I Turned an OLD Box Truck Into a LUXURY Tiny Home (Start To Finish)

In this video we are completely transforming a 25 year old box van from an old work vehicle into a luxury tiny home. Equipped with 800 watts of solar, a massive electrical system, and a full kitchen featuring an induction cooktop and microwave, this van is built for full-time living. But let's go back to the beginning because it certainly didn't start that way. This project began on Facebook Marketplace when I found this. A 10-foot box van. It was almost 25 years old and it had spent its life as a work vehicle similar to the box vans you see at U-Haul. It wasn't the prettiest but there were a few things that really caught my attention. The 10-foot box was big enough to build a camper while still being relatively easy to drive and park. It had a pass-through from the box into the cab and because it was a Ford E350, parts were readily available almost anywhere in the country. But for me, the biggest selling point was the price. These vans are cheap. And because I'd never done a van conversion before, this was all a big experiment. After a few days of going back and forth, I said screw it and bought the van. Yeah, we have a box truck. Holy cow, that's crazy. And looking back, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Before I could even think about building the inside, I had a much bigger problem. This had been a work van and after years of abuse and a leaking roof, sections of the wood and floors were completely rotten. So the first thing I needed to do was tear it all out and start fresh. I might not be saying this later, but it's actually kind of fun getting to destroy things. The boards were screwed directly into the metal frame of the box and after 25 years, most of the screws were seized. So instead of just unscrewing them, I basically had to pry each board up one by one. This process wasn't quite as bad as I thought and after a few hours, the floor was mostly out. Well, here is what the van is looking like. We do not have any floor. Once everything was removed, I got my first good look at the metal frame underneath. And this was actually a huge help for later when I started planning where to mount things like the heater, gray water tank, and entrance into the van. But there was still one problem. The wall separating the cab from the box. Getting this thing out was not fun at all. It was attached to both walls of the van, but after a few more hours of cutting and prying, it too finally came out. Well, that was a ton of work, but take a look behind me. I knew the pass-through would have been great for stealth camping, but I was building a camper and I wanted this to actually feel like one. I bought this RV door that we are going to be installing in the side so that we have another option for how to get in and out of the van. The hardest part was deciding where to put it. Once I cut the hole, there was no going back. Well, the door actually fits perfectly in between these two pieces of frame. I also wanted to build an entry step underneath it, and this location gave me the perfect spot to do both. Cutting a hole this big into the side of my van was terrifying. I measured everything multiple times, but eventually I just had to commit. All right, here comes the scary part. And just like that, we now have a massive hole in the side of the van. Wow. The step was my first ever welding project. I know it's not great, but I was decently happy with how it turned out. After bolting the door in and sealing everything up, we finally had a brand new entrance. The new door was a huge upgrade, but the inside still looked nothing like a camper. With most of the demolition finally done, I could actually start building, and first up was a new subfloor. There are so many different options of how you could assemble the subfloor in these box vans. Because the original floor had rotted from water, protecting the new one was a huge priority for me. I started with plywood, but I wrapped the underside with a giant RV underbelly tarp to keep water and road debris away from the wood. First section of floor is fully bolted down. Let's keep going. For the next layer, I built a simple one-inch frame and filled it with foam board insulation. After sealing the seams with foil tape, I finished everything off with a layer of half-inch Baltic birch plywood, and this gave me a solid insulated foundation for the rest of the build. The wheel wells were another challenge. Since they were made of thin steel, I used Reflectix to add insulation without taking up much space, then built plywood boxes around them. I also added a fuel pump access panel while everything was open up. A bunch of you guys recommended doing this and I'm so glad I listened because it ended up being one of the most useful additions to the entire build. And just like that, I finally had a brand new and insulated floor to build the camper on. Guys, I'm looking at this right now at these floors and I cannot believe I just did that three full days non-stop. Now, if you've ever driven a U-Haul, you've probably seen the roll-up doors that used in the back. My van had one too, but it had a few problems. First of all, this thing was loud. It rattled constantly and I knew that was going to drive me insane. And