Van

I went out in search of the impossible...

A device that can do all of the above. And then I found it. Sort of.

So I wanted to have one all-purpose head unit take care of all these functions. The name brands didn't seem to have this, or if they did, it was a bit expensive... in the four digits.

Then I looked at mp3playerstore's Innovatek line....

For my next trick, I wanted a sink. And I had to have running water. All this in a fully carpeted van, mind you.

I tried not to do this myself. I did. I went to Home Depot and Lowes and looked at their sink/cabinet combos, and all were too big and wasted space, plus they were of course made of MDF and were heavy and not so strong. Adding to my list of gripes with pre-fab selections was the giant porcelain sink-tops which provided very little useful room to place objects onto or do anything but ... well, wash. And that's no good when you're tight on space.

So first order of business is the bed.


I can cut and put screws into wood, I can even use glue and come up with ways to use hinges, but constructing a mattress was something of an enigma for me...

I called some places and got outrageous prices for custom made foam mattresses (and I'd need two if I wanted it to fold!)... and then we went to IKEA. There we saw a nice 4 foot wide futon with a two piece mattress. Fortunately IKEA sells the mattress and futon separately, the mattress costing about $90. The two halves were not the same width, but it was close enough to perfect - at exactly 6 x 4 feet together.

Before I install all my ideas in the unsuspecting van I had to remove a few things: the two captains chairs had to go (there are only two of us), and the rear bench ... well that definitely had no place in the van. It is 4.5 feet long when horizontal, enough for very small people to sleep on. In addition, ours didn't work (was stuck in the down position).

You can see one of them still there in this photo... We eventually decided we didn't need this one either. The captains chairs are pretty easy to remove - you pull the release and carry it away. Not so easy

It's been only a few weeks since I voiced my idea of lightweight RV-ing.

The idea is simple... we can spend years, even decades, waiting for "the right time" to buy a real RV, to try to go full-time, to ... experience any of it. I figured that waiting to take the total plunge without getting your feet wet is a bit of a gamble.

So a compromise came to me: Let me buy a van, throw a bed in it and go from there.

This seemed like a good idea...