9 Van Build Tips to Stay Sane While Self Converting a Camper Van
So you want to build a van? Well, we hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s a little harder than Instagram makes it seem. Converting a van is hard. Like…. really really hard. It’s by far the hardest thing we’ve ever done in our lives.
We don’t say this to discourage you; rather the opposite. We want you to know you aren’t alone if you’re feeling overwhelmed by or downright fed up with the process. Van building truly is just that: a f*cking process.
And no matter how much other van build tutorial sites seem to talk it up into a fun and magical process, it’s not. Call us the voices of reason, the reassurance that you are not alone if you’re on the verge of quitting your van conversion. We really do get it.
But we are also here to testify that not quitting is incredibly rewarding.
The following list is some hard-won van building wisdom we hope will help get you through your camper van conversion. These are all pieces of van building wisdom we wish someone had been around to tell us through the process, to keep us sane and motivated.
Here are all the things we wish we knew before self-converting a van.
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1) Measure thrice, cut as many times as necessary.
This is your van conversion mantra.
Take the phrase, “Measure twice, cut once,” and throw it out the window. It’s not much more than a nice sentiment.
In reality, it goes like this: measure twice, forget the measurement so measure again. Go to make a cut but get paranoid that that measurement isn’t correct and thus do it again. When you finally cut, you’ll err on the side of caution and go a little large only to have to trim again and again until you’ve got it.
It’s a slow way to progress but remember: a mistaken cut can render a $40 piece of lumber virtually useless. These sorts of mistakes get expensive.
2) Being meticulous is good; being a perfectionist is bad.
Be careful with the mentality bred by #1. You want to be careful and cautious where you can, but you can’t allow yourself to get caught up in making sure everything is perfect or you will never finish your build. Trust us when we say that most of the time, “good enough” really is good enough.
The secret Instagram won’t tell you is that no van lifer is 100% happy with their van. We look at our shoddy ceiling job (complete with gorilla tape in sight) from time to time and cringe, but you know what? It hasn’t fallen down despite the crazy bumpy roads this van frequents, so we did something right.
3) Long terms returns are clutch.
When choosing where to buy your van conversion materials, use companies that do long-term returns. As many bad things as we have to say about Lowe’s after sourcing most of our van build materials there, the one thing they do have dialed is their indefinite returns for My Lowes members.
This is super helpful if you overestimate when buying materials, but don’t figure it out for a while.
Or take this example from our build: We bought a sample stack of tiles we wanted to use for the flooring early on only to find the tile design had been discontinued by the time we were actually ready to lay the floor. Lucky for us, we could return it all at no cost to us.
4) There is no “correct” way to build a van.
One of many frustrations we faced was an AWFUL workspace in the form of a leaky, ramshackle shed that continually got our lumber and supplies wet.
Reading up on how to build a camper van is dangerous territory because each van conversion tutorial website presupposed that their method of doing something is the superior method. But that’s not the case for every person or every van.
WHAT WORKS FOR SOMEONE ELSE MIGHT NOT WORK FOR YOU.
Only take advice so far. Don’t allow yourself to get trapped or rendered helpless by it. You do you.
And that includes anything you read here: Our van is not your van. While we hope our van conversion guides are helpful to you, we certainly don’t want you to ever feel like our way is unequivocally the best and that we know what we’re doing 100% of the time.
5) Make a damn decision.
Van building is a lot of realizing you can’t do anything without doing something else. Or that by doing that one thing a month ago, you made this next step infinitely harder.
That’s why we recommend, when planning your van build, to not get too attached to any specific plan of attack. It’ll change all the time, leaving you feeling helplessly lost every time it does. It’s easy to get paralyzed by this never-ending, non-sequential loop of van build steps.
Oh, the number of times we went out to your van with full intentions of getting a ton of work done and suddenly started planning out your day saying, “Well we want to do this, but first, we have to do that, but before we do that, we have to this…” and so on and so forth until suddenly the day was over while we accomplished nothing.
So at some point, make a decision, take action, and damn the consequences. Maybe you’ll have to work around something later. No big deal. The only true death of a van conversion comes from inaction.
6) You WILL mess up. It’s not the end of the world.
You will backtrack. Even if you plan 10 steps ahead, on the 11th you’ll realize something you did way back at step 1 makes what you need to do now way harder.
It’s impossible to have accurate enough insight to predict all these instances and you cannot let yourself become paralyzed by fear of messing up.
There is almost always a workaround to your mistakes. We rarely ever had to completely redo something.
7) Kenny Rogers knows what’s up.
If that reference went over your head, SHAME ON YOU. Kidding, but seriously, "The Gambler" is van build advice gold:
“Know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, know when to run.”
For van building, it’s more like, know when to push through the frustration and when to walk away for the day before you end up losing more progress than you’ve made. You’ll learn the difference pretty quickly.
There were definitely days when we strapped lumber to our roof.
8) Don’t be too proud to accept help.
We know the desire to do all the work yourself. But accept help where you can, isn’t cheating. It’s maximizing your resources.
Frankly, my little Toyota Camry couldn’t have gotten a lot of our lumber home had it not been for Lowe’s complementary cuts.
So, if a neighbor offers you use of their tools and table saw, take them up on it! We’ll testify firsthand that building an entire van with only a Jig and Miter saw is definitely not the most efficient method.
9) Take it slow, if you can.
Staying motivated for the entire duration of your van build is HARD. To avoid stalling out, take your time and avoid placing deadlines on yourself. Our van build got finished because we had a deadline that was literally the difference between finishing or being homeless.
That’s not a finishing motivation we’d recommend for anyone. In fact, we still continued to tinker and finish a lot of things long after moving into our van because we simply didn’t have time to work out the kinds before having to move in.
When all else fails, HAVE FUN! Even when it feels like the opposite of fun, make the best of the situation. Be goofy and remember why you’re doing it all in the first place.
BEFORE YOU DRIVE AWAY…
Again, we KNOW that van building is hard A.F. We know you’ll want to give up, sell your van, and place the money you get from it in a 401K. But trust us, if you can just push through all the stress and headache, the van conversion process is so rewarding.
We’ve lived in our van for over six months now, and we still glow with pride when we give someone a tour of our van. We still get giddy when they ask, “So who did all this?” and we get to answer, “We did. We built all this ourselves.” We can’t even get close to describing the pride we feel in this van and how we got here.
Keep with it. Keep building. Road life is calling and it’s so worth the struggle.
As always, please feel free to touch base with us with any questions you might have about your camper van conversion. If you’re feeling stuck or lost especially, reach out. Our van building process was, quite frankly, a sh*t show so we can honestly offer you some empathetic advice on how to push through.
Keep building, friends. The open road is calling.