second, it just wasn't airtight. After putting so much effort into insulating the floor and eventually the roof and walls, I knew this door had to go. Okay, that is one way to do it. With the door gone, I built a new 2x4 frame and bolted it directly to the metal structure of the box. The foundation of my wall was three quarter inch plywood. I knew it needed to be strong because I eventually planned on mounting my air conditioning unit directly on the back. Since the plywood was going to be exposed to the outside, I gave it two coats of primer and three coats of paint to protect it. But even after all of that, leaving exposed plywood as the exterior of the van worried me. I wanted something that was actually designed to live outside and that's when I came across ACM. I ended up rebuilding the wall, this time covering the exterior with this aluminum composite material. I added a large RV compartment door and this would give me access to what would eventually be the storage space underneath the bed. It took some trial and error, but the finished wall was a massive upgrade from the roll-up door I started with. Of course, the only logical option here was to go with a max air fan. The fan that's named after me after all. The roof of my van is made from chemlight, which to my understanding is essentially a thin fiberglass reinforced plastic. Now it's surprisingly strong, but nowhere near as rigid as a metal roof. Oh my gosh guys, we did it! To prevent the roof from sagging, I ended up building a custom support system that tied into the roof's cross ribs. Cutting a hole like this was terrifying, but it was good practice for what was coming next. Just like with the door, I knew the windows weren't exactly going to help with stealth camping, but I wasn't building this to be stealthy. I wanted it to feel like a real camper and since I love camping in scenic places, I wanted to be able to see outside and enjoy the views. I had to estimate where the cabinets in the kitchen would eventually end up because once I started cutting, there was no going back. The walls of this van are made from gel-coated plywood, so cutting the openings was surprisingly straightforward. I secured them with Sikaflex 252, added the interior trim rings, and sealed around the outside to keep water out. I'm just scared. I'm just scared it's gonna like fall right out, but the whole wall of the box van is moving when I push on the window frame, so I think that's a pretty good sign. Thankfully, they seemed very secure. And with these new windows installed, the van was starting to look a lot less like a work truck and a lot more like a tiny home. From the beginning of this build, I knew I wanted a big electrical system that could keep me off-grid for days at a time, but if I was going to have that much power, I needed a lot of solar to recharge it. The problem was unlike a Sprinter, Transit, or ProMaster, you can't just order a roof rack for a box van and this meant I was going to have to build one myself. I decided to use extruded aluminum because it was lightweight, customizable, and didn't require any welding. The hardest part was figuring out how to actually attach it to the van. I ended up making custom mounting feet from 6061 aluminum angle and this meant measuring and drilling every single hole by hand. Getting the finished roof rack onto the top of the van was another challenge since the roof is so high off the ground. I installed four 200 watt Renogy solar panels and that gives me a total of 800 watts of solar. And since finishing the van, I've honestly been blown away by how well this system has worked. With the new roof rack, solar panels, windows, doors, and subfloor finished, the interior build could officially begin. So this is what the inside of the van currently looks like. Recently I installed some windows, we added this max air fan, and now we are going to get started building some framing, insulating the walls, and running wires for the electrical system. One of the biggest advantages of a box van is that the walls are already straight. I ended up using 2x2s instead of 2x4s to save some weight and attach them directly to the walls using Sneakaflex 252. Almost all of the framing is done on both sides here and then this gap up top we are going to leave and use for running some wires. I added a few screws to hold everything in place but since the walls of this van are so thin, I had to be extra careful not to screw all the way through the box. Next came the insulation. Here is the insulation we got. It's the same as what I used for the subfloor except that it is an inch and a half thick. So I have a list here of, I think it's like almost 25 different squares. I cut each piece to fit between the framing and because it was the same thickness as the 2x2s, everything ended up perfectly flush. I just finished cutting all of the insulation pieces but we are going to move all of these pieces inside the van and start test fitting them. But unfortunately I made one big mistake here. I installed the insulation way too early and as you'll see in just a second, once I started running the electrical wires, I had to pull almost all of it back out. The insulation is pretty much all complete on the inside. Yeah I'm really excited to have this