Deciding to renovate a van into a home is a big undertaking but an exciting step towards fulfilling a dream that some may have. Before even starting a van renovation, or before even buying the van, it’s a good idea to have a detailed plan on what you want to use the van for and how you can make the limited space meet your needs. These things will dictate how much time and money you need to invest.
I personally planned to use my van as a stationary living space while I attended school. If instead I was using it to travel, I could have easily left the items that were already built into it from the previous owners which would have saved me lots of money (and time!).
I bought my van, Benji, from a nice couple who had used him for the purpose of Vanlife, so they had built a bed, shelf, small counter and had flooring and curtains. Luckily, they also inserted a roof vent. They drove the van on a big road trip across Canada and through the USA. Before that, Benji was a maintenance van that drove all around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). So he already has quite a bit of kilometers under his belt…timing belt that is!
Although there were already things built in that provided a living space, the orientation of those items wasn’t functional for what I intended. To say the least, I needed more storage space and a desk where I could get work done as well as cook.
Step 1: Removal
I started by tearing all the stuff out that had already been built into the van. It was somewhat difficult since there were A LOT of screws and when it seemed like all the screws had been removed, I would go to pull the piece of furniture out only to find that it was solidly glued to the floor and everything around it! Once everything was removed, I had a daunting empty canvas to work with that was waiting to be replenished and revived.
Step 2: Floor
The previous owners had installed a plastic tiled flooring. The plastic tile squares weren’t very robust so they were all starting to peel off from the plywood they had been glued to. I removed them all and then sanded down the plywood to get rid of the excess dried glue so that the floor would be nice and smooth.
I chose to replace the plastic tile flooring with vinyl flooring. Vinyl is great because it looks good and it cuts like butter with a box-cutter knife which makes its installation an easy process. Another thing I really like about vinyl is that, unlike other types of flooring, it has no creases or crevices so it’s really easy to keep clean.
I bought some vinyl flooring from the local home reno store, which came in a large roll. I used a large sheet of brown paper to make a template of the inside of the van. I thought this would be an easier approach rather than measuring everything out, since the protruding wheel wells added an extra level of difficulty by preventing the space from being a simple rectangle. I traced and cut the brown paper to size, then removed it and placed it over the roll-out vinyl. Making the first cut is scary because the fear of messing up rises from within, but once you get started, there’s no going back and the feeling of progress and accomplishment replaces the fear.
I made sure the van floor was swept clean, then placed the cut vinyl into the van. I rolled it out to make sure it fit, then rolled it up towards the back of the van. I started with spreading the vinyl glue evenly on the plywood floor and then subsequently rolled out the vinyl and pressed it down to make sure it stuck to the floor. If you’re doing this, make sure you have provisioned enough vinyl glue because I almost ran out! Once I completed the process, I laid a bunch of tires on it and added buckets filled with water for extra weight and left it overnight.
Step 3: Walls
The previous owners had installed insulation and covered it with wooden panels, so that part for me was already done. All I still needed to do was paint the walls and the ceiling with two coats of white paint.
Step 4: Bedframe
The biggest piece of furniture going into the van is the bed so it made sense that this would be the first thing to be placed into the van. For the rest of the reno I had a friend help me who is very skilled in carpentry and electrical (these kinds of friends are very helpful when you have a reno project in mind!).
He built my bedframe as a sturdy box with wooden boards: three width-wise pieces (two for the exterior and one for the middle interior as support) and two length-wise pieces. A large piece of plywood was then attached overtop.
Under the bed, there were different storage compartments. Near the back half of the bed, there were two large pull-out drawers on tracks that could be accessed from opening the van’s back doors. Under the front half of the bed, there was an open space for storage which is accessed from the inside, by lifting up the top half of the bed. The overlaying plywood is slightly separated and partially attached with hinges which allows for it to be lifted. I then painted the exterior of the bedframe white, to match the walls.
The bed size was custom, so I would have had to pay a lot for a custom mattress that fit, so instead, I simply bought two big rectangular foam pieces which I cut to the right size and taped together.
