VAN-TASTIC TRANSFORMATION
Camping makeover thanks to Barry’s lockdown project
BIKE shop manager Barry Marples was beginning to feel bored. In lockdown near Portmeirion in Gwynedd and furloughed from work, the 38-year old felt the need to do something constructive with the unexpected spare time, at least for part of each day anyway.
So he took his standard and rather basic white transit van and transformed it into a stylish camper complete with a little kitchen, eating and seating area, double bed and oodles of style.
Often seen rummaging through the shed at all hours, hunting down left-overs of DIY tasks long finished, Barry also scrounged from family and friends and bought materials for next to nothing on online auction sites.
The transformation from white van man to wonderful campervan man had begun.
Barry and wife Llinos have owned the van in question for about three years.
He says: “It was bought with the intention of being transformed into a campervan but it was an idea that never actually came to fruition because of lack of time.
“We used to sleep in it when we went out and about, but in a very crude way and not very comfortable at all.”
With lockdown and furlough meaning Barry had a lot of time at the family home, he decided to put his handyman skills to the test, even though the biggest thing he’d ever previously tackled was fitting a kitchen.
Barry says: “The whole van only took about a month because you’ve got time during the day; you’ve got the whole day.
“I got up, worked on the van, go for a walk with the kids, then do some more van work, then family time, so it fitted into lockdown well.
“It was my lockdown job, a real job definitely gets in the way of a major project like this.”
So once the decision was made for the van to get a makeover, Barry dived straight into the transformation.
He says: “There were no drawings, I just did it ad hoc, thinking about it, thinking it through with my own logic on how I think it should do it.
“To get the style of how the van could look, the interior design, I used Pinterest, I’m a serial pinner on Pinterest!”
Barry also spent many evenings trawling through YouTube for advice videos and this is an aspect of the project he is passionate about: spend as much time on the research of the
project as you do on the project itself is Barry’s advice.
He says: “Go on the many forums that are out there, because a lot of people are sharing advice.
“But I’d say look at plenty of content because I found there are people who are good at making good videos, they seem to know what they’re on about.
“But then you get to the point when you’ve done it yourself and learnt to do a bit more and you then realise that they’ve given very bad advice about things like wiring.
“So you need to go to enough resources to learn it for yourself and understand the subject and not just take the first video that you see.”
Barry says the project has taught him a number of valuable lessons.
He says: “Spend the majority of your budget on the important things that are specifically for campers and caravans.
“It’s important to have the proper equipment for things like hobs. Domestic hobs are not the same as caravan hobs.
“Invest your budget in the areas where it’s important like insulation, wiring and gas and salvage for more of the aesthetic things. To connect up the gas I got my neighbour to help me who used to be a qualified plumber.
“It helped too that most of the tools I used were his tools. My neighbour is awesome, he says, ‘ Oh Barry, you know there are tools in my workshop – help yourself!’ He’s a wonderful neighbour, I was really lucky.
“I put a skylight in the roof and a window in the side after lots of measuring and then very nervous cutting with the jigsaw.
“They were from a company who do windows specifically for vans and campers, I think it’s important to invest the budget in the materials but it was self installation with these and that was scary.”
From the actual process of doing the build, Barry also comes away from the project with experience and knowledge about the order of tasks.
He says: “A few times I would put stuff in and think I’ve finished that bit but then would have to go back and do it again or change things.
“For example, if I had thought more about the order of the tasks I could have avoided having to work with my head squeezed into a tiny kitchen cabinet doing the electrics, I should have planned ahead and done the wiring first.”
When the couple decided to go ahead with the van revamp Barry did construct a list of what was needed and ordered some items from eBay as well as specialist suppliers.
He says: “I did drawings in the sense of a rough sketch of where I was going to put things but not a proper drawing.
“I sketched where things were going to go to get a sense of the space and from that I worked out exact measurements and how much I needed for each area, like fabric and timber.
“Most of the stuff I got from eBay was things like the caravan sink from a specialist supplier on the site and switches and stuff that aren’t much money but are functional and required.
“But the majority of the actual build was salvaged palette wood, ply sheeting and certain timbers that I had anyway in the shed. That’s how the project only cost me about £2,500.”
Day one saw Barry stripping out the van and installing insulation in the walls and then plywood on top.
Next he put the flooring down, a wood-effect lino that he’s very pleased with, commenting, “It’s quite good actually, it’s quite cheap and it looks quite convincing.”
The sink and counter came next using old palette wood he found in the shed which he painstakingly sanded and then gave a light burnt effect using a blow torch which, although he is pleased with the outcome he exclaims, “It was so time consuming, I’m not sure I will be doing that again.”
The caravan sink fitted snugly into the newly built palette kitchen units under which Barry installed two little 10-litre water drums, one with a pump providing clean water to the tap and the other collecting and storing dirty water from the sink. The gas hob, with the neighbour’s expert advice, was then fitted.
Barry remembers: “The wiring came next and goes from the main van battery to a smaller caravan leisure battery, so you can put the lights on and not run out your van battery.”
After the sink unit and wiring came the seating and bed area at the back of the van and it was this area that almost broke him.
Firstly there was more palette work, removing nails and extensive sanding so the finished piece would be a smooth tabletop.
Barry says: “The hardest part was probably the bed. There was a lot of back-and-forth and head scratching, figuring out how it can be a bed and a table.
“It was frustrating; back-and-forth cutting, trimming, cutting some more.”
The table has got a central leg that is taken away for the table top to lower.
Around all the seating there’s a small lip that the tabletop then sits on which when combined with the bench seats, creates a full-length bed base.
Then the back sections of the bench seating are placed into the middle section, on top of the former tabletop as the middle part of the mattress, and the bed is created.
Barry says: “The bed is made from the bench seats and backs and is actually a memory foam mattress that someone was selling on Marketplace from a spare room that had barely been used. Had to keep shaving and cut bits off that too until it was a perfect fit.”
The finishing touch was Barry’s original artwork above the kitchen done on blackboard.
Art was another activity he has had time to try, including completing an online art course, something else he had always aspired to do but never seemed to have the time.
As soon as Barry shared his finished van on social media, someone persuaded him to part with it almost immediately. And now he’s been bitten by the “small spaces” transformation bug.
He says: “The project has taught me a multitude of skills like doing the electrics and working with the different materials like the fabric upholstery and plywood, and it’s given me the confidence to do another one which is great.
“I’m close to finishing the next one. I took the money that I made from this one and bought another van and also some tools of my own so I don’t have to keep stealing the neighbour’s.”
But this new van project has a new design, with an ingenious added mezzanine sleeping level so no more fiddling about with creating moving tabletops and snipping foam.
And the new van is also very unlikely to feature any burnt palette wood either.