Bo and Yana DIY built their beautiful home on wheels and they thought of everything in the process. From building material choices to a well-thought-out layout, we hope you find something in this tour that inspires you along your own journey.
Hi my name is jana and i’m beau and this is our event ace ventura and you can follow us on go chase dreams i’m gonna start from the outside so for us it was really important that we really consider each space really carefully so really make it multifunctional really think ahead of time and think okay how are we actually going to use the space so we decided
To do this is actually kind of a harder decision because we made this beautiful piece and the wooden tiles was kind of really hard choice to cut through but we mustered the courage and didn’t i’m really happy with the way it turned out so this is something that we kind of did for um you know if we wanted to just hang around you know put a few beers on maybe
Put a few chairs on really enjoy the sunshine if we’re just there for a little bit of a spot or just wanted to hang in there so i thought it was a really good multi-functional use of space as well as you know gives us access to the fridge so in case we need to do any maintenance or anything like that it’s also really great to do and i’m gonna walk you inside
And show you a little bit about the other space and i’m going to show you around in the kitchen we’re really inspired with like minimal japanese style and as you know it’s really hard to keep things minimal in the van because things get super uh super kind of busy so i’m gonna walk you through and i’m gonna start you with the lighting and again mood lighting is
Very important to me so it’s um it’s really nice to kind of you know when you’re in a darker space and the lights are really bright you can choose which lights to turn on and then dim them down to make it you know a little bit of a nice mood so yeah we’re going to move on to the fringe uh this is the retrigo 85 liter fridge it’s got a lot a lot of space it’s got
Even a little freezer in there uh we also have the true induction uh two burner uh cook stove so it was really again important for us to kind of keep that minimal aesthetic but also at the same time have the space very multi-functional then we kind of go into the other kitchen space here so the drawers this was again very interesting so this is from a rv labs
Yeah so we tried to keep it very minimal kind of we did the backsplash ourselves so we kind of chose this like really nice penny tile feel this was actually super fun to to make we also kind of used that same white oak for the magnetic rack so we made it ourselves uh we’re a big fan of the spice rack i really really love this piece uh really big kudos to bow so
It’s really important for us to have very accessible spices as we’re um you know creating our meal here we have our faucet and our sink so i wanted to go for like a really deep big sink so this is about a 19 by 17 uh sink it’s really nice because it has this drying rack and it’s also really flush with the actual countertop this is our fourth van so we’ve had
Three trial vans before this so i think that this was something that was a long time coming and i think we had always wanted to build a van then we wanted it to be something that was customized to to our needs and and there’s a lot more value that you can get out of it if you’re if you’re buying the individual components and assembling it yourself but of course
You need the time to be able to put into building it so welcome to our little office space up front so this is typically what you would call a european style layout of the van which has a separate raised bed in the back and then a separate seating area in the front so like most vans we have two integrated swivel seats at the front we have a standard lagoon table
And this is really really great because we can swivel it in all sorts of directions depending on if we want to have dinner or if we’re working and this is a nice live edge piece of map a burl that has resin poured in the middle and it’s a little bit heavy to be honest a little bit heavier than what you’re supposed to put on a lagoon table but we really like the
Aesthetic of it so that’s why we have it over here we have our window and we really like these guys because they pop open to 45 degrees and you might have heard that ding ding that’s our alarm and i’ll talk about that in a minute but we love these windows because it has the integrated bug screen as well as the blackout blinds or 50 50. so these things are
Just fantastic and we love them we use them every single day moving up here we have two overhead storage compartments and these are used for electronics and i’m going to show you what’s behind this one this is sort of the heart and brain of the van so moving through we have our ring security system so every single door and window has a sensor as well as a
Small integrated camera right here underneath up here we have all of our switches that control the electronics within the van and then we have a water level as well and i’ve got two extra ones on there that i haven’t used yet and we have our wii boost as well and we can see within this area we have our nice dream sign because our brand is dream chasers this
Has tons of storage underneath and actually contains our water heater we really love this big bench seat because if you take the cushions off it also also flips over and creates a little bit larger than a single bed about a single bed so you can easily sleep another person within that area so this is something that you don’t see very often in vans so we have a
Hidden safe underneath this floorboard so you would try to hide it underneath the carpet but it’s raises up like this and you can access things right now we just have some some money and our passports in there but you lock that up and that’s completely hidden underneath the floorboard so in talking about the wood aesthetic of the van all of the cabinetry
And the ceilings are white oak and i have never done any cabinetry before but through youtube and articles we learned how to do everything that was necessary to build everything ourselves we didn’t outsource any of this so this is a half inch white oak and then we used edge banding along the edges to create a beautiful seamless finish and it’s just iron on
Edge banding super easy to use and then sand the edges and it creates this beautiful clean finish and then we found these wall panels at an interior design store and they’re 24 by 24 inches and they have this beautiful pattern already cut into them up here we have our mini curtain up top and then our two large curtains with a little magnetic holder so we kind
Of already had this like checklist of all the things that we’re gonna do and every time i actually catch myself in the van i’m like we made such an amazing space it like really really works well for us so over here you may think it’s a closet but it is not it’s a shower and a washroom so when you open it up they are magnetic actually here at the very very top
So you’ll see they snap open here i’m going to open it up so you can get a better view we actually don’t see many people do this kind of door a lot of people have the nautilus retractable door shower which is really good we actually really use it when we do take a shower if you’re like coming back after a really awesome hike you know the least thing you want to
Do is try to set up your bed or try to figure out how to do a shower so we wanted to have it really easily accessible and that was really really important for us so here these are actually like real tiles took me a really long time i wanted to kind of have this like more of a stone um finish and then we used the paint that is waterproof in order to make it
