Camper Van Tour

Building a camper van from scratch was one of those projects that was so overwhelming, I truly didn't know if we would be able to pull it off (luckily my husband had a lot more faith than me). The full story of how we ended up with Flo, our van, which, in her previous life, was a work van for a concrete flooring company is here.

Where we started

The demo and cleanup work took us about 6 months. The majority of this was due to the need to get a new floor welded in. The company we bought Flo from worked with a lot of chemicals for polishing and painting concrete floors (as you can see dripping down the metal cabinets in the first photo), and that caused severe rusting and deterioration of the floor. The extent of the damage was not visible until the wooden subfloor was removed, and to be honest, we may not have bought this van if we had known it would need that extensive repair.

We also removed the bench seat and put in two gorgeous leather seats we found for a steal on Facebook Marketplace.

I won't show too much of the progress since it is detailed pretty extensively on our YouTube channel, so let's jump right to the tour!

Our Van Non-negotiables:

A Composting Toilet

Kyle built this bench seat, which sits partially on the van's step and provides shoe storage. Inside the bench are two sections. The toilet is on the one side and is bolted in. It is the Ogo composting toilet which has a compost for "solids" and a removable pee jug that can be dumped when it gets full. The left side is additional storage. On our first trip, we used it as a trash can, but we will be moving the trash can under the sink for future trips.

A Kitchen

We do a lot of cooking and try to avoid fast food, so a fridge, sink, and propane stove were priorities for us. Our sink is fabulous. It is 9 inches deep so it holds dishes easily and the faucet extends over 10 ft and can reach out of the van for washing Dolly paws. Our fridge also has a small freezer section and holds more food than you would think possible! We also have a propane stove and the propane tank is in a fully sealed and vented box underneath the bed. Kyle built us a removable countertop for one of the drawers to give us extra counter space for cooking (see right photo). The counter top can be removed to access the drawer space beneath.

Queen bed. We had a full bed when we camped in our Rav4, and while that's enough room for just me and Kyle- Dolly (our doodle) is kind of a bed hog. We opted for a queen bed in width, but the mattress had to be cut and is about 6 inches shorter than a regular queen. There is a cut out on either side of the van which gives us just enough space so that we can fully extend in the bed. Our linen bedding is from Quince.

Our mattress is memory foam, which is easy to cut. BUT, note that memory foam does harden below freezing, so if you do a lot of winter camping and don't have a heater, this is probably not the best option.

Maxx Air Fan & Fans above the bed: we opted to not include air conditioning so fans were a must for Kyle. We each have one that swivels.

Storage Spaces

Under the bed is storage and most of the van's systems. On the left side is our battery system from Battle Born. This was part of a partnership and you can use our code MELISSA for a discount. On the right side is our 33-gallon water tank, water heater, and filter. In the middle of the van is our propane bottle for our fridge. The propane box is rubber-sealed and air-tight with a vent through the floor so that if it ever leaked, it would not go into the van (propane is denser than air and sinks)

For added storage, we built a headliner shelf that sits above the front seats. This added space is amazing for jackets, our dirty clothes bag, and cold weather gear.