To Build a Home

In our last post, we showed some "before" pictures of our van as it was when we bought it, but here they are again to jog your memory.

The setup was pretty basic, and unfortunately did not allow much flexibility for improvement. However, we had a few ideas in mind for turning our house on wheels into a home. To start, we had to pick up all sorts of camping and kitchen supplies to keep us going on our trip. Once all put away in our rear storage, it ended up looking something like this.

As for the main "living area," we had alot of work ahead of us. We started by covering the floor with a layer of stick-on vinyl tiles. The difference was instantly noticeable: the old rough wooden floor gave a shabby appearance to the whole thing, and the new covering mad a world of difference. Holly, crafty as ever, also put up some adhesive tile patterned covering on parts of the wall. We also picked up some bamboo baskets, and glued some magnets to the back to be able to stick them to the wall. A new set of bedding completed the effect.

We were also both frustrated by the lack of shelving and storage we had in the van. Sure, we had room for storage bins under the bed, but since it was so low to the ground, we didn't have quite the capacity we wanted. So lastly, we put together a folding desk out of lumber, painted it over, and fastened it to the floor of the van. In the end, it turned out better than we had hoped! 

And to put to rest the last of our storage woes, we managed to fit an old storage shelf in behind the drivers seat to keep our various electronics, toiletries, and other knick-knacks we would like to keep within an arms reach.

And that's about everything! It took a lot of work but it turned out better than we could have hoped and we are really proud of ourselves! Now all that's left is to take her out on the road and see where she'll take us!