We opted to go with a video for this update; enjoy! We hope to be back soon with more progress. Thanks for following along!
Much love, The Phillips Pack
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Goodness, it has been a minute! Apologies to everyone who has been curious about what happened since publishing our last, disheartening blog.
The answer to that question is "a lot." So put on your seatbelts and join us for the ride! The Parking Spot
The beginning of our problems was the parking violation. Our perfect set-up of parking at Christina's family's house was no longer an option. This is one of the challenges, to those out there reading who are interested in converting, of selecting a less "stealthy" vehicle.
The first step of our plan was getting it to Tanner's family's church, located 5 miles from the house. From reading the last blog, you know we ran into trouble with the van staying on long enough to even do that. But after trial and error, which we'll explain later in this post, we made it! This bought us the time needed to research and decide on an alternate spot. And so, we researched. All signs pointed to an RV storage location not far from our apartment. The cost would be $100 per month, which stung but at the same time would likely light a fire to get things done on the van. We went to check out the spot, feeling pretty prepared to sign the dotted line. Thank goodness we checked it out beforehand! It became clear that management would 1) not allow us to work on the van at the location and 2) not want us to move the van out of the spot frequently (which would be necessary for us to do work on it elsewhere). Back to the drawing board! On a complete whim, we took a look at a secluded parking lot at our apartment complex and found a few boats and trailers. Turns out, we can park our van AT our apartment complex (where we can work on it) for $35 a month. The dotted line was signed. ![]() The Engine
This is where things get more technical than I can understand (this is Christina writing, by the way). I'll do my best to communicate what I think happened:
First, Tanner and his dad replaced the fuel filter (shout out to Wayne for jumping in late at night to help us)! This technically would have done the trick, but we had cranked the engine so many times that the batteries were like "we done." Important to note that diesel engines - especially with a vehicle this size - take a lot of battery power to get started. Second, we replaced the now dead batteries. With the batteries replaced, we were able to make the 20 mile drive to our apartment. This should have also done the trick, so we were perplexed when we continued to run into the issue. ![]()
So, we found a workhorse certified shop to check it out. And guess what? They drove that sucker around 60 miles with no problem. They also left it on in the shop for four hours with no problem.
So.. but... what? We're pretty sure there was some residual bad fuel in the lines causing the engine to shut off. Considering it's been a few months, we're pretty confident the problem is solved. It's a bummer we had to pay a mechanic to tell us we fixed it ourselves, but at least we know a good place to take the van if we run into any further issues. The Conversion
The parking spot and the engine were both taken care of by mid-February. When did May get here?! We've been trucking along, making progress when we can.
Insulation is a step by step process, and we've started with the walls! Reflectix is up, and we're nearly finished installing the foam board insulation. That's been Christina's project while Tanner focuses on the windows. Speaking of which, the frames are built and cut thanks to our new jigsaw. We're ready to move forward with installing on the van wall, which we'll then use as the template for cutting a hole in the walls of our van! We're following a similar process to this video, if you're curious. It may not sound like a lot, but literally every step of the way involves 2,350,745 steps... we're making gains and we're proud of ourselves. ![]() That's all for this time!
Thanks for following along on this journey. Your excitement fuels our fire! With everything that happened in the new year, we were really unsure about a lot of things. The encouragement of family, friends, and this neat lil' community kept us going. In the end? We got an awesome parking spot where we live, at a price we can afford, that we never would have stumbled upon without going through those trials. It's funny how things work out sometimes :)
Till next time! The Phillips Pack
We started the evening on January 22nd with a call from my family, letting us know that they've received a parking violation. The violation gave us 24 hours to get the van out of there. Mind you, we've been parked in this driveway for over 6 months.