Step 5: Shelf
The shelf was probably the hardest part to make since everything had to be perfectly level, and since we were building inside the van, some of the angles we had to screw thing in from were very uncomfortable. We actually had to start over several times because as we were screwing things in, the angle of the wood would shift… quite frustrating!
While working on this part of the project, the power drill that we were borrowing had to be returned because the owner was working on a project that required it. So, for some time we were just screwing things in by hand, which made it even more challenging to keep everything level!
Once the frame of the shelf had been completed, we proceeded to cut the shelves out of plywood after which I painted white, to match the interior of everything else. I also painted the shelf frame, you guessed it, white. Once the paint was dry for the shelves, I glued on the leftover vinyl that had been used for the floor.
Step 6: Desk
The only feasible place to put my desk was beside the shelf and behind the driver’s seat. Luckily I had an old desk lying around, so I cut the top of it off and used it for my van desk. The supports for the desk-top were made with two squares built with two-by-fours attached to plywood. I painted those and then we screwed everything into place.
Step 7: Electrical
The most challenging part is the electrical. Luckily my friend knew a lot about electrical wiring because I knew near to nothing. I suggest, for those looking into doing their own van reno, get in contact with a mechanic or electrician to help with hooking things up and getting the functionality you desire.
I bought two 12V car batteries and placed those inside the bottom of the shelf, adjacent to the side where the desk is. He then hooked them up to the main van battery and included a circuit breaker for safety. This way my interior batteries could charge whenever I drove and then stop charging when I wasn’t driving so that my van battery wouldn’t be drained. It was a pretty cool set-up and something I could not have done on my own!
Once the batteries were in place, they were connected to a switch panel as well as a 12V to 120V converter so that I could plug in things like a hot plate, water kettle, or my laptop charger. We installed three LED lights on the ceiling along the length of the van and then one over the desk. We had to thread the wires for the lights underneath the wooden panels that covered the insulation so that we could connect it to the switch panel which was connected to the batteries. We cut holes into the ceiling to place the lights into. I initially glued the circumference of the lights to the ceiling, which held them into place up until the heat from the lights being on reduced the adhesion of the glue, causing them to pop out. So instead, we installed two screws on either side of the light fixture and then attached a wire to the screws that went across the light in order to hold it up.
Step 8: Extras
Once the main features were built into the van, it was time to add the details! I built a spice rack onto the exterior wall of my shelf, using test tubes as spice containers. I hung up two curtains: one to cover the back windows and one just behind the driver and passenger seats. I did this by connecting a metal chain to the curtains with zip ties and then screwing in hooks along the length of the ceiling, so that the metal chain could hang from the hooks. For water, I acquired two 10L water jugs, one filled with fresh water and the other as my waste (grey) water. I cut a hole in the shelf so that the water jug could sit on the shelf and have its spout protruding from the shelf wall, towards my desk. I bought a bucket to be used as my toilet and garbage, and bought a plug-in cooler as my fridge is a plug-in cooler. On the interior of my side door, I also hung up some storage pockets. To finish off, I bought a bunch of baskets for shelf storage.
This reno took 3 weeks to do, which feels like a long time considering the small space but a lot of time was spent in the aisles of hardware stores trying to acquire the right supplies. That being said, if you’re looking to do a van reno, make sure to come up with an extensive plan before you begin, but as you start, be open to new ideas and learn as you go because not everything will work out the way you want and you’ll most likely have to make slight alterations.
Keep in mind, the design for the interior of my van was meant for someone who would live in a single city rather than be constantly moving, as well as someone who would be attending school. If I was building this purely for road trips, the design would have been very different. I spent a lot of time trying to design my van, thinking of all the pros and cons to each of my designs and then thinking of the feasibility of building what I wanted. If you go on YouTube or explore other blogs, you’ll see that there are a vast number of designs and styles, so if you were to decide upon something for your van, you would need to make sure that it suits your lifestyle and what you want from it. Build it to meet your expectations.