Tomorrow we are finally pulling out of Nate's parents driveway to begin full time van life.
But before we do, we wanted to give you a complete tour of our new home and show you how everything works.
We're Kara and Nate.
After traveling internationally for the last four years and visiting 100 countries, 2020 brought us back to the United States of America, where we purchased a converted Sprinter van that will be our full-time home as we travel across the US exploring our home country.
This is a 2014 Mercedes Sprinter van.
It's the high roof model, which means that we can both comfortably stand up inside.
And it's the 170 inch wheelbase, which is the longer of the two, the shorter one being 144.
This van started as just a regular white cargo van and it was completely converted from scratch by its previous owners, Ashley and Adam, who we purchased the van from about a month ago.
So everything that you see inside the van, they get 90% of the credit for.
But with that said, we have made several changes and updates to fit our lifestyle.
And so we'll show you those along the way.
I guess we'll start with the cab and work our way back.
It's pretty basic up here.
The previous owner did install a backup camera which is kind of an eyesore here on the dash, but it's pretty nice because it's hard to see out the back when there's this wall right here.
We have made two big modifications to the cab that we're really excited about.
We have installed a swivel underneath the passenger seat, so now this chair can turn all the way around, which will be great when we're parked, because before the only place to sit in the van was in the back, but if the back was converted into a bed, there was nowhere to sit unless you wanted to be facing the front, like we were driving, and We bought this lap desk.
Never thought I'd be a lap desk kind of person, but here we are.
And I have a feeling that I'm going to be doing a lot of editing in this position.
So this is kind of like a second office space.
I'm so excited about this setup.
Also, we've installed this headliner shelf because there was so much wasted space up here, and when you're living in a place this tiny, you really need to take advantage of every single inch.
But we loved how open it felt in the cab, and so we were a little hesitant, but I am so glad we went with it because we have so much more storage space now.
Right now we just have our window covers up here, but I am sure it will be full of stuff in no time.
Oh, come on.
What happened?
Oh man.
It can't be easy.
It was totally worth all the effort it took to install.
This area right here is one of the places that we've done the most work.
When we bought this van, this was just a big open closet with a small safe down here in the middle, and that safe didn't hold all of our expensive electronics that we were traveling with and we needed a more convenient solution.
So, like on that show, extreme home makeover, where the host had that secret project that he was always working in the background on.
That's kind of what this has been for me.
I've installed a safe that's about three times the size and completely customized the inside.
So I bought some of that rubber mat that they use for workout floors and I created dividers to hold all of our electronics securely so nothing would bump around while we were driving.
So up here on this top shelf we have our zoom lens, we have a place for both of our computers.
The second shelf is completely devoted to all of our drone stuff, and then down here on the bottom we have a place for both of our big cameras.
When we're not using them, it's really easy to access our batteries so we can charge those, and then also a spot to hold our gopro.
But probably what i'm most excited about is i was able to get a power strip in the back.
So i actually drilled a hole through the bottom of the safe in order to get that power strip in.
So now not only is the safe keeping everything secure, but it's just a place where all of our electronics can live.
They can charge, because i knew if every time we left the van, i had to like gather everything and then put it in the safe, we would never do it.
And so it would be pointless to have a safe in here.
But now all of our electronics just have a home inside of that closet.
So we didn't want the safe to be the first thing that you saw when you walked into the van.
So we installed this closet door to cover it up, and then we used that as an opportunity to hang a mirror for Kara.
We couldn't find one that fit this area perfectly, so we had to buy three separate ones and put them together, which kind of worked.
As long as I don't mind looking at my body in three separate sections.
It's kind of like being at a carnival in one of those fun houses where the mirror warps your body.
And then down here where the old safe used to be, we've installed a drawer.
This was one of like, the big things that we learned when we took that little test trip for a few days was that we had no place to store our pots and pans without stacking them on top of everything else.
So like if you wanted to get a cutting board out of a drawer, you had to take every pot and pan out.
I literally have one of our frying pans in the cabinet with our bedding.
It was like sheets, blanket, frying pan.
So I love my drawer.
And then we just left this bottom area down here the same, because we thought it'd be nice just to be able to like, kick off our shoes and throw them somewhere and
I think this will just kind of turn into like this catch-all storage area.
Kara's vacuum cleaner's already made it right here.
Look how tiny it is.
If you've watched many of our accommodations videos the last few years, you may have noticed that bathroom tours have kind of become a thing.
Definitely the best view from the toilet I've ever had.
So I'm very excited to give you a tour of our bathroom.
