VAN TOUR | Cozy DIY Promaster | Full-Time Home with Dog

Hi guys, I'm Courtney. And I'm Nate. And this here is our self-converted full-time home on wheels. It's a 2017 Ram Promaster 2500 with a 159 wheelbase. We've been living here for a little over a year now. We built everything from scratch, totally DIY. We had no prior experience. We did a lot of research. Tons of research. Watched a lot of YouTube videos. We didn't have a whole lot of money saved up in the beginning so we just decided to take a loan out for the van, move out of our apartment right away and into the empty cargo van essentially. We spent the next eight months building everything. I was more on the design side and I helped with painting and stuff and making lunch whatnot. Thanks for the lunch. Yeah. Without moving out of our apartment, we'd probably still be trying to purchase things for the van. Saved a ton of money on rent and all that money we saved on rent went into our build so that was super helpful. We feel like this is our home. Because it is. Yeah. We're finally gonna show you guys our space. Come check it out. We're gonna take you on a little tour. Let's go. Don't go anywhere. Come back. So building the home of our dreams was maybe a little bit out of our budget so we decided to build the van of our dreams. A lot of the features in here are things that make this feel very cozy and homey and are everything that I would put into my dream home just miniature size. So you may notice that we are missing a seat in the front. When we got our dog he was just a baby puppy and we found that he feels really safe riding in a crate so when he got too big we had to take out our front seat for a crate that would accommodate his size. It's only supposed to be temporary and we do plan on building a more permanent kennel for him in the back soon. We built this van for you bud. We built this van for you. We couldn't afford a house and no apartments would allow us to have a dog so we had to build a van so that we could get a dog and he's our best guy. This is our best guy right here. So when you first walk in you'll see our kitchen. I love to cook and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen so it was really important for me that this was really comfortable and felt like home. So the first thing you'll see is our tile backsplash. I was really excited about this. This is actually cement tile. It's a little on the heavier side which I was a little worried about but it hasn't cracked or anything yet so we're looking good. Next we have our Dometic two burner stove. This runs on propane and over here we have our farmhouse sink. Honestly I wish this was a little bit bigger. We do a lot of dishes and sometimes water splashes around but we really like the way it looks and it serves its purpose. And then we have our water faucet. We've got two settings. We also have a Berkey water filter so this thing is awesome. We just take our water faucet, throw it in there and we just filter water. We use that for drinking and washing our face, brushing our teeth. We went with birch countertops and like I said I like to do a lot of cooking so it was really important for me that we had a lot of counter space. So we have this whole section right here that's all open. We built this little plant shelf just to add a little greenery to the area. We have a nice big refrigerator. This easily holds at least a week's worth of groceries. We really like the way the stainless steel looks on the outside and then it also has a freezer section which is great for me because I love to have ice in my drinks so we can make ice and we also have frozen fruit and ice cream and stuff like that. So behind this wall we have two hooks and this is where we store all of our jackets and then below we recently built this little platform. We store some shoes underneath there and then this is where the dog food is. Right above me here we have our max air fan. We put it here so that it would take all the heat from the stove and any cooking smells up and out. It's also really great for circulating air so we have a window in the back that opens and closes so it creates a nice little breeze throughout the van. Up here is where we store all of our sheets. We also have towels and some other random things. So next I'll show you guys what's in our drawers. In this first drawer we keep a bunch of food so we have canned goods, snacks, supplements going below to this next one is where we keep our cutting boards. We have some rags, Tupperware, alcohol and other kitchen utensils and then in this bottom one is where we keep our pots and pans. We have our tea kettle and then some fruits and vegetables. Below our sink we have all of our cleaning supplies and it's also where our hot water heater is. So going to these overhead cabinets we have more dry goods. We store our spices here, snacks, oil, vinegar, stuff like that. Over here we have my prized ceramic collection. I love ceramics. I take a lot of photos of my food so it was important to me that I had all these pretty dishes. We use these little rubber mats in between each one so they don't break. In this top drawer