Here is a video I put together that shows the entire buildout of our sprinter van, Ellie.

The build was done in June of 2015. Since the initial completion, I added a few things like the Thule Alpine roof storage and the sliding bike trays.

After many many months of van building research, before I tackled the buildout with my friend David, I came across Dakota’s blog, Traipsing About. I was stoked with his idea for slide out bike trays. However, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted or needed them when David and I built our van back in 2015.

When you’re about to hit the road for 365+1 days, (or more…or less based on human dynamics…Joking) you tend to overthink things you need or want to take on the road with you. You also begin to wonder and question if the van you just built will live up to your expectations. Questions you start to think about are, will I have enough power?

I’ve talked about it in a previous blog about how I wanted and needed the van to be modular, transforming from crew van for work to camper van for our road trips. To help give you a little glimpse into how this is done I put a sweet little time-lapse video together with my GoPro Hero4.

Where to start? This blog entry is long overdue. I got back from Madison, WI and things just snowballed, in a good way. (Upgrades to our initial build are here)

May 13, 2015, marked the arrival of our newest addition. Our “metal baby” as we are affectionately referring to her. Jon is hard at work with insulation and documenting. His post will have details, this is just the teaser.