The toilet is in the shower.
So it's a trash can.
This is a nature's head composting toilet.
And if you saw our last video, you'll know that the liquids go in these front two holes and empty into this tank.
And when it's full, but not too full.
I feel like we shouldn't have filled it up all the way.
Oh, there's pee.
We take this out. and dump it somewhere.
And then for the solids, you open up this back compartment with this little lever, do your solids in there, close it and then stir it around a few times with this thing, which stirs up the peat moss that is down there, which literally decomposes any of the solids that go in there.
Then the previous owners told us that in about three weeks, if we're living in here full time, that should fill up and then you dump it in a trash bag.
And since it's compost, you can just put it in any trash can.
And then on the other side of the toilet There's a vent with a fan that is sucking all of the air out, and so it's supposed to never smell bad.
So we've heard.
We haven't actually put the back compartment to use yet.
Oh, and then for the front part when you're done, you spray this vinegar, and that's supposed to reduce the smell as well.
But just in case, I bought some poopery.
And then on this side is our shower.
We haven't actually taken a proper shower in here yet.
I accidentally showered my clothes on the other day.
But we have a 40 gallon water tank and a two and a half gallon water heater.
So if we want to take a hot water shower only we'll have to turn it on, get wet, turn it off, lather up, turn it back on, rinse and we have a five gallon gray water tank beneath us.
So this is the tank, and when it fills up, you just have to crawl under here and empty it out, with your face not so close.
At least it's not the toilet.
Yeah, I've been sitting in there for a little while.
Across from the bathroom is our kitchen.
We have a two burner stove that runs off a 10 gallon propane tank under the sink.
So there's our propane tank.
We have some cleaning stuff here and behind this tank, you can take it out.
Can you see it?
We've just installed this water purifier back here.
So our water tank?
We just fill up with the hose pipe and regular hose pipe, water comes out of the sink.
And then if we want purified water, we use this little scotch.
The previous owners didn't have one of these and like they're fine.
They're still alive, but we just didn't want to have to worry about the water that we were drinking.
We also installed this paper towel holder and we got the one that has this resistance.
So our paper towels weren't always unraveling, but unfortunately that didn't really work as planned.
So we've made this makeshift. rope weight thing that works for now.
We have three drawers in the kitchen and all of our drawers have these leather tabs instead of handles.
And we weren't sure how we felt about these at first, but then I realized I'm not going to have bruises on my legs for the rest of our van life from knocking them on the handles.
So these are really great.
We also have these locks on all the drawers, so when we're driving, these aren't just sliding in and out all the time.
In this drawer I have my blender, a cup and our melamine dishes that look nice but they won't break.
In this drawer I have one more smoothie cup, some kitchen towels, our coffee cups, our wine cups and some cutting boards.
This is the drawer where I was trying to fit all of those other pots and pans.
And I'm just so happy with how clean and easy this is now.
Still getting used to this.
In this drawer, we have our cutlery and just all of our other kitchen tools.
We've also put a little hook right here for a hand towel.
And, just like the shower, there's a separate five gallon gray water tank underneath the van on this side that catches all of the water coming from the sink.
And last but not least, is our fridge.
There's not much in here right now, mostly chocolate and bubbly water.
It has a little freezer compartment.
It's probably not what we would have chosen.
We would like something a little bit bigger, but it wasn't really worth redoing this entire cabinet just for a little bit bigger fridge.
But it'll do for now.
And continuing in the kitchen, this is our main pantry cabinet.
I have this double spice rack that's holding all my spices in place so they don't fall over when we're driving.
One thing that we learned on our test trip is that pretty much every time i open this up, something fell on my face, and so this basket has solved that problem, at least for now, and this side of the kitchen has kind of become my favorite corner of the whole van.
The previous owners had a tv here, and we don't watch a lot of tv, and we were nervous that if there was one in here then we would start watching it all the time.
So we took that out, And instead we put this beautiful hanging plant right here to cover up the hole that the TV made.
We got this super cute Bluetooth speaker.
And in general, it's just given us so much more space right here.
This is an extra like chopping station when we're cooking.
We could stand here and work if we wanted to.
And I just think it's so pretty.
Over here it's kind of turned into like our drink station as well.
As you can see, we've installed a wine rack, which you'll see why this is important in the future, and up here we have some more baskets with more drink stuff.
These are all of our healthy smoothie goodies.
We have our green juice, protein powder and, Most importantly, our coffee basket.
We love coffee and for the last four years we've had to drink just whatever coffee is available, which can be hit or miss.
