#Vanlife Reflections, Part 1: The Build
Three months ago I bought a 1996 Winnebago Class B RV with a dream to live #vanlife full time, and I’m been renovating it ever since.
It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but since it’s moved from a dream to a reality it has gifted me dozens of new life perspectives. And I haven’t even moved in yet!
In this post I’ll share some of the recurrent thoughts and worldviews that have infused my mind in the last 3 months. If you’d like to view the working spreadsheet I used to coordinate my purchases, tasks, and advice, that’s here.
Homeownership, Light
#DIY self empowerment
A constructive hobby, creating capital
“Its never done, you just decide to stop working on it”
Intimate awareness of sustainability
Forced minimalism as a feature
Ease and E-commerce Dominates :/
Humans are ingenious and screws are everywhere
Homeownership, Light
Most of the problems I faced were the same problems homeowners face, so I found myself understanding how homeowners think. For the first time in my life I fully grokked that scene in Malcolm in the Middle where the dad tries to fix a light only to discover every tool and step he needs in order to fix the light is also broken, and thus up to him alone to fix.
For that is the dark side of being a homeowner, or a landlord, much as the internet likes to deride them as ‘societal parasites’. They also ensure that your doors and appliances work, and that there aren’t rats in the walls. Because while you may live in it, it’s fundamentally the owners problem, not yours, which is why you can call them up at 2am and demand they fix it.
It’s like what they say about the difference between owners and operators , consultants and employees — operators will get the job done, but only care if it’s done right enough that they pass the bosses muster. Owners are their own bosses, and care about the result, so they spend the extra blood sweat and tears to ensure it’s perfect — as it affects their home or their resale price.
And it makes sense, after all, for #vanlife vans are homes, so they have to be engineered along the same lines, and last just as long, and one must think of resale, and all the rest. We just don’t have the some real estate market or contingencies around neighborhood and the like because we can park almost anywhere. :)
No Right Answer, Only Yours
I’ve never before undertaken a project that:
A) affected me so deeply, and
B) only affected me.
Almost every decision I made over the course of this build — from car mechanics to paint colors and what to renovate and what not to, really only affects me in the end, as the van dweller.
But almost every one of them are decisions that will stick with me for the duration of this #vanlife, every day, without escape, every minor imperfection or sub optimal solution grating on me each and every use — and nobody else.
It’s an odd combination of empowering and overwhelming. I have nobody to blame, and nobody to rely on, other than my self.
Just like my uncovered learning that the only thing between me and fixing just about any physical doohicky in my life is time and effort, NOT knowledge.
#DIY self empowerment
Like many modern millennials, I never learned to be as handy as past generations, given how much easier it was to hire someone or buy a new one than fix things myself.
But with the van, this didn’t make a lot of sense. Unless I wanted to spend more than what I bought it for on professional renovation (as many Sprinter van owners do, with undeniably beautiful results), I was going to have to do most of the work myself. So I learned a lot!
What’s more, I learned the skill behind the skills, that helps no matter what you’re doing in life — some combination of troubleshooting, testing hypotheses about root causes, and thinking critically about solutions.
Even the handyfolks I volun-told friends into or hired Yelp specialists for (Thank you, Eric, Matt, Zach, Brian, and Hector!) would only ever jump in for one or two problem solves as the process invariably ran into some new roadblock. At the end of the day, I was the only person moving the project forward, because I was the only one the project affected.
- I learned how to paint walls (proving all the cliches true as soon as you try to paint ‘against the grain’ or don’t ‘measure twice and cut once’).
- I learned (kinda) how electricity works, how to lay and cut and fit laminate flooring, discovered DC to AC converters, calculated watts and amps and all the rest for every one of my worldly appliances.
- I decided where to put LED strips interior design style(and learned they look good only as backlit options rather than straight on).
- I learned why cars that spend their lives in California are preferable because we don’t salt our roads in the winter here and as such the undercarriages are less pocked with rust.
- I learned about the magic that is SharkBite push to connect plumbing fittings.
A constructive hobby, creating capital
I didn’t realize at the outset of this project how much the build itself become a hobby, rather than a means to an end. It is a great way to spend ones nights and weekends.
It’s constructive, rather than consumptive, and by the end of it you are left with an asset you can use or sell — a concrete reward for all the hard work put in.
