And the build begins...

The build of your van can be as simple or as complicated as you decide. You can choose from prefabricated or custom professional installations to a simple DIY or existing furniture installs. I personally chose to do a quick combination of existing furniture and simple DIY to start because the goal was to get into the van as quickly as possible to leave behind the massive rent amount of a traditional living dwelling.

First things first, the floor. I insulated the floor with 1" foam panel (est. $13 each) topped off with a 1/2" plywood (est. $35 each). The goal here was to be as insulated as possible yet use as little space as possible so I opted to insulate more and use less subflooring (Side Note: I live in Southern California so the cold weather is not a huge factor in my decision making.) then used a peel and stick tile planks (est. $30/box) for the flooring I needed 1.5 boxes but only used 1 and have bare floor in the back of the van. Which actually worked out extremely well and originally looked amazing! One change I would make to future builds/improvements. Use scratch resistant flooring. I have a toilet that does not, nor will ever have, for the foreseeable future, a permanent home location within the van so it is constantly being moved around causing lots of scratches in the flooring.

Next step to insulate the walls and ceiling. For this I used the left over 1/2" foam board for the areas where the cut outs for windows would be, then added a 1" foam board on top of that secured it with: liquid nail, spray glue, spray foam & tape. All of which were done in no particular order and only switched products because the insulation panels kept falling off. The most challenging of the entire project was the ceiling because I did not have property supports or time to allow the product to dry fully. In between the ribs I used expanding spray foam and at the bottom rear near the wheel wells I used pieces of rock wool insulation paneling.

In many of the build forums I've read and van build videos I've watched much of the materials they used were extremely expensive or not readily available at my local Home Depot or Lowes so don't be discouraged if you can't afford to the fancy stuff. Use what you can get your hands on or what is available to you. All in all for the floors & insulation I was into this project a little over $100 but I have a friend who bought a $6,000 van and put an old area rug down for his floor, moved in his blow up mattress and called it a day. So in reality it is all a matter of what you want to put into it. I wanted to make sure the basics were done before I moved in.

Now time to create a place to sleep. Measured my existing futon mattress comapred it to the area of the van I was going to have the bed located and took all of the proper measurements. As luck would have it a full sized mattress fit perfectly. I bought 1 - 2x4 and 2 - 1x4's along with 2 pieces of 1/4" plywood cut at the Home Depot into 54" x 72" pieces. Cut 6 pieces of 12" 2x4's and 4 pieces of 54" 1x4's. With the thought the overall bed was going to be 72" x 54" and 12" high... Except I forgot to factor in the 1" at the top and bottom of the main frame plus the 3/4" plywood on the top. Mistakes from the jump! But since I was tired and it was already glued and screwed together I decided to just keep it that way... for the time being.

The 1.75" does make a world of difference as I am unable to sit up straight while on the bed. With this said I now have 2 options: 1) take apart the bed and cut the 12" pieces to size or 2) exchange my 6" mattress for a 4" topper which is going to cost at least $200 for a decent one. Since I am trying to repurpose as much of what I already have and save as much as possible I have decided I need to pull the bed back out and re-cut to the size I need. Which will be a project for another time.

Scavenge and use what you can find if you don't want to or can't purchase new. Anything can look good with some elbow grease and a fresh coat of paint. The paint I used came off the "oops paint cart" at Home Depot or Lowes. I haven't used or needed a lot of it so a one gallon and pint did me just fine for me.