extremely helpful with that kind of thing, they are willing to give you advice and actually help you out," says Morris. "Our lil' man doesn't stop," says Falconer."He's so, so active, so we have struggled with that a bit on the road, as its hard to always keep him out of trouble.
Geiger, from Massachusetts, had often dreamed about going on the road in a campervan, but it wasn't until the pandemic set in and her job as a senior project manager went fully remote, that she felt ready to give van life a try. Once she'd purchased the van, Geiger began the conversion, working her way through the project step by step.
"My skills were very basic," she admits."So learning how to use power tools and measuring stuff, that was definitely a learning curve. But it was really fun working through it all." Aside from calling on her family when she needed extra hands, Geiger completed the whole conversion herself.Geiger was able to achieve this by building a Murphy bed design, which folds out of a wall or cabinet, into the van.
"Just living van life, there's so many problems that you have to solve every day," she says."But you get used to it because you built the van, and you had to problem solve through the build." When their plans to travel around Europe by train fell through due to the pandemic, Dacombe and Hitchcock began searching for alternative ways to see the world together once borders reopened.
Determined to keep costs down, they completed the entire renovation using just a jigsaw, a drill, a hand saw, a spirit measure, a screwdriver, a sander and a workbench. "Going into it, I was quite confident with the appearance of converting a van," says Dacombe."But electricity was another ballgame. You don't want to get that wrong."
The conversion took eight months in total. Hitchcock says she was very particular about how she wanted the van to look and would come up with new ideas at the last minute. "Gemma's the interior designer and I'm the laborer," he admits."But I don't think we'd have been able to do it without both of us chipping in on both sides."
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