Now I understand all the hipsters painstakingly making woodcrafts or restoring cars — not for the outcome, but for the process of the input, of intimately understanding some part of the universe and bringing it to life to call it your own.
My old van certainly isn’t as beautiful as the Sprinters you see on the #vanlife hashtag, but I find it beautiful because I made it.
This is my van. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Every first-timer mistake I made in the painting, to the flooring, and beyond, doesn’t bother me, because I made it. If the future owner wants to change it, that’s their problem :)
“Its never done, you just decide to stop working on it”
This adage is as true for any hobby project as it is for creative endeavors.
There are so many more things I could do with my van — redo the kitchen, get new tank monitors, take out the old generator I’m not using, and so on. But for now, the main things that I need to work, work, and that’s good enough to ship.
Intimate awareness of sustainability
I am now intimately aware of my resource needs, from heating and cooling to water and waste. Not academic knowledge, but lived experience.
- I know how many BTU equivalents of propane energy a human body emits while sleeping.
- I can FEEL how poorly windows insulate heat.
- I know what propane smells like, that it gathers on the ground rather than the ceiling, and that it’s byproduct of the natural gas creation process.
- I know about the incredible swing in degrees from night to day or even just direct sun on my solar panels that hum with happiness on a sunny day versus a cloudy one.
I am more intimately attuned to the noises and landscape around me. Aware of the gifts that nature and the built environment gives us, and what it does not. And for that I am grateful. It’s a kind of mindfulness.
In a house, I didn’t have to think about these things because a professional had solved it for me. There is the ‘correct’ capitalist answer and that’s the one they chose — the best output for the best price, for the right market.
But for me, alone in my van, there is no general best answer — only the best answer for me, which may have different tradeoffs than a mass construction plan.
Forced minimalism as a feature
I’ve always been drawn to the minimalist lifestyle to do more with less. And nowhere is that more necessary than here in the van.
My kitchen table is also my computer table, my stove has a cover to become a cutting board, my sink is a storage space, and my passenger seat is also where I store my folding bike.
Yes, it requires one to think a bit more about each day, and live a bit more tidily, but that’s more of a feature than a bug in my mind. With the necessity comes the awareness.
It’s odd that I have bought so many things for this minimalist life. But each of them will get used to the utmost. From the table legs to the window shades to the weird one-off tools necessary to seal my propane pipes — each of them has a noble, necessary, unavoidable use — unlike the pleasure tchotchkes I usually buy to use once or a few times.
This is the pleasure of a good toolbox, in knowing one has what one needs, and trusts they can handle whatever problem the project throws at them next.
Ease and E-commerce Dominates :/
I have spent more money on Amazon for this project than probably the rest of my life combined. I tried to buy from my local hardware store whenever possible (and to be clear, they were a crucial source of advice and tools and tips that I visited more than once a day throughout most of this period.)
But there is much they cannot do. They do not have exactly the right part, times ten. They don’t have the reviews or the gear lists or the affiliate links from others who have gone before me. Amazon has all that in one place, easily shipped to me within two or even one day, such that the digital downside is almost non existent.
I shouldn’t be surprised — this is the nature of ecommerce vs brick and mortar. It’s simply turned up to eleven for this project, with so many purchases, so many back and forths, and need for expertise throughout. I felt some remorse — but ease wins the day, and the ease of which Amazon solved most of my problems was an order of magnitude easier than the next option, online or off.
Humans are ingenious and screws are everywhere
Humanity has figured out a solution to just about every normal problem out there!
Almost any problem I encountered as a home or RV resident is one that most of the other people on the planet have (thank you, boomer retirees) and thus there are endless solutions to problems I didn’t even know existed, from door hinges to shades to heating and beyond.
It’s like when you read the industry magazine for some business vertical you have no knowledge of, and all the jargon or ads talk about solving some ‘container dockerization for your deskless employees‘ problem that you have never heard of. If its a problem thats faced, someone has figured out a solution or five, and written a blog post comparing which is the best for what, and thank goodness they did.
Also it turns out that most of our world runs on screws. Big screws little screws hidden screws metal screws plastic screws. And no wonder, given how well 99% of these things are still screwable even in my 26 year old vehicle.
Stay tuned for Part 2 about the experience of living in it, coming soon. Meanwhile, sign up for my weekly email newsletter to get more of my writing.
