Ready to Hit the Road!

When Ginny and I decided to quit our jobs and convert a van to live and travel in, I knew that it would be difficult at times but I really underestimated the number of challenges and the overall degree of difficulty of the project. We’re resourceful, quick learners and fairly handy so I figured there would be some roadblocks but that we generally had it in the bag. Whoops, I was sorely mistaken on that one! We did look at other options to upfitting the van ourselves such as buying a used campervan or having someone do the conversion for us. The used campervans weren’t quite up to Ginny’s “look and feel” standards and we had three issues with having someone else convert the van for us: 1) most van upfitters have been totally slammed and couldn’t fit our build in until 2022 at the earliest! 2) the cost of the van conversion was more than we wanted to spend and 3) we weren’t sure if someone else could create exactly what we were envisioning for the van we would be spending the next couple years traveling around North America. 

Having run out of other options, we decided to undertake the van conversion ourselves which was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying! Back in April, we started the process by purchasing a 2019 Ford Transit High Roof Extended van from a used car dealer in LA. The van had been an Amazon Prime delivery van and came complete with running boards, shelving and a steel partition between the cab and the cargo area — and lots of white patches covering the areas where the Amazon logos had been! We thought we might like to keep some of these features but everything except for the running boards ended up getting tossed. In June, we quit our jobs, sold our house and drove cross country with our dog Scout to stay with my folks in Massachusetts while we completed the van conversion. 

When we arrived in Massachusetts in July, we hit our first big torrential downpour and learned that our van had leaks! Ugh! We brought the van to an auto body shop and they confirmed what we had kind of suspected...that the van had been in an accident as part of the roof had been replaced. So the first step in the build was definitely fixing our leaks as a dry van was a must. It took multiple visits to the auto body shop but we eventually ended up with a leak-free van. We spent the next few weeks planning our build, insulating the van, installing windows and starting to build our electrical and water systems. It was a particularly challenging part of the build as it felt as though we weren’t really accomplishing much. Cutting huge holes in the van to install the windows was lots of fun though!

One of the biggest challenges we faced early in the build was working together. Ginny and I hadn’t completed such a big project together so it took a while for us to learn each other’s working styles, despite being together for 24 years. Ginny is a meticulous planner and researcher while I am more action-oriented and am quick to jump into a task to get ‘er done. These two work styles often clashed and we had a number of rough days in our first month of building the van. We worked on merging our work styles to leverage the best parts of each approach and by the end of the build we were a strong team and our work product had significantly improved. Specialization was one technique we used effectively as Ginny took on electrical and propane and I took on carpentry and plumbing. Working together taught us a lot about each other and we now feel that we’re better equipped to take on other big projects in the future. 

The biggest godsend of the whole build was our trip up to New Hampshire where my aunt Caitlin and her husband Dennis hosted us for five weeks while we built our cabinets. Dennis is a retired finish carpenter and he was incredibly helpful in teaching, guiding and even constructing some of our cabinets. He’s got a dedicated woodshop that we worked from while we were there and we learned to do DADO cuts, build cabinets (uppers and lowers), construct and install counters and many other tricks of the trade. It was a true master class in carpentry and we’re so grateful to Dennis for sharing his knowledge and having the patience with us as we learned and made numerous mistakes along the way!

In the last couple weeks, we’ve completed the finishing touches on the van to include installing the flooring, finishing the propane system, testing the water and electrical systems and installing our composting toilet. There were a few hiccups in there including frying our solar controller, having our water pump die on us and fixing numerous leaks throughout the van. It’s been a long journey but the van is ready to go so we’ve packed it all up and will be hitting the road tomorrow! Our initial travels will take us down the east coast from Massachusetts to Washington, DC, with stops in CT, Brooklyn and Philly, before we head west to California. We can’t wait for the journey to begin!