So, since we officially have a home now, we went all out on our coffee setup.
We have a six cup glass Chemex, which is totally not practical for van life, but we really wanted it anyways.
A hand grinder, which grinds the perfect amount of beans for our Chemex.
And probably the thing that we are most excited about, our water kettle.
This is so nerdy, but not only is it beautiful, but it's super functional as well.
When you turn it on, you can tell it the exact temperature you want it to boil your water to, and then it will hold it at that temperature.
Totally not necessary, but super exciting for us.
We are so excited about this setup.
Woohoo!
Okay, what's next?
Underneath our drink station is our toiletry drawer.
I've put all these little bins to organize everything, and all of this is mine and I've left this one for Nate.
These bottom two drawers are for our clothes.
This one's Nate's, this one's mine.
And what's crazy is the size of this drawer is pretty much the size of our entire suitcase that we've been living out of for the last four years.
I feel like most people, when they move into a van, are downsizing, but we can't believe how much space we have.
Like this is only half of my clothes.
The other half are in this cabinet.
I got these little drawer organizers and turned them vertically, just to add a little bit of separation.
And Nate's... I haven't really filled mine up yet.
So if it looks like we've been sweating a little bit during this tour, that's because this van has no AC and the main way of cooling it is this max air fan, which we've had turned off because it's a little loud.
And the way it works is it's a suction fan, so when we open the vents on the windows outside, it sucks air inside and creates a surprisingly good airflow to keep the van nice and cool for the most part.
But one of my least favorite things in the world is sweating while I sleep, so we installed two extra fans in here with a little bit of extra effort.
Why are you not working?
Which was not easy, but totally worth it.
The thing that makes these fans super nice for the van is that they use very little power.
They provide a lot of air and you can rotate them 360 degrees, So you can pretty much get air anywhere you are in the van.
But we specifically placed them right here because this is where we're going to be spending a lot of time.
This is the dining room slash office.
This table is about to get fixed once and for all.
If you missed, our renovation video when we originally bought this van this table was super wobbly and set really low.
And so what we did was we And now after almost catching the van on fire, it is nice and sturdy.
This table also comes off in this whole area, converts into a bed.
But before we show you how that works, I want to show you what's under each one of these benches.
Underneath this left bench is pretty much completely devoted to water.
This is where we have our big 40 gallon fresh water tank.
Back here we have our two and a half gallon hot water heater, and then this is a water pump that actually moves all the water to the sink and to the shower.
The really nice thing about having such a big freshwater tank is that it lasts for a really long time.
We've been living on and off in this van for a week now and we've yet to have to refill that water tank.
And then over here on this side, if I move the table Under the right side of the bench, we have storage in the front for things that we don't plan on using very often, because that is extremely annoying to get to.
And then the back half is all devoted to our power.
Our van is completely solar powered by three 100 watt panels that we have on the roof.
So if we have enough sun, we can exist indefinitely off the grid.
And all of this stuff down here is what allows us to do that.
So underneath here, you can only see one of them right now, but we have four 100 amp hour batteries.
Then we have a bunch of cords.
I understand what about half of these do.
And then this is our 2000 watt inverter.
I had no clue what an inverter was before we bought this van three weeks ago, but we've been having a lot of trouble with it recently, and so now I have a decent understanding of how it works and, from what I understand, our van is able to charge via solar, but it's also able to charge if it's just like plugged into a house or an outlet, and this inverter takes the 120 watt power that comes from a house and then it turns it into 12 volt power, which is what the batteries run off of, And so this enables those batteries to charge from being plugged into a house.
And then it also works the opposite way.
Since the batteries are 12 volt, your normal household plugs run off 110 to 120 volts.
So in order for the power to be usable from the batteries to these outlets, they have to be in.
This makes it possible to run the outlets.
Also don't quote me on any of that stuff but it's been pretty fun to learn about how all of this works.
You sounded like you knew what you were talking about.
And then in this very messy cabinet right here, we kind of have the brains that control all the electronics you saw down below.
This is our fuse box.
This little thing right here goes to the inverter, so that we don't have to crawl under that bench to turn it on and off anytime we want to.
Over here we have a cell phone booster that may or may not be working, and then this is our charge controller, which i don't fully understand, but based on this little picture up here, it takes the power from the solar panels and puts it into the battery and then turns it into a light bulb.
Now we're going to put the entire dining room back together and show you how we convert it into our bedroom.
Honestly, going into bed mode is a little inconvenient.
We're still getting the hang of it, but I think it's totally worth having this awesome workspace during the day.
