Since the beginning of January, we’ve come a long way in the van. In terms of conversion anyway, kinda, maybe? Well to me it feels like a long way. Not as far as I’d hoped but we’re making ground all the same. Judge for yourselves, my guys.
Do you know what they don’t tell you at the beginning of a van conversion? How much F**king cleaning there is! And how much it costs to get different things to clean different bits. There is a lack of tutorials on what to do and what to buy and best things blah blah so going into this blind cost me an unnecessary amount of money and a HUGE load of time. I’m talking like 3/4 weeks where I would get home after work and slave away for the hour and a half I had before it was dark. My weekends consisted of cleaning and I don’t think I had a day off for a good month, maybe 2? After plenty of elbow grease, metal scrunchies, and blue roll. The van was FINALLY stripped and cleaned. The walls were bare and white. All bits of rust were wiped down, treated with a cleaner then blasted with some Hammerite. God was I happy to see the back of this stage.
From then, things slowed down slightly. I bought some bits ready to insulate in the future and minor bits I could do now. So I have managed to fully insulate and tidy the front cab and it came out pretty beautifully if I do say so myself. Considering I had to shape and cut things in a tiny space it honestly looks pretty good. With some added RGB strips and a mat from Vanmats.co.uk, I am incredibly pleased with it. We did run into a snag where the cab was flooding because water was pooling near the wheel arch. After hours of searching the web and asking in forums, nobody seems to know WHERE the water was getting in from and nobody had a real solution. So we had to go with most people’s simple solution of “Drill a hole under where the water is pooling.” As it turns out that is actually probably the only fix and the water only drains onto the wheel so no harm no foul.
Once I was happy with the cab it was time to bite the bullet and attempt to fit the window. AHHHHH. Now, up until now I was pretty confident and pleased with how everything was coming along, but this? This scared me. Cutting a big hole in the side of your van is a very daunting idea. But with the help of my Dad (who am I kidding, he did most of it). We gut that fish and left a gaping cavity in the side of the van. Promptly, we got the window up and into the space. Easy enough. Nailed it. Or so I thought… Leaks. Not sure how in the hell a huge gap produced at the top of the window after we really dumped a load of sealant/glue around the whole thing? Balls. I suggested putting sealant at the gap from the outside. My dad thought it better to seal the trimmed edge from the inside. I could see a problem with this but a lot of back and forth ended with doing it his way. As per. After a whole week and STILL having leaks. Turns out I was right. The water was still entering from the outside and pooling between the outer and inner sealant. A bit of trickery, sealing the outside and the problem had now been solved! Thank god. I do have good ideas sometimes… Oh and I also sound deadened the van so that’s another thing ticked off, no point going in-depth on that because it wasn’t very exciting tbh.
Since then though it’s been very very slow. The next step is to fit a shelf above the seats, then fit the other external parts then, and finally, insulate. This is all taking longer than anticipated due to time and the fact that we took a lovely week away to Lanzarote for Bethan’s birthday. We had an amazing time for our first holiday away and it was definitely needed. The winter sunshine re-energized us both to the max, but it also made us realise that we need to get out there, see the world and explore. Work-life is not for us (I wish that could be a thing). ANYWAY – the point being, not only did we lose time but it also made us pretty skint. So I’m hoping that when payday hits the end of March we will be able to afford the insulation and get that DONE. As soon as that’s done the van is once again useable! Hooray! Adventures can continue and we can have random weekends away wherever we want.
My plan was to make this blog post short but alas I sort of got carried away with myself there so following this I will be jotting up another post relatively soon as I want to create a post “Why Vanlife?” I will talk about why we’re doing this, what it means to us, what we want from it, etc. So a much more in-depth post to our thinking behind this whole lifestyle shift! That post will then be a sort of benchmark post where we will ask interviewees similar questions to find out their why. So it’s all fascinating so keep your eyes peeled.
OHHH and we might have our first podcast guest featuring in April so you definitely want to tune in for that one!
Peace! A and B x
Vanlife - Welsh Wanderers 