Look this way we also have our washroom so this is the airhead washroom we also kind of designed this cedar piece at the bottom so again when you’re taking a shower it’s really nice very soft and it’s not as cold especially if you’re doing this in the you know dead of the winter like we did in calgary we have a mirror here so i use this all the time so in the
Morning you know when i get ready uh if i wanted to do a meeting or anything like that so i just get ready here i have we have all of the storage on the inside so again if you’re having this big space and if it’s always open it’s not as very useful so we wanted to put these kind of pieces in the back they’re not necessarily super neat but we try to make them as
Neat as possible and yeah that’s our space okay guys now i’m going to show you the bedroom so the great thing about our bed is that even though it looks like it’s a fixed bed and it’s raised everything is actually completely removable including this wall and i could have everything out of here in about 10-15 minutes if i really wanted to so on the back of this
Wall i’ve got little clasps and this whole piece can just be completely removed which is pretty neat in this little block this is our step that allows us to step up onto the bed and that’s really useful for a shorter person and this also provides quick and easy access for us to our storage in the back if we want to access any of our linens or our big backpacks
Or camping equipment anything like that so i’m gonna hop up here and show you some of the stuff up here there’s the step okay so it’s just the right height for me to sit up in bed a lot of people have one side of their bed without cabinetry so you can fully lean back but we really wanted the additional storage because we have a lot of stuff that we bring with
Us so both sides left and right have storage the bed itself is a olympic queen so it’s six inches wider we have the froley bed spring system which really really gives us extra comfort and replaces an entire box spring and these are fantastic because you can adjust them to your level of comfort on either side you’ll see the bump outs that we talked about and the
The flare spaces and we’ve lined the flare spaces with very very soft fabric and a little bit of foam underneath our lighting for the shower and for this side and then our lighting for this side so we have zone control in this thing it’s great so if you want lighting in any particular area that was something that was really important to us having that sort of
Control and we really love it this is our fres air unit and having an air conditioning in a van is a luxury item and this is what we call an evaporative cooling system so it actually pulls water from the water tank and drips it over filter pads and then blows air through it and that’s how it creates a cooling effect as the water evaporates my other favorite part
Would be the roof rack by remora remora roof racks and we have a cedar deck up top that we can climb up have a drink up there watch the sunset put out a blanket yeah that was like one of the best decisions we’ve made is to wait the extra time for the solar panels to come in that you can walk on because it’s like gives you all of this real estate for essentially
Having a patio okay so i’m going to take you around the exterior of ace ventura our van so mounted to the front here we have these bars on the front to help protect us from any collisions and then we have our rigid mounted fog light moving down the side of the vehicle we have the upgraded bf goodrich ko2 tires under here we have upgraded you can see the the
Yellow shock here we have a bilstein front and rear shocks that we upgraded in the vehicle we have these lovely side steps made by carr that have really helped because we also included a lift kit underneath the van here we have access to our gray water tank and i have a us solid ball valve that’s actually on a switch inside the van so i can flip that at any time
And dump our water tank if it’s in a good area to do that so we applied this vinyl decal ourself with the windows all the way around the vehicle we have awning style windows that we got from wilderness vans in calgary this is like a small little upgrade that many people wouldn’t think about actually but it’s a tiny rain gutter because when you have this door
Open we used to get drips coming in all the time when you because water’s coming off the roof and this little rain gutter redirects the water just past the door and we never get any water coming in anymore it’s fantastic we also have our large roof rack made by remora roof racks and we’ll take you guys up there in a little bit and then attach to the remora roof
Rack is our awning our thule awning so these are our flares from flarespace and now the promaster is already quite a wide van it’s wider than the sprinter and wider than the ford transit by about eight to nine inches so if you want to sleep sideways you already have quite a bit of space but if you’re a person who’s six feet or more than six feet having those
Extra couple inches that a flare provides is really really nice so before we put in these flares i was kind of head and foot right up against the side of the van but i loved adding these in because now i can wiggle my toes and i don’t feel the cold the cold coming through the windows because we have that extra space so the roof rack is made by a company called
Remora out of quebec we got a little bit of an upgraded version that has both side ladders and a flip down device that can be used for surfboard paddle board or small kayak and that’s something that we’re really really excited about up top we have 270 watt panels and then in the middle we have two smaller 110 watt panels we love these panels because they’re thin
They’re flexible and you can actually walk on them they’re hardcore and we’ve really enjoyed having them okay so welcome to the garage space in the van it’s a little bit of a mess like most people’s but this is key to our survival in a van because we’re able to store so much stuff back here over on this side tucked in behind here we have our battery system and
We have four 105 hour lithium ion battery so that’s 420 amp hours of lithium which is really really fantastic and that powers everything we need in the van including our inverter and we have a 3000 watt victron inverter over on this side we have a 40 gallon water tank under here and it’s quite narrow and thin but it balances kind of well with the weight of the
Batteries on that side at the back we also have a little outdoor shower so if you’ve been surfing or paddle boarding at the beach and you want to wash off sand or any gear before you put it in the back this is a great little shower to have we have all of our camping equipment and most importantly i have my tool my tool bag and i can’t tell you how often i have
To fix little things in the van that breaks so this is this is an essential part of van life to have a proper tool bag that’s easily accessible in white rock yesterday no snow no ice we there’s a 33 degree hill and and we went down it and we’re like oh this is going to be a bugger trying to get back up and we got stuck halfway up the hill and started spinning
Out going up the hill and this is with the bfgoodrich tires and that’s just because we’re so heavy on the back end just tilt it up so we start jumping in the front oh my god oh my goodness it was scary and there was a car behind us right so you start to like get back and the guy’s like beeping and yeah i was probably shouldn’t have tried you
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This Ram Promaster Van Conversion Is Nicer Than ANY Downtown Apartment | Van Tour By Van Clan