done. Really excited to have the framing done and next we will move on to wiring and electrical. The pre-wiring definitely wasn't one of the exciting parts but it was one of the most important parts to this build. I had so many devices that would need power. Lights, fridge, a fan, water pump, outlets and USB-C chargers and since I didn't want any of these wires to be visible, I needed to get them behind the walls before I closed them up. The tricky part was that I was basically wiring a van that didn't fully exist yet. I hadn't completely finalized the inside layout so I had to plan ahead and make my best guess at where everything would eventually go. And boom! Our van is all cleaned up. Today we are moving on to the floor, finally covering up this plywood. For the flooring, I decided to use two different materials. One for the main living area and one for the garage. So after a little bit of trimming, I was able to get this kind of garage floor just laid out. For the living area, I went with a vinyl roll. It came as one huge sheet which meant I could lay it out and trim it to the exact shape of the van using an exacto knife. All right guys, this piece actually fits so well. I might have to do a little bit of trimming just like in the front corners but honestly it looks pretty good. I used floor adhesive to glue it down and then went over the entire thing with a heavy roller to make sure it was properly secured. For the garage area, I went with a heavy duty coin flooring. This stuff is significantly more durable than the vinyl I used up front. Since this area is going to be filled with tools, gear, and whatever else I end up throwing back here, I needed to make sure it was fit for the job of protecting the subfloors. I spent what felt like hours and hours doing trim work to hold everything down. This was one of the most painstaking parts of the build since everything had to be custom made. But the finished result was a floor that looked clean, durable, and ready for use. Before closing up the walls, I wanted to install one of the biggest systems in the van and that was the 12 volt AC unit. I had actually planned for this when I built the rear wall so I left a dedicated spot for it. I considered mounting it underneath the van but with the gray water tank, entry step, and heater all taking up space underneath, the back wall made the most sense. I built a custom mounting plate on the outside to spread out the weight then ran the refrigerant lines through the walls to the indoor unit. All right guys, it is bolted up. This thing feels super solid. I was testing it. I can actually fully hang from it and I'm not super heavy but still I think that is a good sign if it can support my whole body weight. Drilling through the finished rear wall was definitely painful but it felt super secure which was exactly what I wanted. One of the most exciting parts of the build was next and that was finally getting started on the bed. I wanted to keep the space underneath it open for tools, gear, and storage. So instead of building a traditional bed frame, I decided to make it completely floating using Ikea bed supports. I am going to be adding 2x4s kind of in between the framing here and then we'll be attaching these to our 2x4s that are bolted to the sides of the van and that will make up our bed. The biggest challenge was figuring out how high to mount it. Higher meant more storage underneath but less headroom in the bed. Lower gave me more room in bed but less storage space underneath. These feel super great. The weight of the bed is going to be distributed between all three of them but even still like I feel totally confident putting all of my weight on just one. And this is another place where the box van design helped me out. I could use the walls themselves to help support parts of the inside just like this bed. Before I could close up the walls I had one last thing to finish and that was the insulation. You guys can see up here in the front of the van we have quite the mess. So now we are going to work on taking all of these pieces and trying to fit them back where they belong. Unfortunately I had installed a lot of it way too early so after running the wiring and adding the bed I had to pull a bunch of it back out to modify it. It took a little bit of time but I did eventually get all of the insulation back into the walls. I want to move on to something I have been meaning to do for a long time and that is insulate the roof of this van. The roof was the last area I hadn't insulated yet but I knew the thin material could transfer a ton of heat into the van. Just like the walls I filled the spaces between the roof ribs using foam board. I then went around the entire van using spray foam to fill all the awkward gaps around the edges. Take a look at the walls. They look absolutely crazy in here. It is such a mess in this van right now but these are the final steps in getting this van ready for installing the walls. After a whole lot of scraping and cleanup the van was completely insulated. But this is the aftermath of my work over the past couple of days. We are going to do some cleanup here and try and fix this disaster. I decided to use half inch plywood for the walls. It was a little heavier than a quarter inch but I wanted