Van Tour - Sleeps 7 - Never Seen a Layout Like This!

Hi, I'm Kim from Budget Travel Family, and today I'm here to show you our self-converted, seven berth, yes, seven berth, self-converted camper van. Let me show you inside. And if you stick around till the end, I'm gonna let you know how much this van cost. We have five children, and when we were buying this van, we considered all different vans. We decided to go for a Peugeot Boxer, extra long wheelbase with an extra high roof. This has given us maximum space. But what we've done here, we find is the best layout for our family. And we have fitted five children in this van. So this is our kitchen. We absolutely love this kitchen. We have managed to self-build it, which was a surprise to us all. My lovely husband built these cupboards himself. We have storage up here, and then we have some more up there. We have this lovely worktop, which we actually picked up from Ikea. I think it was around 65 pound. I think it complements the kitchen really well. Under here, we have a 25 liter water tank and waste tank, and we also store our pots and pans. In here, we have a bit of an everything drawer, cutlery, cups. This fridge here, we got from Amazon again. It's a 65 liter, and it works really well for our large family. From there, this is a new addition to the van. It's an espresso coffee machine, and it's gonna work wonders. We have running water here. Our trusty sink, again, from Amazon. These beautiful tiles that we get asked about all the time were from B&Q, would you believe? And they actually stick on. They were a slight faff to put on, but they work really, really well. We just absolutely love the color we've chosen for this kitchen. So we get asked quite a lot, where do we cook in our van? Now, it looks like we just have a worktop. We did think about installing a gas hob, but when we looked at the logistics, it would take the majority of the worktop up, and we just thought sometimes we won't use the hob. We just wanna prep sandwiches, and if we actually put a gas hob in, we just probably wouldn't have had much space to store. So we have two portable hobs, which we store under the bed. One just sits neatly here, and then we have another one for outside if we want to cook two things at once. We did a five-week trip around France, Spain, and Portugal, and we actually took the air fryer. The odd times we were sort of plugged into campsites, the air fryer worked perfectly. I like things, I know it sounds silly, but things like potatoes, that sort of thing, and we really enjoyed it. We actually went to Scotland a couple of weeks ago, and we did one week in Scotland, off-grid completely, no campsites, and we took the microwave, and it was actually a really good addition to the van. We actually don't need a microwave or an air fryer, but they worked well. The main cooking source is the hob because you can cook rice, pasta, that sort of thing, and it just works really, really well, and it is one of the main questions we get asked is, where do you cook? And that is where we cook. So this van sits seven. As standard, the van came with three seats in the front, and we've had these four seats professionally fitted. These row of four seats actually turn into a single bed, and if you stick around at the end, I will show you exactly how this turns into a single bed. So we have five children, and I want to show you exactly where we all sleep. So first off, we have two beds just up here. So up here, we have two singles for our two oldest children. We've created an extra space here for our son's feet because he's nearly six foot, and it works really, really well. So can you believe what I've just shown you for the extra foot space for our son? This is what it looks like from the outside. It looks like a kitchen cupboard, but actually, behind here is extra feet space for our son, and it works really, really well. We have this bed here. This is a European king. It turns into a fantastic day space. So say the weather's not very good or that we just want to chill, we put cushions all the way around the outsides, and we class it as a day bed where we play board games, Uno. We have popcorn. We've had movie nights. We've watched the Euros, and it's just been a fantastic way to chill. No, it's not just for me and my husband to lounge. We actually use it as a family of seven. Another question we get asked is, where do we go to the toilet in the van? This is our chemical toilet right here. It is a Fetford, which we picked up on Amazon, and it works really well for a family of seven. It actually lasts us a good two to three days before we have to empty it. Inside here, we also have got the space if we want to add a shower in the future. We also have storage either side, which is fantastic for toiletries and clothes, underwear, that sort of thing. And it works really, really well for our family of seven. Two common questions we get asked in this van is, one, how do you breathe in such a tin can? And two, does it get hot? First off, we have constant airflow in this van because we have two maxi air fans. We have one pushing the air out and one bringing the air in, and it just creates such a lovely airflow to the van. And two, we went to Portugal and it got up to 30 degrees Celsius. Yes, it was hot, but it was never unbearable. It wasn't unmanageable. And actually, it was quite enjoyable to have both maxi air fans bringing in such a lovely airflow. So there's your two questions answered. So we created this space up here. It's a double bed, and our two youngest children sleep here. And we did that by extending the cab. And what we've done is extended over and used an Ikea beam to secure it in place. And it works really, really well. We've got the row of four seats, and they do turn into a single bed. And let me show you how we do that. So this is it, fully set up, a single bed, perfect for adult or child, and it works absolutely amazing for our family. All our beds in this van all have USBs and a nightlight. We find this layout is perfect for our family of seven. We get asked quite a lot, do we have internet in our van? And of course we do. We cannot go in a van with five children without internet. So this is what we use. It's called Starlink. We've had no issues whatsoever with Starlink. We've been here, there, and everywhere in the middle of absolutely nowhere. And we've always got really, really good signal. I would highly recommend you get Starlink if you have a camper van. This is all powered by our solar panels right up there. And also we have a leisure battery, which is situated in our garage space. And here is our full electrical system. We can hook up and be fully off grid. This is where we store everything. You wouldn't believe how much we can fit in our garage space. It goes the full length and width of our king size bed. And in here we house all our clothes, dining set, shoes, laundry, everything. We even have a paddle board and a kayak in there. And it just is a great space where we can just shove everything in and have a nice, clean, tidy van. And now it's time to tell you how much this van costs. But first, coffee. So coffee done, let's get into it. So we bought our van for 9,500. It had 132,000 miles on the clock and it was a 2019 plate. The total cost of the van build was approximately 9,500, which brings the total cost of the van build and the van included to around 19,000 pound. I think that's a very good price for a seven berth off grid, self-converted camper van. We think it's fantastic. Now, what do you think? We'd love to know in the comments. Do you think 19,000 pounds is a good price to pay for a seven berth camper van? Let us know in the comments. Also, just a little side note, is we did everything in our power to keep this van underweight. So when we last had it weighed, it was ready to go for a five week trip to Portugal. We had a full fuel tank and water tank. We weighed it with all seven of us in and we came in at three, three, four, eight kilograms, which is underweight, fully loaded and ready to go.