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Here's our first build article on saving time and money throughout the van conversion: https://meanderingexplorers.com/van-conversion-saving-time-money/.

I'm curious to hear how you all have been able to save time and money while converting your vans?

What is up at the ceiling over the counter?

Those are our surfboards in bags. We didn't have room to mount them on the roof and didn't want them mounted on the side of our van, so this was the best we could come up with. They are surprisingly easy to get in and out of the van .

This past year, we bought a used 148" HR Ford Transit and converted it into a camper van with the hopes of working remotely and optimizing our lives for adventure! The van conversion is complete and we thought it'd be fun to start a thread sharing our van conversion process.

You can follow the conversion and our adventures via our site, Meandering Explorers (https://meanderingexplorers.com/).















Hopefully, we can help give back to all of you. 

Wahoo!

Wow, I love the rustic look to your home on wheels! Way to go.

Here's an easy to read article on "Sound Dampening Materials Research", specifically targeted towards van sound dampening, that should help with your conundrum: https://meanderingexplorers.com/sound-dampening-materials-research/.

We used rigid closed-cell foam, Polyisocyanurate, because of its high R-value and foam sealant, for convenience, in between cracks. This turned out to be very labor intensive and next time we would use foam sealant for the whole thing. You can read the article on what we did here: https://meanderingexplorers.com/thermally-insulating-a-van/.

Hey Dan!

I totally agree. Sleep is super important, considering we spend ~1/3 of the day in a bed.

Yes, having a platform bed of sorts maximizes storage space and is the most convenient. However, we went with a convertible sofa bed because we wanted a pleasant space to work and hangout in.

We've actually found bed slats to be a great solution to just about all of your concerns, except the cost. Ours was easy to build, but using extruded aluminum is quite pricey. The bed slides in and out very smoothly, but that is because we added UHMW (Ultra High Molecrular Weight Polyethylene) between two bed slats and bolted them really tight together, to prevent the bed from binding when sliding in and out.

Here's an article on our convertible sofa bed and cushion design: https://meanderingexplorers.com/custom-convertible-sofa-bed-in-a-camper-van/

Hope this helps!

Surprisingly, we have found 4" of foam to be more than enough and have been happier with the foam in our van than any normal bed mattress we've ever slept on.

Here's a list of materials used on building our bed, including the type of foam we ordered: https://meanderingexplorers.com/custom-convertible-sofa-bed-in-a-camper-van/#itemized-list-convertible-cushions. Hope this helps!