the extra strength. This is so exciting guys because the first section of wall is complete. One wall down, two more to go. The difficult part was getting everything to fit. Each piece had to be measured and cut around windows, electrical boxes, and switches. And because I was doing all of this by hand there was definitely some trial and error. Now besides the fact that it's very messy in here right now I think this is by far the best this van has looked since I bought it. Of course we still have the sealing to do but it is starting to look a lot more like a home. Even once the panels were screwed into the framing I still had another problem. I needed to find a way to seal the seams between the pieces of plywood. I originally tried wood filler and sealant but neither gave me the finish I wanted. Eventually I found that bondo seemed to work best. So I filled every seam and screw hole then spent I think almost two days sanding, filling, more sanding, and trying to get these walls ready for paint. Oh my gosh take a look at this guys. Dusty, sandy, wowza. It was a ridiculous amount of work for something that would eventually just get painted over but I wanted the finished walls to look like one solid surface. I honestly don't think it's safe to be in my van right now without a respirator but just went through and sanded everything down and it's starting to look a little bit better but I finally feel like the van is getting really close to finally being able to paint the walls. After finishing the walls I took a break from the build to visit my family for the holidays and when I came back I found a nice surprise waiting for me. A giant puddle of water on the floor. At this point I had already tried resealing the roof four different times and none of them had worked. I was so frustrated that I actually started thinking about just giving up and selling the van but after putting so much work into it I decided to give it one more shot. I completely stripped the roof down and started from scratch and of course this all happened in the middle of winter. I spent eight hours a day working in an unheated shop with temperatures around 20 degrees, doing fiberglass repairs, applying fresh sealants, and covering the entire perimeter with heavy duty Eternabond tape. To be honest it was pretty miserable and I don't quite know how I got the motivation to do this. Now I still can't say for certain that this van is 100% leak free. We haven't really got a hard rainstorm yet but I feel better about it and today we are moving on to the ceiling. For the ceiling of my van I am going to be using some cedar planks. They were lightweight which was important because I didn't want to add unnecessary weight this high up in the van. So part of my plan here was to do a bunch of alternating lengths so that the ends of the cedar planks don't all end at one point and form a solid line. Even though the cedar is naturally rot resistant, I coated both sides with polyurethane for some extra protection. After everything I'd been through with the leaking roof I wasn't taking any chances. Let me tell you guys though, cutting all of the cedar smells amazing. And to attach these cedar planks I'm going to be using these metal beams that I have in the van. Now we'll see if this idea I have actually works but that's the plan for now. I then shifted my focus back to the walls. With all of the bondo and sanding finished it was finally time for paint. I gave the walls two coats of primer followed by three coats of paint. Thankfully this part was so much quicker and easier than all the bondo work I had to do before. Next it was back to working on the bed. I cut two pieces of plywood for the platform and added ventilation holes underneath the mattress to help prevent moisture buildup. Well if my hole saw wasn't worn in yet it definitely is now. That was a lot of drilling. This ended up taking me about three hours. Let's go test fit it in the van. Then I built a divider between the living area and the garage underneath the bed. So now that we have the main piece cut I need to make a couple more cuts to get this piece ready. I also added a small pass through so I could grab things from the garage without having to go outside. All right sweet it's totally fine. It's not the biggest hole of course but easy enough in case I need to grab stuff. I could not be more happy with how this turned out. I think it looks so cool. Of course the ends will just be there to support and hold the mattress up but then this lower section being cut out just makes it so much easier to get up into the bed. Next came the cabinets and this was easily one of the most time-consuming parts of the entire build. Over the past couple days I have been working on getting a bunch of measurements and putting together plans for my cabinets. I had never built cabinets before so I had to figure everything out from the dimensions and face frames to the doors and hinges. So last night I was able to get pretty much all the pieces made for one of the cabinets but today we are going to start by putting this first cabinet together. I built all of the cabinets myself in my garage including the shaker style doors. I relied on the $50 table saw I found on Facebook marketplace and while it's definitely not the