here we keep all of our silverware, kitchen utensils, knives, stuff like that. We like to keep everything in bins and dividers so that nothing goes sliding down. That helps us stay a little more organized. Down here we have our junk drawer so this is where we keep a lot of our electronic cords, receipts, books, random stuff. Here is where I have my blender. We have our milk frother, cups, water bottles and then this skinny drawer worked out perfectly to be our laundry basket so we both just keep our dirty laundry here. So these three upper cabinets have my clothes. In this one I keep all of my leggings, sweaters, jeans, overalls. In this one I have all my blouses and dresses, stuff like that. Stuff I hardly ever wear honestly. I have my everyday t-shirts, a couple more sweaters there. In this one I have sports bras, hats, undergarments and this bag has all my socks. Nate doesn't have quite as many clothes as I do so he only has two upper cabinets. In this one he keeps clothes, miscellaneous random items and then over here just more clothes, hats. I think he has a beer glass over there. So the back of our van is a convertible space. It has three modes. Right now it's in lounge mode so we really like to take our table and drop it behind the cushion so that we have this big open walkway. It makes it a lot easier for the two of us and the dog to maneuver around the van and when we're needing to use the table to work or have a meal we'll set it up on our lagoon mount and then at night when we're ready to go to bed the table drops down to the center and the cushions push in and then we have a queen size bed. So we built our benches a little bit tall and when I would sit down on the couch my feet wouldn't touch the ground so we built this little platform and it actually comes in super handy because this is where we store all of our shoes. So if you just flip it up it gives us a ton of extra storage space. So this bench here houses our electrical system. We have 400 watts of solar coming off our roof that goes into our 310 amp hour battery bank. We also have a 2000 watt inverter and it's also a charger if we want to plug into shore power. We also have a battery to battery charger to get power from our alternator in the van. Inside this bench here we have our 30 gallon freshwater holding tank, our water pump and accumulator tank, as well as our propane tank which is in a sealed locker that's vented through the underside of the van. For a gray water tank that's mounted underneath the chassis it's 20 gallons. So I really wanted to have a spot that I could keep all my girl stuff like skincare products and makeup and whatnot so that's what this drawer is designated for. So I have everything nice and organized here. I have towels, my brush, all my skincare, makeup, our toothbrushes go in here. We have little accents around the van that just make it kind of more like home. So we have a base these are all held down with velcro. This is actually our trash can we try to be low waste so we try to keep it to this little guy. Up above here we have a little shelf we built this so we could have some more plants in the van and then this is our little mirror. So on the back side of this column we have a 12 volt socket, we have an AC outlet and then this is the dimmer switch for our under cabinet lighting on this side of the van. On this column we have our overhead lights so we have the front and back separated they're both on dimmers and then this is our under cabinet lighting for this side. Underneath here we have our nature's head composting toilet. I was a little bit hesitant about this at first I wasn't sure if we really needed it but now that we have it I can't imagine not having it. It just slides out from underneath the cabinet which makes it easy to tuck it away. Our entire van is insulated with sheep's wool and we also have a propex heater that's mounted underneath this cabinet so even in cold conditions we're able to stay nice and cozy inside. So we really wanted to have a spot outside that we could set down our drinks or have a snack so we recently made this little outdoor table it just folds down like this and it's super convenient to just set things on and be able to enjoy our time outside more. So we got a little extra storage here in the back of our benches keep our water hoses, tools, shower equipment. We also hook up our water right here to fill up just goes straight from the garden hose and fills up our tank. This is our outdoor shower got a nice teak shower mat here keep our feet from getting dirty and we got a hook up back here hot and cold water which is really nice also a suction cup mount for our shower hood just goes in like so and there you have it. So thank you guys so much for checking out our van tour if you like what you saw you want to see some more check out our website hit subscribe somewhere. This is our first youtube video too just so you guys know hopefully it wasn't too weird. Where's subscribe? Down here. I'm not sure wherever it is we hope you guys subscribe because we're gonna go on a ton of adventures and we're gonna start filming it and we're gonna show you.