Hiya Steemians that love vehicles, living in vehicles, and part time living in vehicles! Some of you have been interested in our van conversion for a while, and I’ve been putting it off as there’s so many fabulous ones out there that I’m never sure it’s worth sharing! Anyway, have a read and let me know what you think of ours, and I would so much love to hear about your conversions too. I know that some of you realise that we're a bit obsessed with converting vehicles to live in, so this post will simply feed that view of us, and that's fine by us. We really can't help it!

Vanlife is such a funny tag, isn’t it? It seems to have taken the world by storm, and it looks pretty gorgeous and lovely on the outside, doesn’t it? Those camera angles sure make vans look spacious and luxurious. Don’t get me wrong – I love living in vehicles, and have done so all my life. The happiest I’ve been in living in cars, vans, buses and trucks, starting with a trip around Australia on Jeff Kennett’s surf team (@centrelink and #teamaustralia folk might get this reference, if not, ask) in a mid 70’s Toyota Corolla with a single camp mattress, towels for curtains, and snuggled up next to a backpack and my surfboard.

It was no co-incidence, then, that I met the love of my life when he was living in an old mobile library – you can read about this here. I found another picture of the old girl the other day – isn’t she beautiful? When I look at that I think about the romance that went on inside in the haloed honeymoon days of our relationship, with the woodfire tick tick ticking and… well, you don’t need to hear about that. Here's he in the snow, the morning after our third night together. As an Aussie, I was so excited about the snow in England, but he's barely awake and not so impressed here.

Then, we lived in a Bedford horse lorry. Again, I wish I'd taken more photos, but who was to know Steemit was coming? I've popped a link to the story about her below, if you're interested.

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Then, we moved to Australia and lived in this bus, which was sweet. It didn’t actually drive, and would have cost a small fortune to even start her up, so we bought a crappy old Econovan for a couple of hundred bucks, which was my son’s bedroom for a time before we bought the silver caravan pictured. He had all his school stuff and clothes and everything in there, and he’d wake up, come in the bus for brekky and then we’d drive his bedroom to school to drop him off. He was pretty happy when he got his own caravan that didn’t drive off everyday or was used to haul building stuff or surfboards.

We just chucked a mattress in the back of the van and off we went around Tassie and up the East Coast of Australia and all sorts of places, with Jamie swearing all the time as the petrol smells came in somewhere as we drove and he is hypersensitive to smells. We were pretty happy to see her go and we had enough cash to move up in the world and buy a Ford Transit. The only photos I can find of her is pushing her out of the mud in a festival in the Pyrenees, Australia, and another collecting firewood. This one is an added bonus for you, if you're read this far, as you get to see Jamie bending over. Vans are awesome for collecting firewood and going to festivals in.

You know, I can’t even remember what we did in the back of that one, but I do remember lying in the back of it all the way back from Byron Bay because I’d hurt my S.I joint so badly I couldn’t sit. I ended up driving her into the back of a truck, which was a bummer. It was the way of the universe, though, when my friend was upgrading his VW Transporter and sold his old one to us for a song. We actually couldn’t convert it for years because we had to have a seat in the back for Jarrah – but it was long wheel base, so we could fit a double mattress behind that seat, the esky under Jarrah’s feet and so on – we squished in somehow, and Jarrah was small enough to sleep along the width behind the driver’s seats on a camp mat.

When Jarrah got his licence, we got straight into conversion mode. We’d learnt so much about conversion over the years that there wasn’t a lot of thinking involved, just doing. The most important thing was the insulation and cladding, because condensation is a bitch. We went straight for foilboard and whatever you call that other white fluffy stuff.

Rather than proper ply, when for a plastic backed one which is great as it’s super light-weight and wipe clean. The hardest bit was cutting the templates – we got big sheets of plastic, held them in place and marked them with a sharpie, then used those to trace around the boards and cut them out.

We also lined the floor with foilboard and big sheets of plywood to have a solid base to work with, and we knew that would also make it warmer. We’ve been in some really freezing places in this van and have been far toastier than anyone around us. We found some cheap linoleum – the idea of wooden boards is PRETTY for hashtag vanlife but after years in live-in vehicles we knew it wasn’t practical, and it’s hard to keep clean. Plus, there’s not a lot of floorspace in a van anyway, so why bother spending all that cash on boards or making life hard for ourselves? I’ve never regretted that decision, that’s for sure.

We could then make the frames for the seat and bed situation. We had two objectives really – an easy to put together bed, plus being able to transform it so we could carry long things like surfboards or bits of wood and building stuff for endless projects. This also had the added bonus of being able to reconstruct it so there’s also a table on the inside, which is handy. We’ve had the entire family in there once eating dinner in the rain – that’s my parents, two nephews, my sister and husband and me and Jamie. To be honest we don’t use it that much on our own as I can’t be bothered making the bed again.

Me, waiting for my morning coffee. I look pretty happy here, don't I?

The other thing I really wanted was LOTS of storage room for food and everything had to be super easy access. As I’ve explained before my post on the cooking arrangement in the van, it was really important for me to be able to pull over and make a cuppa or a hot lunch without rifling through a lot of crap. In the end, turns out we have two food areas – one in the front near the fridge for most of our food, and the one in the back for cooking equipement plus the things we use regularly like olive oil, spices and srirarcha and so forth.

Missing a door at this point

We have had a bookshelf in every vehicle we have converted

The 12V fridge was also a must. We live in Australia, and it gets hot. Eskies are great, but I hate the way they smell and how your food ends up floating around in fetid melt water. They aren’t too expensive and well worth the money. There’s a roll out space under the fridge for extra things like Jamie’s clothes and other equipment. 25L of water is strapped behind the passenger seat, and we could easily fit 50L if we needed it. I like all the space when you open the sliding door – plenty of room to get changed in and get stuff out.

I won't write a lot about the cooking situation, as I've written about it before (please read the post before, as I totally love our solution!). I will say though that the removable cookbox is sooo good, and I much prefer the kero stove over having to carry around a gas bottle.