nicest tool I have it got the job done. This project absolutely fried my brain. I spent hours trying to get every measurement and alignment just right. Well here are the doors. I still need to glue them up but I'm at hour 12 today of working here in the garage and I am exhausted. It's after 10 p.m. Out of all of the different parts to building things, I think the finish work is probably my least favorite. Sanding, prepping things for paint. It's just a slow and tedious process. I sanded everything with both 120 and 220 grit sandpaper but I feel good about the point. I got them to and now we are going to start the process of applying the first coat of primer. Not gonna lie it feels like I have been sanding and painting forever trying to get the face frames and the cabinet doors ready for paint and after a full day of work yesterday I think I am finally ready to start applying paint. But wow am I ready to be done with this. Once everything was finished I mounted the cabinets directly into the roof ribs using plus nuts and bolts. This gave them enough strength to hold not only all of my food but even a small microwave. Well we did it but not without some struggle. I think the thing I'm most excited about is just the fitment here. We got a tiny gap but I mean it's maybe a sixteenth of an inch or so. The whole process took about two weeks but seeing these go up completely transformed the van. I think one of the coolest parts was that I had no idea how to build cabinets when I started. But just like with every other part of this build if you're willing to try new things without the fear of messing up it's amazing how much you can learn. Alright guys well I am absolutely exhausted. It has been a long two weeks of cabinet building but everything is mounted. I cleaned up the van and I want to show you how it all looks. Ready? Let's go take a look. And here are the cabinets all mounted painted and installed. One of my biggest goals with this van was being able to work from the road so I wanted to build a workspace that could actually function like a real desk. And this is kind of my vision for the bench seat. We'll have a little storage space and charging station up here on the side and then underneath the seat I'm planning to have a pull-out drawer for storage. This is going to be one of the end pieces. So that piece is going to go like this. I built a simple bench sheet from half inch plywood and added a drawer underneath for my dry flush toilet. Sweet that actually fits pretty well. The outlet lines up pretty much perfectly in our little cubby here. And then so we'll have that cubby for charging and then this storage space down here for whatever. Now that we know our bench seat fits pretty nicely here, before we can move on to installing handles, door latches, and drawer slides, I need to get this thing painted. For the desk I mounted a butcher block on heavy-duty folding hinges. It ends up working as both my table but also a cover-up for the pass-through to underneath the bed. And finally I added a monitor on an extending arm. And that is going to go right here in this area kind of in between the bed and eventually where the kitchen is going to be. I can pull the screen out when I'm working and tuck it away when I'm not. This was a huge part of the build because now I had a place not only to work but also to sit and eat meals when on the road. I don't have a shower in this van which is surprisingly a massive point of controversy between van lifers but having a toilet was a must for me. Before I built out the rest of the garage, I installed a heater. While most van builds use diesel heaters, I went with a gasoline heater from Velet. I was able to run it directly off my van's fuel tank, eliminating the need to carry a second type of fuel. And luckily my E350 already had an unused fuel pickup line which made tapping into the tank insanely easy. But the heater left me with an awkward space in the garage. This whole area is a little bit awkward with the wheel well, the cover for the fuel fill up, but I'm thinking what I'll do eventually is build some type of storage system here in the back and hopefully that will help make this space a little bit more usable. I built a custom storage box around the heater and added mounts for my Milwaukee packout system along with extra cubbies underneath for gear. This ended up being one of my favorite parts of the garage because it combines the heater and ducting with a ton of organized tool storage. Since I plan on traveling with this van, I wanted to bring enough tools to actually attempt to fix things on the road if something does go wrong. And this storage box gave me an organized way to do so. Next came the project I was probably most intimidated by, and that was the electrical system. We kind of have two parts to the electrical system. The first is the wiring diagram, and that is figuring out all of the different components that I need. Fuses, the wire sizes, all of these different pieces and how they're all going to get connected together. Now the second part is taking all of these components and figuring out how to build them into a box. And it's just been so much work to try and figure out the arrangement of everything and how to fit these big components into a neat, compact, and