VanLife: First Night or the Fantastic Journey Begins

My first night enjoying #VanLife was pretty sweet really. Oh, sure there were and are some links to work out in my interior design but by and large it was very comfortable in so many ways.

I had the occasion to visit a friend/mentor, Jerry Capel, and pick up a few supplies on the way to my Mother's Day show in Manhattan Kansas to sell art glass. A visit with Jerry is always fun. Whenever we get together we always laugh, plan, scheme, dream, eat pizza, along with some decadent desserts, and just generally share our lives and our faith and have fun. Having known one another for about 27 years, we have a bit of shared history and have long ago perfected our social interactions.

The night went pretty well as expected and we laughed and told stories late into the evening, enjoying ice cream and one another's company. Jerry retired to his house and I to the Kraken parked in his side yard by a studio his daughter Renee tinkers away in creating art and beautiful things.

Earlier in the evening we had loaded 6 folding tables in the Kraken adding to his already full interior along with some packing material in the form of boxes, tissue, and shopping bags for my coming show. When I climbed into the van, at least my bed was clear! However, moving around the van was like trying to horizontally navigate a storage unit with about 2 1/2 feet of headway.

My windows were open and there was a cool breeze flowing through the van across the top of my body. When I built my bunk, I positioned It 2 to 3 inches below the window line thinking that I would enjoy the cross breeze ventilation keeping me cool in the evenings. My plan worked like a charm. It was delightful.

There was rain and possible thunderstorms forecasted for the early morning hours. I wondered how well my van would stay dry with my windows open and if I would need to wake up and close them. This made me sleep lighter than I would have liked but all in all I slept pretty well in my new bed. As luck would have it, it rained but no rain came through the windows and the breeze was exquisite. The gentle pitter-patter of the raindrops on the roof of the fan lulled me in and out of sleep.

All in all, my first night in Van life was fantastic! Even now, I am listening to a choir of birds singing as we begin morning prayer together, welcoming a new sunrise and a new day.

Blackout Panels & Curtain for Stealth Camping

So as it turns out the blackout panels and the curtain were the most expensive  endeavor for the van.  I'll detail my final cost in an upcoming post.

For the blackout panels I used "plastic cardboard" or corrugated plastic sheets and Reflectix reflective insulation.

I cut the plastic panels to size and then used 3M Spray Adhesive Hi-Strength 90 to laminate the Reflectix insulation on both sides.  I used the 90 because it was heat resistant and I thought that perhaps that might be better given that the panels would go in the seven windows in the van.

I used craft paper to trace the pattern of the windows and then transferred that pattern to the plastic sheet and cut it out with an xacto knife.  The panels fit really tightly so I added gorilla tape pull tabs to each of them to help in removing them from the windows.  All in all, it worked well and took about two days to complete at a cost of about $120.

The black out curtain I lucked into in the clearance isle of a Wal-Mart.  They were standard curtain panels of about seven feet tall.  I cut them down to about four feet and hemmed them with permanent fabric glue.  I hung them from a tension rod between the cab and the cargo area.  The three foot remnants I also hemmed and kept for possible future use. The curtains were on sale for about $20 each and I used two panels.  With the fabric glue and tension rod my cost was $56.  This brings my total to around $176.

Honestly, this was the most challenging part of the buildout but one that I'm very pleased with in the end. The panels fit surprisingly well and the curtains are perfect.  I'm also glad that I doubled the amount of Reflectix I used.  I like the way it looks on the inside and it does double duty as insulation.

The Kraken is one step closer to #VanLife!

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Much of my build-out was based on my bed.  I needed as much room as I could get without sacrificing a decent bunk to sleep on.  A good friend of mine had suggested I look into a Zinus Memory Foam mattress and that's just what I did.  I managed to find a narrow twin which is only 30 inches wide a 75 inches long.  So it would be long enough for a 6 foot tall person like me to sleep on but take up as little width as possible in the van.

I added it to my Amazon wishlist and behold, my very first patron and a very good and thoughtful friend of mine bought it for me as a surprise.  It arrived ready to unbox, unroll, and inflate.  I was beyond tickled and excited!  This single event kind of made the whole thing real for me.  I would really be sleeping in this van out there the world somewhere and soon!

The link I added above is not the mattress that was purchased for me. Sadly for you, dear reader, it would appear that Amazon is no longer carrying that exact mattress that I now have but offers a hybrid of some description instead.  I'm just glad my friend acted when he did and purchased my original choice.

The instructions said to let the new mattress inflate for 72 hours before use so I had to wait three days to try it out.  In the meantime it made sense to try and pack my glassblowing show back into the Kraken to see if everything would indeed really fit, tables and all.  It took no small amount of arranging and rearranging but finally I was able to get it all in with a little room to spare and without blocking the windows which was a big goal for me.

This exercise in spatial relations reminded me very much of those finger puzzles I would get as a kid which had square tiles of letters in a plaque with one square empty from which you could shift and maneuver the letters around to make words.  You simply had to move "A" to move "B" to move "C" to spell CAT.  Well my friends, it would appear that I have been able to spell CAT with this build-out.  I hope it functions as well in reality as it looks here in preliminary preparations.  Only time will tell the story.