To Make a Van a Home
The early trials of making a vanlife dream come true
In 2019, my wife Ellen and I decided to build out a van and hit the open road. You can read about that here. I had convinced myself that we would be living our best life, compactly and cheaply, instead of devoting the last of our vigorous years to the tedium of working jobs that were losing their luster. We would shortcut the system to prevent stagnation of the heart and soul, trading unimportant comforts for a sustained adventure. I committed myself to the plan by putting my truck up for sale and cashing in a bit of stock. Ellen let me without complaint. I took this as a good sign.
Challenge #1: Finding the Right Van
Soon after, we found the van we wanted, a 2005 Dodge Sprinter 2500 (T1N), high roofed and extended. I had settled on this generation of Sprinter because of the solid reputation of its five cylinder, “million mile” diesel engine. Being manufactured only until 2006, they had become somewhat hard to find, especially on the west coast. This one came to us via a car broker Ellen had met years back, when each was starting their business. I had never heard of car broker before, but I was delighted when he quickly tracked down some T1N Sprinters through his extensive network.
The van we settled on looked perfect on screen. It had spent its life in service to a community college back east and had extraordinarily low mileage. We were encouraged to jump on it quickly. A rare find like this would not last long. The catch, the first one… it was 2500 miles away, across the country in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
Pittsburg, we were told, was home to a vigorous vehicle resell market that serviced the east coast. We crossed our fingers, trusting our broker, and bought the Sprinter sight unseen. We paid him up front.
I cleared my calendar and took a plane out to Pittsburg, eager to drive our new project back home. I packed a sleeping bag, pad and pillow for the long drive back to California. I would be camping out in the back, grabbing that first taste of our future lives on the open road.
Once landed, I called the broker as instructed. Another catch, the van was located on a wholesale lot and was not available to the general public. I would have to play myself off as his employee to pick it up. He would transfer over my money once I had looked over the vehicle and agreed to take it.
Now I didn’t care for this arrangement. It made me uncomfortable. I’m an unnatural actor, an instantly knowable, transparent kind of guy, but he didn’t heed my stuttering complaint. Instead he informed me, with practiced ease, that he was having someone from the lot come over to pick me up. I was already in for the price of the van and brokerage fee, which I could probably recover should I balk. The price of my plane ticket there and another one home, would be lost.
From my very limited experience with this resell market, Pittsburgh is where you go to buy a vehicle that is rusted beyond practical repair. In the northeastern states it’s common to salt the streets when it snows. The corrosive, salt laden slush sticks to the lower reaches of the vehicles and eats through the metal.
If you’re a westerner, you might not know this. I didn’t, at least not from memory sculpting experience, and the thought didn’t surface when I needed it to. I had spent my childhood in snowbound Wyoming. There they coated the snow covered streets with gravel. It lay dormant in the gutters throughout the year, but didn’t corrode the cars. I had little experience with rust.
The memory is imprinted deep in my mind. I was being taxied in a golf cart through an immense, used car lot in the Pittsburg rain, my eyes scanning every row for a large white van. There it was! standing out prominently along a row of low slung cars. It looked just like the pictures. I eagerly hopped out to take a closer look. There was a little rust bubbling up under the paint, not too bad.
I slid under the chassis… rust everywhere. I knew immediately that I wouldn’t be investing my time and energy building on top of this corroded foundation.
The new reality hit me like a mule kick to the chest. I was angry, frustrated and humbled. I had let myself be guided here, standing next to a broken dream on the far side of our big country, my bank account far lighter than it had been just weeks earlier. I had nothing to lean on but my gut. It said roll with it and see how things play out. I lost a rear mud flap and a bolt or two to the hum of the highway on the way back to California.
It was a long road home and although I was disappointed and prone to cursing, I absolutely fell in love with camping out in the cargo area of the van. I could feel my future on the road. I picked up a little hanging light at a Walmart, my first van “improvement”. Then I added a pee bottle that wedged nicely into the sliding door step. I was totally won over by this newfound convenience.