Let's do this.
First thing we have to do is take the top of the table off the stand.
All right.
So you like, press this little button down, loosen it this way, i think you just kind of wiggle it until it goes off, then set that here for now, and then we take the stand off and it works the same way.
There we go, and then you wiggle this off, put it on the ground, And then this table goes between the cushions to act as support.
And then we have an extra piece right here that just lives underneath this cushion.
It goes at the bottom.
All right, so that's really the hardest part.
From here, it gets a little easier.
So we take these side cushions.
They squeeze down into the middle.
It's a little tricky though.
It's a little bit easier when Nate's helping me and not filming me.
Did I break something?
I feel like we're making this look way harder than it really is.
It's really not that bad.
And conveniently, all of our bedding fits, well, most of it, not our pillows.
Most of our bedding fits right here.
Surprisingly, this is pretty much a king bed.
It's just four inches short of a king.
So we have king sheets to put on here.
Glad I'm the one filming this section.
Drop sheet.
Charlie will get better at this with time.
And quilt.
I really like this quilt.
We found it's a linen blend.
So it's pretty lightweight, but still very warm and rolls up surprisingly small.
This is my contribution to the bed making.
And then five, maybe 10 minutes later, we have a bed.
It's not the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in, but after traveling full time the last four years and sleeping in like a million different beds planes trains, buses we can pretty much sleep anywhere.
Back by our pillows.
We conveniently have two outlets and two USB ports on both sides of the bed and this little nightlight switch turns on this light right above our bed and then in the front of the van there's another switch that turns on all the other lights.
Our windows are pretty tinted, so during the day it feels private in here, but at night, when the lights are on, it's like we're in a fish tank and everyone can see exactly what we're doing.
So we're storing all the window covers right here behind the driver's seat.
The previous owner made these and the back ones just are magnets and pop right on, and they attached these side ones with Velcro.
But instead we took the Velcro off and we had Nate's mom sew in these from it.
Then we added these little hooks on top of the window.
Just last night we glued these washers on the bottom of the window and glued these magnets on the bottom, and I honestly don't know if they work yet.
So oh, look at that before.
These would just kind of hang like this and they still didn't feel very private, but Oh, they attach.
I just think these look so much better than big Velcro things sticking here all the time.
Now no one can watch us sleep.
And that about wraps it up for the inside.
Okay, last and probably actually least is the trunk area of the car.
We're pretty much just using it for storage.
The previous owners had these shoe bags back here, and we thought, oh, those are kind of ugly.
We'll take those off for sure.
But then we just kind of started putting random stuff back here, and it's really helpful for organizing all the little things that we don't know where to put in the van, like sunscreen, bug spray, cleaning supplies.
And then all of the big stuff that we need to store kind of goes in this trunk area right here.
I guess the only like interesting thing back here is this is where we fill up our our 40 gallon water tank.
Somehow it connects inside the van and that's about it.
We're storing a two-person sleeping bag back here, because One thing that our van is missing is a heater.
And I know I can install one, but I started researching and it looks like a lot of work.
I'm sick of working on the van and I'm ready to start traveling.
So this is going to do for now.
Honestly, the heater thing to me isn't that big of a deal.
I'm super happy with this van, but after we bought it i did realize that there's one huge thing missing.
So there's this little groove up here on the roof and this is where the roof rails are supposed to be, but they weren't installed before the van was built out.
So now there's no way to attach the roof rails without tearing out the ceiling, which means that unless I tear out the ceiling, we can't put a roof rack on top of the van.
Honestly, I don't need to store anything on the roof so it's really not that big of a deal.
I just thought it would be cool, like that was kind of a bummer way to end our van tour.
But the last few weeks have been really, really special for us, turning this place into a home, because we haven't had a home in four years and i love it so much.
We are hitting the road full time tomorrow and we cannot be more excited.
We can't wait to share this next chapter with you Ah.
Oh, I hit the eject all of the dirt button instead of the power button.
Oh, first time for everything.
Nate's is this middle one.
This is the one that's kind of broken.
I broke it.
I'm sorry.
I have a feeling my clothes will end up over there as well.
Convenient.
So you've taken all the toiletries, all the clothes space.
Having all this space is dangerous.
I will fill whatever space I have.
Also, this is like, I don't know if you can see how weird the color of the sky is today.
But apparently there is a dust cloud that has blown from the Sahara Desert in Africa and that's why it's hazy today in Tennessee in the United States.
Crazy!
And windy.
Hmm.
That's it!
Two king pillows!
I didn't think that was gonna happen.
