Gone For The Season

Part 1: Why?

Winter hasn’t been a season that brings excitement for either of us. Last year, in 2018, we tried escaping from it for short periods during our vacations. We had used a Toyota Camry as our house on wheels for weeks at a time. Showering at truck stops and gyms, cooking on a camp stove and a portable hotplate, doing laundry in Silicon Valley and driving thousands of miles in a short span of time. All of this brought us joy and excitement, something the long winters in Wisconsin couldn’t. It was obvious that the only way to escape the northern winters was to head south. After road tripping countless times near and far in that small Camry, we got used to living in a small space and making the most out of what we could fit in it throughout different seasons. We discovered the “Van Life” and “Nomadic” lifestyles and we fell in love with the idea of finding a vehicle larger than what we had and making a tiny house of wheels out of it to travel more comfortably. This was where the idea of buying a van came from. We knew a bus would be too big, an RV would be too noticeable, and a high-roof van would be too expensive. Thus leaving us with the option for a small work van, the search began.

Part 2: Searching for the “right” van

After looking at what felt like every van in the greater Milwaukee area on the internet we came across a few intriguing options. The first was a Ford E-150 conversion van, we messaged the seller on Facebook Marketplace to set a day to meet, this was in mid-august. It was the very first van, we were so excited with the idea of moving into something bigger than the Camry that the clean, collector’s registered, van made us feel confident it’d be the one. The asking price was a bit out of our budget so we left giving us time to think it over. Doing more research we found out that E-150’s weren’t made for big loads, certainly not a load the size of the conversion we had planned, making this van a good test drive at best. Then we found a GMC Savana 3500, a van capable of carrying twice the weight we estimated for our build, perfect! It was through another Facebook Seller, we met with him and test-drove it. It felt great but the interior was terrible, meaning we’d be putting a lot of work getting it clean and ready to build on. We left this test-drive with the idea of buying it in mind but wanted to give it time before we handed over $3k. After meeting with again within a few days we asked if we could do one more test-drive, this time the van wouldn’t start. The seller promised he’d change the starter on it and get back to us within a few days to sell it to us, we knew it wasn’t going to work out after that. Lastly, we found another GMC Savana 3500, 2001 model, this time it was an extended cargo version meaning that it was longer than the average work van, even better! This one was through a dealership so we figured it’d be in a lot better shape than the others we’d seen. After driving down to test-drive it we felt very confident it was “the one” even though it was $1k more than the smaller version of it. With only 130k miles and a rust-free exterior, it felt like a great deal. A few days went by and our feelings didn’t change so we went in to sign the paperwork and took it home. Finally, the first step of our plan was complete.

Our GMC Savana 3500 Extended Cargo Van

Part 3: Beginning of demolition

Once the van was home we started thinking of where things would go and how the inside would look. This van had a metal wall with a door that separated the cabin from the back, this had to go as we wanted to maximize the amount of living space inside, every inch counts! There were a few metal mounts in the back that had no purpose to us so we took them out and donated them. Lastly, the floor had a black mat covering it from front to back, split by the metal wall. After lifting up a corner of it we found out what had been causing the humid smell inside the van--mold! Lots and lots of mold and with it came a lot of rust, we were very disappointed to find this as it meant we’d need to take out the mat, scrape off the humid sound-deadener and grind off all of the rust on the floor. This took about a week since we were both still working full-time jobs. In the end, we were left with a silver floor with small brown spots all over from the rust we couldn’t get off without puncturing the floor. This was all covered with rust reformer by Rustoleum which sealed the rust and bare metal and made it look less frightening, on top of it all we spread liquid rubber to create an extra layer of protection in the case of any water getting on the floor again. We had planned on using recycled denim insulation on the floor and ceiling to save as much space height-wise for us to live in, this material was no better than the moldy sound-deadener we had ripped out so the rubber seal gave us peace of mind. Lastly, we spray painted the bare metal on the outside that had chipped off with white automobile-body spray paint so that it wouldn’t rust. After all, we were left with a clean slate of a van to start building in and out.

After the black mat was lifted this is what we saw

This was the after the rust reformer was sprayed

Part 4: Research and planning

Before we even thought of buying a van to convert on our own we watched every video on YouTube and read as many articles online as we could about taking on a full conversion on our own to gauge the time, money, skill and labor it would all take. In the process, we learned a lot about what all goes into these vans and the endless options people have while converting. From materials for flooring and walls to water and cooking systems, we knew it’d be a lot of work, money and time. The average conversion costs for our size van (including the van) were between $3k to $15k, depending on what people put into them. The average conversion time frame was all over the place, from weeks to months since everyone has different plans and amounts of time dedicated to the builds. We knew we wanted to keep the conversion between $5k and $7k, a completely do-able figure, time-wise we wanted to finish it before winter hit Wisconsin. We’d seen people try to convert during winter and it looked miserable. With all of this in mind, it was already early in September and we had already spent $4k on the van, two somewhat concerning factors in the plan. We had to learn quickly and get to work asap if we wanted to finish it in time for a smooth drive south.

Part 5: Where we are now

At the time of writing this blog post, we are in late October and the van is halfway done. All materials and equipment have been bought and are ready to be installed in the van. We’re both out of work, working on the van full-time so that we can hopefully miss the first snowfall this year in Wisconsin. What’s left to do now is build a cabinet to store kitchen-ware, install our solar setup, put up finished walls and floors and install our roof vent. The rest are all small details like painting and moving in, once all of this is done we plan on spending a week somewhere near-by to test it all out and then head south-west for the winter!

Insulation was put up using spray adhesive, then furring strips were bolted into the walls

We’ll try to keep this updated but as we will be spending most of our time and energy building in the van, the blog may not be updated for a while. If you have any questions or comments feel free to message us on Facebook or Instagram, our profiles are linked below. Please share this with anyone that may be interested in our journey!