Perhaps a week after my return, a friend spotted another Sprinter for sale just an hour’s drive away. This one was a rust-free, southern California reared, 2006 Dodge Sprinter (T1N), a heavy duty 3500 model, high roofed and extended. It came equipped with dual rear wheels that could handle a heavier payload.
This van had relatively low mileage and sported an abandoned build attempt that covered one wall and the floor. It appeared sound enough and got a thumbs up from a local dealership. We opted in, making this second purchase on money borrowed from a friend.
In a matter of a few short weeks we became the neighborhood’s biggest challenge, the folks with two large Sprinter vans a truck and a car parked outside their home near the center of the city.
Ellen saved the day. She took the helm on selling the original van while I sold my Toyota truck. She quickly found the right buyer, a German born, Sprinter van true believer. He was very happy to take it off our hands, rust and all, for the price we paid for it. We had done him a service by bringing it to the west coast. Our only losses were the travel costs and registration fees.
Challenge #2: The Van Buildout
The next two years were spent transforming our van into a camper. Most of my spare time went into the build. I tacked several hours of daily build time to my 12 hour work/commute routine and committed every unscheduled weekend to the task. My life became consumed by it. I dreamt about the buildout almost every night, puzzling out concepts in my sleep.
My workshop was the garage and the street just beyond the rolling door. A folding metal table served as my workbench. A circular saw, a jig saw and a hand drill were my only power tools. Everything else was accomplished with simple hand tools. Welding was the only task I didn’t attempt myself. I farmed out my metal designs to a friend.
I remember clearly my first nerve testing, gut wrenching cuts through the skin of the van. Friends gathered to cheer me on as I cut loose a large scrap of metal the shape of a window. I would later fret over which types of insulation and installation methods to deploy. I struggled over the electrical layout.
I chose to clad the interior in plywood to create solid walls that I could lean on and mount things to. This meant that these key components would be buried behind a barrier that would be forever beyond my reach, unless I were to dismantle the entire build. Everything placed behind those walls had to be fully functional, secure and durable.
Every buried cut or penetration through the metal skin, worried me as a threat for future, hidden, rust. This was my most precious project to date. Every step felt consequential, potentially tragic, if approached with less than reverent care.
The most important aspect of the interior build was creating a handsome, roomy living space that could hold the two of us comfortably for years on end. We took full advantage of our heavy duty suspension and built the interior furnishings out of quality, baltic birch plywood which presents a consistent, light color and a handsome grain.
To ensure the space felt as large as possible, we built no vertical obstructions, such as a wall or shower. We chose flooring with lines that visually extended the length of the van. We glued up carpeting on the open wall that did the same. A single set of overhead cabinets extend the length of the interior as a solid clean line.
I built each component separately in the garage: cook station, sink station, toilet, propane/shoe cabinet, center-drawer-and-table station and overhead cabinets. Once built I mounted each into the van, on top of a single, solid piece of Marmoleum that was edged in caulk to prevent any moisture from creeping through the floor to the metal below.
The cook and sink stations were built to precisely fit our chosen array of gear. The drawers of the cook station fit the bowls, and cookware exactly. The sink station snugly fits three water jugs, two fresh and one that captures the sink drainage. Almost by magic, each component of the puzzle fit perfectly together into the fourteen available feet of living space, with no room to spare.
I wrapped the counter tops of the cook and sink station in copper. It’s easy to clean, anti-microbial and provides an ever-shifting texture of color, responding to citrus, tomato and scrubbing with novel patterns of use.
For the sake of overall daily ease, we built a stationary bed, with a queen mattress set lengthwise in the rear of the van. It requires no setup or take down and serves as a permanent cap to our “garage” storage space. A thin steel bed frame is mounted just high enough to fit our partially dismembered bikes underneath. The thin frame allowed us a few extra inches of headroom when sitting up in bed, propped up on pillows.
Underneath I mounted our electrical cabinet and partitioned the area in sections for storage that is only accessible through the back doors. I secured a drawer-and-table station under the bed, facing forward. It claims a portion of the garage space, but provides significant interior accessible storage. This unit is framed by a low wall, built bed to floor, that also offers access to a pantry space, wine cabinet and garbage area, all separated away behind doors.
