worked and travelled out of our self converted Sprinter van needless to say

it was time for some serious upgrades so today we're gonna give you a full tour

of what our van looks like now let's go check it out

so Eamon and I actually create videos every week all about this lifestyle what

it's really like to live in a van and travel around so make sure you subscribe

and join the community welcome to our home before we jump into our own van

build it's really important to remember that the reason you do a custom build is

because you get to prioritize exactly what it is that you want in a tiny house

so for Eamon and I we love hosting people which reminds me we always begin

by offering our guests a drink this can crusher is actually a new

addition to the van we can't quite kick Eamon''s addiction to Lacroix so this

will hopefully reduce the size of our waste anyways you guys it's really

important to keep your driver happy at all times so if my buddy wants Lacroix

he's gonna get some ginger ale oh thanks babe so here we are in the captain's

chair this is a 2008 sprinter and we actually had to replace the engine

when we were in Mexico last year so with sprinters they are great vans as long as

you keep them maintained regular oil changes there's no real major

modifications up here with the exception of a little bit of extra storage so I

really wanted a nice easy place to keep our drone that's not a drone and camera

accessories and equipment so we actually keep our microphone in here this one

here their drone everything organized ready to go I can pull that out quickly

get the shot we have the pull out curtain so that's what separates the cab fully

black out and then I keep some other little things like a quick access to a

headlamp you got to have a koozie and we'll move on to the rest of the van

I'd like to say that we split the driving 50/50 but the truth is this is

where I spend most of my time in the passenger seat so I've got sunglasses

emergency tampons that kind of thing up there this is my area you can always

find water bottles flashlights and the best part about this seat is it's

actually a swivel so I can go from driving to lounging in just a quick sec

having a swivel seat really helps to open up the space as we mentioned we

love to host people so it's not only an extra chair

it really helps kind of bring this area into the van give you an extra square

foot one of the big game changers when living in a van to make it really feel

like a house is having temperature control so for that we actually

installed a while ago a Espar d2 heater and we love this thing we've done two

Canadian winters in Toronto it's been minus 30 degrees outside and we can be warm and

comfortable in here once you slide the door open it does get a little bit of

chilly you got to wait to let the heater warm the place up but it's well

insulated and it makes a big difference in feeling like a little house our

fridge is double the size we had a 55 litre Dometic fridge for two years no

longer it's now 110 liters we are so looking forward to storing much more

food and also making our own ice in the van our goal with our van was to make it

feel as at home as possible for us and that meant having a swing fridge as

opposed to the chest fridges you often see in van builds where you're digging

to the bottom to find your leftover peppers or whatever you have in there so

this makes it feel right at home for us and also when I'm driving I can easily

open up the fridge grab a drink grab some snacks so we just love the fridge

we just wanted to increase the size and that's what we've done did I show you

where the ice goes did I tell you about us making ice now? Ice Ice Baby if you're

new around here you might not know that I actually do most of the cooking

10 of out 10! Wow! so the first thing that we loved is our

nice spice magnetic spice rack we got the large jar so we don't have to

refill them as often we actually went out and did a custom jar I found this

jar I bought a hot sauce that was in it and then put a magnet in the top and

that's for our garlic because there's just not big enough for us just gonna

interject here and say that Amon is a Top Chef and he is fine-tuned his skills

since living in the van because he's got limited space and resources he's made a

plant-based cut we've made a book and we are so proud of it if you guys are

interested in quick simple and nutritious ly delicious meals the book

will be linked here and in the description below so check it out check

it out back to the tour up here we store easy access items the things that we

grab a lot olive oil plays bowls cups you'll notice we only have two of each

but that's all we need two mugs two cups two smoothie cups three bowls we lost

the ball so we have a van cise strainer this guy you just punch open get that

out of here I thought that was pretty cool we have the most amazing chai tea

unbelievable company I think it's called chai wallah you can check that out while

Eamon does most of the cooking that leaves me to clean so gotta have room

for my full-size broom this was a year and a half almost two years in the

making friends I used to sweep with a little tiny things tiny house gets messy

fast but also cleans pretty fast so I'm sweeping pretty much all the time

whoa should we talk about my new rug I didn't even think about that this

beautiful baby I've also finally convinced Eamon to have some color in

the van have to be very careful not to get any red in here so this carpet is

from an Etsy shop called rug Basel and they're based in Toronto but I think

it's a Turkish vintage rug from like the 20s or 30s and it's beautiful I think it

really adds like some color and vibrance to our space we almost forgot to share

with you one of the coolest neatest trickiest little things we bought it to

the bin this handy-dandy table it's an outdoor

table so we're still working out the kinks of the new van here but while

we're hanging out outside there are many mornings when Amon and I will set up our

outdoor chairs and just kind of hang out so this is gonna be awesome for putting

our breakfasts or coffees teas we don't really drink all the elf ki beverages

all that much but you know never say never finish a corner down a little bit

there a but I love it I freaking love our new house in our first van build we

were time and money crunched so our cabinetry kind of reflected that we

didn't spend too much time on it which is why this time I really wanted to make

it special this cabinetry was all pieced out by a man painted by me and I'm super