organized box. I had never wired anything before so I spent over a month researching, planning, and trying to figure out how everything was supposed to work. I designed and built a completely custom electrical box to organize everything, and planning this out was so hard that I think it actually gave me headaches. I had heavy batteries, a big inverter, a DC-DC charger, and dozens of other components that all needed a place to go. Since I had never done any electrical work before, there was a massive learning curve. But once I had the plan together, the actual construction was surprisingly fun. In fact, it might have been my favorite part of the build. Let me turn these lights on, let's see. Oh my gosh. No way guys, it's working. The finished system has 640 amp hours of battery capacity, a 3000 watt inverter charger, a 60 amp DC-DC charger, and a 60 amp MPPT solar charge controller. And I have a full distribution panel to organize all of my 12 volt fuses and 120 volt breakers. I think the coolest part of building the system wasn't even having power. It was proving to myself that I could build something I originally thought I'd need a professional to do. At this point, we were getting really close. We had a fully functioning electrical system, a bed, a workspace, and the van looked completely different from the wet moldy work van we started with. It has been a ridiculous amount of work to get the van to where it is today. We just have one big project left, and that is going to be building the kitchen. I know building this kitchen is going to be a ton of work, so I'm trying to mentally prepare myself for this one. The basic kitchen frame was pretty straightforward, but the custom face frame and shaker style doors were a completely different story. Just like with the overhead cabinets, I built everything by hand in my tiny garage using the same Facebook Marketplace table saw. Between cutting plywood, assembling, sanding, bondo work, painting, installing hardware, and building all the drawers, this took me about two weeks working almost non-stop. Next came the butcher block. I had to cut it to size and cut every opening for the sink, faucet, soap dispenser, and induction cooktop. The butcher block is sanded and clean, and now we are going to transform it from this raw piece of wood into a nice looking kitchen countertop. Being an indecisive person definitely didn't help, and I think choosing a wood stain took me three attempts. And just when it seemed like I was getting close, I still had to figure out all of the plumbing. I completely underestimated how confusing this would be. I made what felt like a hundred trips to the hardware store trying to find the right fittings. But eventually everything did come together. No way. And when it did, we had running water, a filtered drinking water tap, a fridge and freezer, tons of drawer storage, and a two burner induction cooktop. And with the microwave up above, this kitchen might honestly be nicer than the house I was renting when I built the van. At this point, you might think the build was finally done. I certainly did. So much so that I actually started traveling in the van. But four days into my first trip, I noticed something was wrong. I've been getting some type of burning smell. I'm not sure if it's oil. That thing is covered in oil. It's an old Ford. I knew something was going to happen eventually. I'm just trying to figure out what to do next. The leak was coming from the head gasket. It wasn't a complete failure yet, but it was bad enough that I didn't want to keep driving. From sitting on the beach to sitting in traffic. Gosh, this is depressing. So my travel plans were immediately put on hold four days into my trip. Things got even worse when the mechanic quoted me $13,000 for an engine replacement. There was no way I was paying for that. But over the past year and a half, I had learned how to build an entire home inside this van. I had never done an engine swap before, but I figured if I could learn everything else, I could learn this too. So I bought a remanufactured engine and did the swap myself. It took a few weeks, but eventually, the van was back on the road. This time, ready for travel. When I look back at this van the day I bought it, it's honestly kind of hard to believe it's the same vehicle. What once started as a beat-up work van with a rotten floor, a leaking roof, and almost nothing inside, has transformed into the perfect little tiny home that I built completely myself. When I first started, I had no idea how to build a van. I had never built cabinets, never done electrical, plumbing, welding, or an engine swap. And there were so many times I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. When you take on a new challenge, you're probably going to mess things up, you might make mistakes, and maybe even have to build things twice. But that's okay, that's part of the process. Because every mistake teaches you something, and every time you learn or work through a new challenge, you become a little bit more capable than you were before. If there's anything I hope you take away from this video, it's that you don't have to be an expert to try something new. And if you are willing to try, you might just be surprised at what you can do.