El made cushions that cover our propane and toilet cabinets which serve as two seats set on either side of the pullout dining/work table. The lower drawer of the center station rolls out to link these seats into a cozy cushioned couch. The two front van seats, bolted onto swivels, turn inward, providing optional seating an important little distance away from the table. A portion of the counter, we call our “lift table”, lifts away to provide room for the rotated driver’s seat or can be set mid-height as a standing work station.
I built an overhead storage compartment in the over-generous headroom space of the cab for jackets and in house necessities, below which hang our blackout curtains which separate the windowed cab away from the home for sleeping and for stealth. The curtains stuff easily away in the storage above when un-deployed. There are lights installed into the base of this overhead storage, providing some light in the cab that is connected to our house batteries, instead of the van battery.
A more complete photo archive of our build can be found here.
The build became a meditation that fully engaged my attention. I would slip into a state of flow, keenly focused on the tasks at hand. The process of measure, mark, remeasure, cut, became a kind of hypnotic mantra. On weekends, I routinely worked through any hunger until El interceded with food. I didn’t want to be pulled away from the process mid-thought and each thought, each task, overlapped with another.
Neighbors would interrupt the flow from time to time to check on my progress. I didn’t mind. I liked showing off each accomplishment, but when asked by friends if I was enjoying the process, I couldn’t answer yes. It was satisfying, but difficult. My days were overlong, for a very long time. Ellen suffered from my absence just a few short feet away. It became a point of tension.
During the build years, our plan to cut loose and take to the road shifted significantly. The pandemic interceded and our tech heavy city of San Francisco saw an exodus of workers who were now free to work remotely. They left in droves, taking their high urban incomes to weaker economies where they could level up to wealthy. Our near future dependence on steady income from house rent seemed imperiled.
At the same time, Ellen’s work situation was improving. It became clear that she was uncomfortable stepping away from her career. We shifted tact. We would build the ability to work on the road into both our plan and the structure of the van.
Ellen’s focus tilted toward designing the homey comforts of the van interior. She took the lead on selecting the best gear we needed for cooking and adventure. She also had some specific expectations of the build: a comfortable place to sleep, work and cook. El wanted clean lines, ample countertop space and a generous setup for cooking.
A van, even a large van like ours, is a very small space to accommodate all of a couple’s needs. A lot of careful thought and planning went into crafting the interior and selecting the contents that would best serve us. I can’t imagine making this work from a prebuilt, common denominator, van.
It was necessary to both pare down and upgrade our gear into a set that would fold into both the storage and living spaces of our new tiny home. Everything we migrated into the van had to support some important aspect of the life we wanted. Ideally, each item would hide neatly out of the way when not in use. The van needed to remain a comfortable, fully functional living space when completely packed.
Our list of interests was long and varied. Most of the items that made the cut were tasked to perform double or triple duty. Our mantra was flexibility. We’d asked ourselves: Is this need rational, deployable and fully supported? How many ways can this item be used? Can this need be addressed more efficiently or with items we already have onboard?
This ideal of flexibility took on a different set of meanings when it came to the function and appearance of the van. We wanted the van to be reliable and secure in the greatest number of environments. This meant beefing up the suspension, wheels and tires to handle the build’s near maximum payload and provide better clearance and durability in challenging back road environments. It meant adding a tow hitch that could be used as a recovery anchor point to pull us out of a future poor decision.
It also meant devising a strategy to make the van “blend in” in urban environments, so we could overnight in a variety of settings without attracting unwanted attention. To accomplish this, I chose to dress the van in the skin it came in, that of an everyday work van, instead of identifying itself as a live aboard camper, so that we might settle on a busy street and disappear.
To capture the work van look and feel, I left the paint the original, standard white. I paint over any dings or rust spots with Rustoleum from the can. It’s an older van, I want it dressed that way, funky but clean. I only broke the simple lines of the van’s original profile for what was necessary to provide the comfort we needed traveling for months on end, doing my best to hide those amendments from the eye.
