shelves

Doug says: It was interesting to watch other videos and see what other people’s priorities were, y’know? There’s people that need their surfboards in their vans, there’s people that need — I saw a van with two people living out of it and they had two desktop monitors. If you’re a social media person, you need drones. Stuff like that. All throughout your build, you have a list of priorities. For my van — and then our van — the priories went like this:

• have our own style

• natural wood feel

• bicycle storage underneath the bed  

From there, it gets practical. I wanted us to have as much headspace and not feel like everything was closed in, ’cause I’ve seen a lot of builds where they have all the overhead cabinets, but they’re working with a foot and a half of actual headspace from the bed to the seats. I wanted it to feel like a comfy, open home as much as possible. And especially when we started dating, I was like, fuck how can I maximize movable room?

Brooke says: Ah, the joys of dating an amazon. I was apprehensive about the shelves at first. I wasn’t sure what we were gonna fit on them. But we found ways to fit the items to the space. Trying to measure commonly used items or whathaveyou would have driven us both insane.

We didn’t measure, but everything we need found a place.

Brooke writes: Same deal with our garage area. Before Doug built it out, I gathered all our outdoor adventure gear and spread it out on the floor and tried to visualize the ideal storage solution. Turns out, there really isn’t one. Once again, we didn’t measure, but everything we need found a place. The last and in my opinion most beautiful shelf is this one right here:

Doug explains: I just wanted you to have a little spot to put your stuff next to you while you were sleeping. I wanted to use part of that back void for a purpose. It’s good enough for a book or a cup of coffee. So there’s no insulation behind that shelf.

Brooke concludes: Admittedly there’s not a whole lot of coffee drinking going on in bed, and anything I put on this shelf would fall off as soon as we get moving, but part of a successful van build is staying open to possibilities for the space. Who knows, maybe in Season 3 we’ll figure out a function for this shelf that’s totally integral and we’ll wonder how we ever got along without it. Or maybe it’ll always just be a beautiful place to put my Nalgene. That’s good enough for me.

lofted bed frame

Doug says: The bed frame is built directly around us having bike storage. Storing them outside could damage them, make them a target for theft, and advertise the fact that we’re van lifers.

Brooke asks: Did you follow plans for the bed frame?

Doug says: No, I just had a picture.

Photo courtesy of Seek Dry Goods.

Here’s what went into it:

• Stanchions: Six 2x4s

• Slats: A combination of pine and oak, with the oak slats under the areas that support the most weight

• Under the mattress: ¾” plywood 

Everything’s bolted together, and the stanchions are bolted into the walls of the van (don’t forget —  anchor nuts are basically your best friend!). The bed frame itself it attached to the top of the stanchions with a pocket jig.

Underneath the mattress, with spooky green lighting.

If you’re building a frame from raw materials, you’re fine to go with pine — it’s sturdy enough, and hardwoods like oak would add a lot of weight to your build. However, in classic Doug fashion, he repurposed an old yellow pine bed frame from the bunk beds he and his sister shared when they were kids. Not only did this give new life to an old piece of furniture that would have just been gathering dust otherwise, it also made the building process easier.

Notice I said “easier” and not “easy:”

Doug’s got a story about this picture. Take it away, babe:

Doug says: Building a home of any kind can get frustrating. Building a home within such a small space with no 90-degree angles, I constantly had to think about the step I was on to make sure that it wasn’t gonna impede any further step down the line. This picture’s a great instance of that.

I Googled dimensions for a full-size bed, and then built the bedframe to those dimensions. Turns out, haha, the mattress* that I got was a little smaller. So I wasted a whole lot of room, ‘cause there was this big gap between the side of the mattress and the end of the bedframe.

My mom came out and asked how I was doing, and I went off about this mistake I had made. And she said, ‘Can’t you just undo it?’ And that was all I needed to hear.

Fixing it entailed unbolting the sideboard, moving it to the correct location, and then covering up the holes.

And now it’s a really cool flaw, ‘cause it has your gears on it.

He’s talking, of course, about original gear ring from my bike Lucky, which I rode across the country back in 2018.

*Let’s talk about this mattress! Doug and I both have screwed-up spines, but the Casper has remained comfortable for both of us our entire trip. Highly recommend!

the desk

I’ve written about this desk elsewhere. It works really well as a kitchen/storage area. Using an existing piece of furniture was less expensive and time-consuming than building something from scratch. And now this desk that has sentimental value for Doug (his dad gave it to him when he was a kid) gets a new life in our home.

First, Doug refinished all the surfaces — sanding it and putting on a couple fresh coats of polyurethane. “It’s just so satisfying,” he said. “It just shines and brings out all the natural beauty of the wood.”

Next came the actual installation.

Doug says: I put a stud directly into the van wall to screw the desk into. I could have put anchor nuts into the wall and bolted right in. But making holes line up between two surfaces is an endeavor, especially when it’s the inside of a desk that doesn’t come apart, cause you can’t reach around and measure.

In other words, work smarter not harder. The next step was accounting for the inward slant of the van walls. Doug did this with a pair of stanchions that fill the gap and make a flat surface for the desk to sit flush against.

Doug says: I feel like I could have done this more efficiently, but it kind of just attests to how I never really drew up any kind of complex plans for the layout. But now these stanchions help hold up very useful pantry shelves.

bike slider

Thank you thank you thank you Far Out Ride for the plans for this bike slider. It’s been essential. I cannot imagine how jacked up our backs would be if we had to wrestle our bikes out of the back of the van, or how jacked up our bikes would be if we stored them outside. (We once saw van lifers with their bikes stored on the front of their rig, like on a bus. It was unspeakable. Like, do you enjoy scraping an inch of dead bug carcasses off your bike every time you want to use it?) 