excited about it I think it adds a really nice rustic DIY look to the house

these two are actually fake drawers don't tell anybody this was supposed to

be a cutlery drawer it did not work out r.i.p this is the first drawer we store

all of our cooking utensils in here tea towels and our utensil drawer hopefully

when we have a better sorting and this is going to be our big momma

we've got not only pots and pans our dish rack we've got dry food storage

popcorn in here rice this is kind of where everything goes hopefully it

doesn't get too messy too fast we didn't really change the main layout because we

love having a big sink and stove and that's all we could really fit in here

but yes we still have propane so we do a two burner stove fresh water filtered

water so we have a carbon and sediment filter on the little top and a little

soap dispenser that's a nice little touch especially if you want to keep

your kitchen clean you know if the moving of soap bottle in and out let's

talk about water though really really excited about this

we added a 40 gallon water tank that's stored under the bed I'll show you guys

in a minute and then we actually have a nine gallon gray tank that's mounted

underneath the van and the coolest part about that is when we flicked this

little switch here it just automatically drains so if we're in a drain friendly

area we can just flick that ditch the gray water and we don't have to muck

around changing pipes and cleaning it up this is a space that I see a lot of

people not utilizing in their van and it makes me go why it's a like literally

probably 10% of the van is right there it's kind of our junk drawer

it looks very organized now but typically it's like if anything needs to

just get out of the way it goes up here so we start jackets more camera

equipment towels toilet paper Tupperware stuff like that one of the most

distinguishable features of our van is that this shrine we've built for our

vitamix blender we use it every day multiple times a day so having it really

easily accessible was really important to us we've also got something else

that's really important to us our pee funnel you guys know we installed the

toilet but you didn't think we'd get rid of the pee funnel did you this is our

new beautiful system for using it it's got a cute little door and the pee

funnel is there at all times it hooks right up into the line with the pee tank

from the toilet so we're good to go we've had a lot of questions and

comments about how we're going to use the toilet in the middle of the night

when we're in bed mode and the answer is the pee funnel of course we also have a

hook for our natural spray right after we use the pee funnel just give her a

one two this is also where we keep our toiletries so we've got our toothbrushes

on this little hook there which I actually really like it's a small touch

but just once again little tricks that help you keep really organized

obviously toothpaste soaps lotions stuff like that you might notice we don't have

the eye hooks anymore so these were like two bucks at Home Depot and they seemed

to have a pretty decent bite it's just got this little tongue that slides into

there I put two on here we're hoping that that will stay it does

hold it pretty nice and tight but we'll see over here in these new pop down

drawers we've got things like crackers quinoa oats anything that doesn't quite

make it into that one drawer in the kitchen area it's easily accessible

right here another major major upgrade to the van

was the electrical system so because we run big appliances like the blender and

computers and camera equipment etc etc we were finding that we are a little bit

limited so we had two AGM hundred amp power batteries and it just wasn't doing

it for us as well as I think we did bring them down below forty percent one

to many times which is really really bad but if you're in a pinch you got to do

what you got to do anyway we upgraded we now have four times the amount of power

six times the amount of power everything is stored in this little housing here so

this is easily removable this pops open we want to give a big thanks to our

friends at Go Power for getting us new batteries basically what we've done here

with the new setup is we have four six volt 225 amp power batteries so here's

two of the batteries I've just got a little rubber flap on them just extra

precaution proper fuses in between the two lines running into the central red

this is the central black and then that's going into our charge controller

and our 12-volt fuse panel this is an inverter charger so this is actually

gonna give us our 120 stuff for the blender as well as I can plug into Shore

power and juice up the battery bank if needed we've had this system for a

little over a week now and guys I have to say we have lots of power lots and

lots of power we're very excited about it two more things I don't think I

mentioned we are hooked up to our alternator so as we drive we do also

charge our battery bank and we've also got a wee boost here it's not connected

right now obviously but this thing's amazing it boosts cell signal and we

actually upload all of our YouTube videos off of cellular data when we're

travelling so if we're in the van and we've only

got like one bar we can flick this thing on and get four bars LTE so shout out we

boost as Amon mentioned temperature control is very important we did spend

the entire winter in Baja Mexico so this fantastic fan came in handy we've

installed it on the roof and it sucks air in as well as out so if you're

cooking it can really help as well if you have the door open it can create a

really nice cross breeze in here and it's actually kept us fairly cool

another thing I really wanted to add to the van this time was a mirror so your

girl got herself a mirror two years than the maken if you've seen our first van

tour you would know about the pullout drawer under the bed we actually

redesign the entire space to fit the poop bucket

I'm just any poop bucket our friends at nature's head hooked us up with a

composting toilet so this right here my friends is where you go number two

and number one really really great design you basically poop into peat moss

or coconut shreds and then it's got a little spinner here which you can spin

up and turn everything and actually compost it's all vented sealed doesn't

smell actually we haven't used it yet but apparently it is super super