Were you to walk around our van in a parking lot, you’d see only one out of place feature on the sides of the van, a window behind the driver’s door. There are no plugs, vents or water intakes to catch the eye. We view the window addition as an important luxury that breaks the isolation of the interior. I chose a standard sized window that fits squarely into a pre-stamped window indentation and closely matches the van’s original aesthetic. To make it blend with the paint, I covered that window with see-through, white perforated vinyl, the same product that covers the windows on wrap around bus advertisements. In the daylight, the window looks like a slightly discolored panel, with some visible black trim. At night, with the interior securely covered by a light blocking insert, the window almost evaporates.
Perhaps the biggest visual difference between a work van and a camping rig is the variety of items attached to the outside of the camper. We hang nothing off the back of our van. Everything we carry fits inside, much of it in the large “garage” space under the bed. This makes us both more stealthy and more secure. No one is drawn over to tamper with our bikes or test the security of a mounted box. We opted to have no easy-access awning or shower box mounted near the roofline. Instead, ours reside inside, disassembled. They must be assembled and deployed when needed.
Perhaps the surest give-away of a stealthy live-aboard are those essential items mounted on the rooftop. Roof vents and solar panels are obvious clues that someone might be living inside. To hide away our rooftop menagerie, I installed simple, low profile L-Track as my roof rack, the same track used to secure movable seats on an airplane. I then clamped the sides of an old ladder, with rungs stripped away, on mounts above it. The rails of this old Werner ladder sit between our vents, solar panels and antenna, and the eyes of the onlooker, blocking most of the view. If someone were to look closely, it would be obvious that there’s something odd about the arrangement, but the ladder rail catches people’s attention first. Few look beyond it.
To carry this theme further, I placed reflective, safety-stripe stickers on the back, alongside the rear doors. They stand out crisply against our plain white van and draw attention away from the roof. These simple diversions are meant to catch the eye and direct the mind’s initial snap judgement to log — “work van”. Experience tells me that it’s usually van folk, people who have an eye for and curiosity about custom built live-aboards, that see past the ruse.
Even though the van interior isn’t visible when we’re parked stealthy on the street, the design is key to the function. We created the space to look and feel as roomy as possible. Almost everything we carry is packed tight and neat behind a cabinet door or under the bed, with almost no storage room left to spare. For us, the open layout becomes most important when urban camping because none of our day to day tasks can shift to the outside. The single room of our van’s interior is the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom and office. When everything is properly stowed, the two of us can function together in this small confined space, even after we’ve cut the cab away with a blackout curtain.
The “garage” space under the bed is accessible only from outside through the rear doors. Everything we don’t need for basic living inside the van: the bikes and paddle boards, all the sports gear, backpacking gear, yoga mats, tools, folding chairs and table, grill, awning, shower, etc., live there, out of the way and inaccessible from the interior. So does our electrical cabinet, with its batteries, inverter, converter and solar charge controller. It’s a tight fit back there and retrieval of any one item might require the removal of many, but that sacrifice allows us a feeling of spaciousness and a homey comfort in the living space of the interior.
The most immediately satisfying build moments have been the improvements and repairs I’ve made since we’ve been on the roll. It made no difference how carefully I planned the build out, some time on the road unearthed the need for improvement. The way we use this small space evolves as we live in it. It begs to be molded to our purposes. For us, the van has become an extension of our bodies, more so than any stationary home. Perhaps this is due to its close, wrap around fit or the overlap of it’s many functions. It moves with us. It’s always there. Fixing an issue or improving a function feels like building muscle.
Challenge #3: Road Testing and Repairs
The van itself, all these beautifully coordinated working parts, is another thing entirely. Unlike the home we built within it, much of it is a mystery to me. A problem with the engine or drive train is likely to hobble us, potentially stranding us far from any help. I’m not a mechanic by training nor inclination, but I am learning, the hard way, by doing.
Fortunately there is a great deal of information about the T1N Sprinter online. Built by Mercedes-Benz between 2001 and 2006 and branded Dodge and Freightliner in the United States, it’s a well loved and sought after vehicle. There are active online communities of knowledgeable owners and mechanics. The mystery of this moving machine is slowly coming into the light as I address the problems that arise, one by one.
