I bought my van on a Tuesday, which felt like the wrong day to make a life-changing decision.
Here’s the thing about converting a vehicle into a home: nobody tells you that the first month will be spent mostly sitting in parking lots, staring at the empty metal shell, wondering if you’ve made a catastrophic mistake. I used to think van life was about freedom and sunsets and waking up near mountains. Turns out, it’s also about learning the difference between 12-volt and 120-volt systems at 2 AM while your hands smell like expanding foam insulation. The forums say you need roughly $5,000 to $15,000 for a decent conversion, give or take, depending on whether you’re the kind of person who can handle power tools without ending up in an emergency room. I am not that person, but I learned anyway. The smell of sawdust became my new cologne. My friends stopped asking when I’d be done because the answer was always “maybe next week,” which we all knew meant never.
Wait—maybe I should back up. The actual building process isn’t romantic. You’ll spend days on insulation alone, stuffing foam boards between metal ribs, trying to create something called an “R-value” that I still don’t fully understand. Honestly, the YouTube tutorials make it look easier than it is.
The Electrical System Will Humble You More Than Any Philosophy Class
I thought I was reasonably intelligent until I tried to wire a solar panel to a charge controller to a battery bank to an inverter. The electrons don’t care about your confidence. They follow laws—Ohm’s Law, specifically, which I had to relearn from high school physics with a growing sense of existential dread. You need to calculate your power consumption: how many watts your laptop uses, your phone, your lights, maybe a small fridge if you’re feeling ambitious. I made a spreadsheet. It had colors. It was supposed to help. Instead, it revealed that I wanted to run more devices than my 200-watt solar setup could reasonably handle unless I was parked in the Mojave Desert during summer solstice, which seemed impractical for year-round living. The battery—probably a lithium iron phosphate one if you can afford it, which I barely could—becomes your new god. You worship it. You check its voltage the way other people check their bank accounts. My first battery cost $800 and I treated it like a newborn infant for six months until I realized batteries are actually pretty resilient and I was being ridiculous.
The wiring itself is tedious. Strip the insulation, crimp the connectors, seal everything because moisture is the enemy of electrical systems and vans leak in ways you won’t discover until the first rainstorm. I definately blew a fuse or twelve while learning.
Building Furniture That Won’t Kill You When You Hit the Brakes
Van furniture has to be lightweight but also strong enough to withstand sudden stops, which means you can’t just use whatever lumber looks pretty at Home Depot. I built a bed frame from pine boards—probably not the best choice, but it was cheap and I was tired of spending money. The frame had to be exactly 74 inches long to fit the width of the van, with storage underneath because every cubic inch matters when your entire life fits in 60 square feet. I installed drawers on slides, which seemed clever until I realized I’d measured wrong and they only opened halfway. I kept them anyway. You learn to live with your mistakes in a van; there’s nowhere to hide them. The countertop in my “kitchen”—really just a two-foot section with a portable stove—is made from plywood with a walnut veneer that I thought would look sophisticated but mostly just shows every water stain and coffee ring from the past two years. I should probably sand it down and refinish it, but I guess it tells a story now, or that’s what I tell myself when visitors look at it with poorly concealed concern.
Weight distribution matters more than aesthetics, which I learned after my first long drive when everything I owned shifted to the back and the van started handling like a drunk elephant.
The walls got cedar planking because I read somewhere that it smells nice and regulates moisture, and honestly, that’s true—it does smell nice, in a way that makes you forget you’re living in what is technically a commercial cargo van. I added windows, which required cutting holes in metal with a jigsaw, an activity that reccomends having good insurance and perhaps a therapist on speed dial. But natural light changes everything. Without windows, you’re living in a cave on wheels. With them, you’re living in a tiny mobile cabin that sometimes smells like your portable toilet needs emptying, but at least you can see the trees outside while you contemplate your choices. The curtains I sewed myself from fabric I found at a thrift store, which sounds charming but really just means they’re uneven and don’t quite block out headlights from passing trucks at night. I’ve gotten used to it. You get used to most things, eventually, even the parts that would’ve seemed impossible back when you were sitting in your apartment wondering what freedom tastes like. Turns out it tastes like instant coffee and uncertainty, with occasional moments of profound beauty when you wake up somewhere new and remember why you gutted a van in the first place.
