Vanlife - How to fit a van and make it your home
French pass
South Island, New Zealand
I am quite new to the whole vanlife but I have to say that I love it! Almost a year ago my partner and I purchased a van that was not yet fully livable. After about 6 weeks and many hours put into the van we had a fully livable and comfortable van! Previously we have rented a van for a couple of weeks at a time for travelling around the country. As we ended up staying in New Zealand a lot longer than planned we decided to make the most of it. We wanted to get our own van so that we could move around freely as we wished without having to think about renting a van. The closest place for us to rent a van is 2.5 hours away and there is a bit of planning involved.
It was difficult to known what type of van we wanted as we had never owned one before. We started researching and finding things that we liked and disliked about different vehicles. After looking at different vans online and in person for weeks and even months we finally settled for our Kia Pregio 2005. It was registered as a self-contained van which means that it has a toilet (portable), sink, grey water tank and plenty of storage for fresh water. But we did not just want a van that we could live in, we wanted to make sure that it was more than that. There was enough room to be able to sit comfortable on the seats while the bed was not made which was a key point for us. Here are a few photos of what the van looked like inside when we bought it.
We were adamant to make sure that our van building impacted the environment as little as possible. Therefore we decided that the majority of the items we bought for the van was to be second hand. We had a whole van to fit with kitchen items, bedding, carpet etc. The only things we bought as new for the van was pretty much the paint/oil, a new sink, Velcro and a couple of hinges with screws. Buying second hand is a great way to make sure items get a longer life and to support smaller operations such as the local OP-shops.
One of the first jobs was to give the van a full paint job inside and to treat the wood to avoid water damage. To make it more unique I decided to add my own wood burn art onto some of the cupboards in the “kitchen” (thanks to Fiona for lending me the wood burner).
The windows in the van was tinted to start off with but we decided that it would be better if we let more natural light into the van. There are many ways to remove tint and the best one would be to take it to someone who knows how to do it. Being quite stubborn I wanted to do it myself and if you do not have the patience or soft hands I probably would not recommend it. It was winter time and I had finished my contract at work at the time so I had all the time in the world! I jumped onto the world wide web and Youtube to see how other people had done it themselves. It probably took me 2-3 days to remove all the tint successfully without damaging the windows and the heating strips on the back windscreen. The result was amazing though and I am so happy we decided to remove it!
After another couple of days we had curtains, carpet, covers for our mattresses and seat covers that I managed to sew together with a borrowed sewing machine (thanks to a Kaikoura local for lending me that one) and things were starting to fall into place.
The best thing about having a van is to be able to stop and spend the night wherever you want (as long as it is a suitable place to do so), especially in those remote places. As my partner and I are avid wildlife observers and do a lot of photography we wanted to make sure that we could charge our devices at all times. My partner Allan put a lot of time and research into finding the best set up for us. We now have a small solar-panel, inverter and a deep cycle battery set up in our van, all second hand of course. So as long as the sun shines every now and then we have power!
As soon as the van was finalized we decided to take off on our first trip which lasted for about one month around the South Island, mainly the northern and western side of the island which we had not visited before. We had some amazing views, we did one of the Great Walks of New Zealand which was the Abel Tasman walk and saw some incredible wildlife. One of our highlights from this trip was seeing the Tawaki / Fiordland-crested penguin. Shortly after this trip we ventured back to the westcoast another couple of times to view these stunning penguins during their breeding season.
