- Building out a van, like the ones often seen on social media, can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
- But we "built out" a Chevy Express van for under $1,000 and lived in it in Colorado full time.
- All you really need in a van is a bed, storage, cooking supplies, and a decent location.
We moved out of our Colorado apartment in 2018 when I was heading to Chicago for a year to attend grad school. My partner, Iver, had a business that kept him in Colorado, so he decided to take the opportunity to try out van life full time.
We had spent years traveling out of and sleeping in a Chevy Avalanche — a now discontinued pickup truck that had a fully enclosed bed that connected to the cab — so when it was time to trade it in and choose a van, he knew he could live with a very minimal setup.
Iver bought a used, dark blue 2011 Chevy express passenger van — that was previously owned by the Air Force, according to ownership records — and built it out in about a week. He lived in it full-time for the next 20 months, primarily in Colorado, and I joined him for the last three months until the pandemic hit.
Van builds — especially the gorgeous, decked-out ones often seen in Instagram feeds — typically cost tens of thousands of dollars. But it is possible to make a van perfectly livable for much, much less. Here's how we did it.
Preparing the van
When buying a van, you can get either a passenger van or a cargo van. Most van conversions start with a cargo van, which is more stripped down and therefore easier to build out however you desire. But if you are going the minimal route, starting with a passenger van may be a better option.
A passenger van will already have heating and AC in the back, carpeting, and windows, as well as paneling on the walls that, while not well-insulated, covers the metal frame. So starting with a passenger van eliminated the need for us to install walling, flooring, or windows.
We had all of the back seats removed before taking the van home from the dealership, which knocked about $400 off the price of the van. But if you want to hold onto the seats, you could store them in a storage locker — a handy thing to have as a van dweller regardless.
The floor of the van still had tracks that the seats could slide on and off, so we covered the floor with basic foam tiles, like the kinds that are often laid down on a gym floor, and then we covered the foam padding with easily washable rugs.
We also placed the passenger seat on a swivel, so that it could be turned to face the back of the van. Depending on the make and model of your van, there are swivel seat bases available online in the low hundreds of dollars. You can place it yourself or do what we did: pay someone at a van conversion place to install it for you.
Build a bed platform
There are two things that are pretty much a necessity for any van: a place to sleep and a place to store your stuff.
We built our bed in a day, after a single trip to Home Depot during which we purchased a large sheet of plywood that an employee very kindly cut into the size and shape we needed. We also bought some 4x4 wood posts that we attached to the plywood near each corner and in the center. We covered the platform with a fitted sheet and used a staple gun to secure it. Once completed, we slid the bed platform into the back of the van, and it was good to go.
For a mattress, we used a 5-inch thick memory foam pad and it was perfect for us, soft enough but firm. Memory foam is also great because you can use scissors to cut around any protruding areas of the van walls to ensure a perfect fit. A mattress could also work but, depending on its height, could make it more difficult to sit up while in bed without hitting the ceiling.
We covered our memory foam with another fitted sheet and completed our bed with a loose sheet, a blanket, and a comforter. We also used our sleeping bags on nights that were freezing.
Add storage and finishing touches
For under-bed storage, we bought large plastic bins that could easily slide underneath the bed platform. We stored items we didn't need to access often — like backpacking gear or extra clothes — in the bins that were behind the easily accessible ones. We used the bins on the end to store our everyday essentials, like cooking supplies.
We used a simple six-shelf cube organizer to store our clothes and additional items. We secured the organizer to the wall of the van, between the bed and front seats on the side opposite the sliding door, using good ol' rope and duct tape — and it was perfectly sturdy and never moved in the more than two years we had the van.
Sleeping in a van, especially a minimal build-out without proper insulation, can sometimes get either too hot or too cold. We had several small fans in the van that could be charged via USB during the day that we pointed at us at night. We also added small lights everywhere, some battery-powered and some rechargeable, and relied on auto-start to get the van warmed up or cooled down before crawling out of bed on especially cold or hot mornings.
Lastly, we made simple black-out shades by using super glue to attach small magnets to pieces of black felt that we cut into the perfect shape of our windows. We then glued magnets around the windows, making it easy to hang or take down the window covers.
How to manage without a kitchen
To store food, we had a Yeti cooler that we filled with cheap bags of ice from gas stations, which could keep cold for several days without melting. (Pro tip: most McDonald's will sell you a bag of ice for $1 to $2.) A cooler is of course not as convenient as having a fridge, so grocery store trips were a bit more frequent. We also had lots of dried food, like rice or pasta, and canned food, like tomatoes and tuna.
We had a simple camp stove, a pot, a pan, a cutting board, utensils, cooking oil, and tons of spices in an easily accessible bin under our bed. Usually, we'd cook outside. But if we were in a location where we needed to be discreet or the weather wasn't working with us, we'd cook in the van, with the windows cracked.
A gym membership is a lifesaver
As for a bathroom and shower, we relied heavily on our gym membership. The place we often slept at night was an area outside Denver, right next to a 24-Hour Fitness, a Whole Foods, and a public library.
We'd start every morning by driving two minutes to the gym, where we could shower, use the bathroom, and brush our teeth. Then we might go to Whole Foods to buy groceries, or go to the library or a coffee shop to work. Behind the library was a large, beautiful park, where we could take a break at any point in the day, or hang out all day if we wanted.
And at the end of the day, we could go back to our gym, maybe work out or use the sauna, shower, and get ready for bed.
Location is key
For day-to-day living in a minimal van, the location in which you live will make a huge difference. We took the van on month-long road trips across the country, but being based in Colorado made living and working full time out of a van accessible, thanks to the mild weather and amenities available for campers and van-lifers.
There are of course challenges that come with living in any van, and finding good places to park is one of the most well-known. Some options include: rest stops, overnight parking lots for backpacking, campgrounds, and just public roads where overnight parking is allowed and sleeping in a car is not prohibited by law. In Denver, for instance, sleeping in a vehicle is not illegal, but in Telluride, located in the southwest part of the state, sleeping in a vehicle is prohibited.
It's important to check the laws in the state and local jurisdictions you are in, but once you find a handful of go-to parking spots, this part of van living gets much easier. Worst comes to worst, many Walmart parking lots still allow overnight camping, and we have spent many nights in them, sleeping among other campers and truckers.
We had some questionable experiences — like when a drunk couple was arguing beside our van while we were trying to sleep, or when a security guard knocked on our window in a Walmart parking lot that we didn't realize prohibited overnight parking — but they were few and far between.
Despite the challenges, if you set realistic expectations van living can be an incredibly rewarding experience. If it's something you plan to commit to indefinitely, then it may be worth going all out and building out a van with many more features than we had.
But if van life is something you'd simply like to try out, either for a summer or longer — and you don't want to spend $30,000 to do it — a build like ours could be the way to go.