Bridget and Lucky in action.

Anyway, just a few words about our experience with the slider and what we’d do differently:

1. Use a hardwood — definitely harder than pine.

2. Consider reinforcing the mounts with metal brackets.

3. Use bolts rather than screws to attach the mounts.

Just a few images from the construction of the slider

Doug’s gonna elaborate on this. Take it away, babe:

Doug takes it away: The sliders were really sturdy, but upon the later stages of construction, I realized I had used quite a soft wood — pine.

This structure is going to take a lot of torsion. I mean, the bikes swing on it. They test its lateral strength every single time we take a turn. I saw evidence of this pretty quickly when I was first testing the bikes out after I put the mounts on the front. The wood was kind of waving.

So I knew I had to reinforce it with metal brackets. And it’s held up tremendously so far.

Bridget’s mount was screwed in so close to the edge of the slider that it moved enough to pull the threads out of the wood. Thankfully, I had saved as much space as I could by making the bike slider extend out over the floor a little bit — basically as close to the rear doors as I could get it. So I drilled holes straight through the bottom of the slider and then used bolts instead of screws. If it happens with Lucky, it’s fixable too — I could route out a half an inch in the bottom of the bike slider to account for the nut.

Happy biking!

how to stop rattling

Way back this spring, we’d spent a solid few weeks working on the van and decided to actually, you know, take it out for a drive. Within a few blocks, we were appalled at how loud it was inside.

“Is this gonna be our life?” I yelled over the rattling din.

We did some research and overwhelmingly the answer seemed to be: “Yeah, just turn up the radio!” Forget that — here’s what we’ve found that works:

Secure everything. Doors and drawers especially. And shelves — anything wood has to be firmly attached.

Drawer liners. We used Con-Tact. They’re holding up pretty well, except the one under our stove; the little rubber feet things are slowly disintegrating the liner. C’est la vie.

Muffling silverware/plates. Plastic plates and silverware are another option, but that isn’t our aesthetic. And so, we layer bandanas between anything metal that might rattle. The stove was one of the main culprits, but layering a couple of microfiber towels over the grill did the trick. Hot tip: You can’t have too many microfiber towels when you live in a van. They’re just so useful.

Organization. Buffer stuff that might rattle with stuff that doesn’t. Making everyday objects pull double-duty is key for van life.

how to keep stuff from flying everywhere when your house is a vehicle

Drawers and cabinets, right?

See, I thought so too. But there are two issues: They’re heavy, and if you don’t maximize space, a van gets cramped pretty quickly. Can your chassis handle the weight of your construction materials? Will you have to contort yourself to get into that drawer? Are you gonna smack your head on that cabinet door if you leave it open?

Makes sense.

Totally! That being the case, we used a variety of different ways to keep our stuff in place:

Drawers

I know I just said drawers aren’t the solution but… they sometimes are! Also, check out this cool desk.

Doug says: It meant a lot to me to get to use this desk that my father gave to me when I was 7 and I’ve had all this time. And now it gets to be a part of the first home that I built.

We use drawers for silverware, plates/cups/bowls, pots and pans, and Tupperware. There’s also the obligatory junk drawer. Doug installed cabinet catches in the bottom three drawers to keep them from sliding open in transit, and that little chunk of mahogany keeps the top two drawers closed.

Cabinets

The vanity is secured with a clasp. It’s been pretty sturdy so far, but one particularly rough road made it fly open.

Doug trash-picked this door because it looked cool. This space has come in handy for miscellaneous everyday stuff that’s too bulky for the vanity or that might fall out of our shelves. (You only need to clean olive oil out from under a car seat once to never want to do it again.) We don’t have any special restraint system on the door; so far it just stays closed on its own.

Shelves

This eyelets-and-rope configuration has done a good job of keeping our food in place while also accessible (although occasionally a package of Ramen might make a daring escape). Bonus: It’s lightweight and looks nice.

Also, a note about the banana hammock (haha): We originally had it hanging from two hooks, but it was smashing against the wall and destroying all our fruit. Fortunately, we had an extra hook floating around. Doug anchored it from the bottom, and now our fruit is pristine.

Lips are another simple restraint solution. It took a little trial and error to figure out the best way to fold our clothes to keep them from sliding out, but now it works like a charm.

Velcro

I thought we would use more of this, but the glue tends to melt after enough time in a hot van. Also, like… who spends 15 months doing a beautiful woodworking project and then puts Velcro all over it? It works for our hand soap at least.

Bungee cords

We wanted our art supplies to be easily accessible so there’s no excuse not to use them. As soon as we park, that ugly bungee net comes off and we can work on one of the like six projects we have going on at any given time!

Eek, pardon our messy gear shelves! In the garage, the aesthetics don’t matter as much. We restrain our panniers, table, and tools with a combination of hooks and bungee cords. The ladder goes behind the fridge. All of our outdoor gear is (usually) carefully organized and restrained with two bungee cords. And of course, our auxiliary water tank is secured with an airplane seatbelt Doug stole when he was 14.

Hanging

We’re not wild about this, honestly. It keeps the guitar in place (and provides extra restraint for pantry items), but it’s enough of a pain in the ass to get the guitar down that it discourages us from using it. We’ll keep experimenting with this space and figure out the best way to use it.

Pockets

God this thing is so convenient (and the least ugly hanging shoe rack we could find on Amazon). We cut off these excess two rows, installed some grommets, and then screwed it right into the plastic in the back door. It’s the perfect storage solution for tools and other little stuff that we want to access easily.