My first road adventure in our freshly completed camper van came after the death of my father. He had made a final gesture of gifting us a little money to cover the cost overruns of the build. I brought the van to his funeral, in part to honor his contribution, but also as it’s first practical duty. I proudly drove it in his funeral procession and savored the time spent sheltered in the back with my brother after the service. I drove him home that night and camped out for a spell on the property I once called home.
When it came time to leave, snow was filling the passes between Oregon and California. I chose the longer coastal route home. That evening, the road became treacherous with heavy wind and rain. Gusts slammed the tall sides of the van and I could see only a short distance down the highway in the dark. I pulled off the road, parked as far from the lane as possible and weathered the storm in comfort, watching a movie in bed.
The sun rose on a beautiful day. There was no need to fight the elements to achieve my destination. This rolling home offered a better option. I drove the coast highway home, deeply satisfied with the hard earned fruit of our labor. Unfortunately, as I neared San Francisco, the van lost power, hauling me home at a go-cart pace.
The local Dodge dealership located the problem, a cracked hose in the high pressure turbo system. They replaced the old, split hose and completed a full and expensive 60,000 mile inspection and tuneup. Somehow they gave a passing grade to the two remaining old hoses within the high pressure loop. I challenged this decision when I came to pick it up, but was assured that the hoses were fine.
The following month, I lost a second hose on a steep rise of a Mexican highway, far south in the state of Baja California Sur. This was our self described van shake-out trip. I had the combined talents of several friends to help me out. This and a glued down, clamp supported, patch got us quickly back in the caravan. Many days later, after the failure of several such patches, we separated from our time-hindered companions, settling into a slow roll through the northern state of Baja and over the border into California.
Happy to be done with the ordeal, I replaced the split hose with one sent ahead to our rendezvous point in Orange County. The next day, leaving Los Angeles via a steep and fast moving stretch of freeway that climbed out of the San Fernando Valley, we blew through the third and final hose. Ellen and I found ourselves stranded in the breakdown lane for an hour, the New Dog rocking to the beat of every passing vehicle. A good natured tow truck driver came to our rescue, white knuckling us out to safer ground. We had him set us down on the street next to the closest Mercedes dealership. They’d have the part by morning.
We spent the evening exploring Van Nuys, the heart of the San Fernando Valley, on foot, then slipped back to the van to camp stealthy on our side street. I changed that final hose in the gutter next morning, confident that we had at last passed through our trial by fire. Less than fifty miles north, we fell back into limp mode, crawling up the grade, a big white clog in the slow lane. We made the exit to Ventura. El, completely exasperated, took a cab back up the coast to San Francisco.
I limped the New Dog into a local repair shop. They identified the problem as a split turbo resonator, yet another component in the same high-pressure turbo system. I lingered there until the part could be acquired and installed. In a phone call up the Dodge dealership chain, I laid out my case that they take some responsibility for the chain of events, but that got me nowhere.
I’ve come to understand that Dodge no longer had the expertise in their stable of mechanics to handle my Mercedes built Sprinter. They had moved on. I, on the other hand, was just beginning to learn what keeping a rolling home on the road really meant. I joined the Sprinter Source online community, upgraded my tool kit and downloaded a manual. I have been far better prepared to handle engine trouble since that time.
There is a lot to learn. I am humbled by the immensity of the task, but the lessons come at a pace I can handle. They generally arrive one, occasionally two at a time and they command my attention until the issue is resolved. The mystery of how a mechanic can fail to fix a problem is no longer a mystery at all. It’s complicated math. I’ve come to know that the experts who really understand my vehicle are few. Many are retired. I collect their names and numbers when I meet them.
Despite the challenges underneath the hood, that shake down trip down the Baja Peninsula had been a good one. Strong, gusty winds made driving the narrow highways a challenge, but they also highlighted the real benefits of camping in a hard-sided shelter. We had run this route many times with this crew of friends, but never in such comfort.
We returned home looking forward to a future where we could slow down and travel at a more leisurely pace. We no longer needed to be destination driven now that we had a comfortable home wherever we landed. The road life ahead was looking better than ever.
For more insight on our stealth camping experience, check out The Art of Camping Stealthy.