After a brief moment of freaking out, we had a plan B. To meet the 24 hour deadline, we'd park the van at our family's church. It wasn't a permanent solution, but it would give us the time we needed to come up with a new renovation site. With a plan in place, we hit the road to my parents house! It wasn't how we envisioned our night going... but hey, it could've been worse! Tanner hopped into the step van, and I hopped in the Mazda so I could follow him. The van turns on, all is normal. But then, the van turns off. And then comes the sound everyone is familiar with but no one wants to hear - when you turn the key, and though the engine tries... it can't quite commit to turning on. ![]() So, yeah. That wasn't a great moment. Tanner got out the manual, read some things... I sat in quiet support. At some point we agreed that if the van turned on, we needed to book it to the church so that we could at least get it moved. Whatever was wrong could be fixed later and in a different location. After about half an hour of tinkering, the engine got started again! Immediately, the van was put into reverse and hope was sparked! It was on the move! He began backing out, and about halfway out the driveway the van quits. Just quits. And now? We're blocking THREE cars from backing out themselves. Plan C is to just get it back to where it was... and accept whatever ticket(s) we're given until we can get it moved. Tanner reads more of the manual/googles the problem, I continue trying to support while having no idea what's going on. About an hour later... the van randomly turned back on and got parked back in its original spot. Whew. Around this time is when Wayne, Tanner's dad, shows up for support. It was just like old times. Wayne just so happens to know a mechanic, so they get him on the phone and explain the issue. He suggests that it's probably the fuel filter. They can probably fix it themselves, but they're going to need the right parts to do it. Cue father and son driving to the only open O'Reilly's at 10 p.m. At this point, I decided to move from biting my nails outdoors to biting my nails indoors and let the engineers handle it. After another hour they came into the house, done for the night. I sat patiently on the couch waiting to hear the results. It didn't work. ![]()
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we ended our evening. It truly was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
We're both feeling a little doomed. Whatever encouragement you have to give, please share it! We'll take all the prayers and good vibes that this lil' community has to offer.
Till next time... hopefully with better news, The Phillips Pack
UPDATE 1: Wow guys. I got a call from Jim, my step-dad, letting me know that the violation's deadline has been extended to February 1. Go Jim!!!!!
UPDATE 2: Okay what?!? I called Tanner to let him know about the extension... Turns out he took off work and somehow got the van to the church! Still unsure about whether professional repairs are in order. Lesson learned: if it sounds easy, it probably isn't Goodness, I cannot believe it’s been three months since our last update! I’ve not wanted to post a new blog until another project was completed… but now so much has happened that I don’t know where to start! To summarize, we removed the garage door and replaced it with swing out doors. We did this in order to add about 28 cubic feet to the van, which is super significant! So, we set aside a Saturday and planned to remove the garage door, build a frame and set up the new doors. *laughs to ourselves at how ambitious we were* It started with the genius plan to purchase hollow doors (also known as: cheaper doors). We knew we’d have to cut off about a foot and half of the length, so we cleverly thought to stuff the doors with insulation and seal the hole! After cutting, we learned the hollow doors had structural inserts which made it impossible to insulate (picture a maze built of cardboard). On to plan B: Tanner found free solid doors off of Craigslist! He came home from work one day with a pair of mismatched solid doors and determination in his eyes. That Saturday, we decided to prep the doors as much as possible before removing the garage door. This included insulating the divots on both sides, attaching a thin layer of wood on the interior side, and attaching a layer of whiteboard-material on the exterior side. Homey on the inside, nondescript on the outside. Prepping the doors themselves took some time: we filled divots with blow-in insulation, used reflectix to keep in place, cut both the wood and whiteboard-material to the exact measurement, and attached with liquid nail/bolts. If we were to do it all over again, we’d probably use foam board insulation or skip the insulation step altogether. About a week after prep, we could see some warping on our exterior layer, due to an unflat surface which was caused by the insulation. Next up came removing the garage door. First step was to cut the spring’s wire, which allows for easy lifting and lowering of the door. Tanner warned a dozen times that we could lose our fingers if we weren’t careful… thus the explosive, nervous laughter in the video below: Once the wire was cut, we planned to roll the door right off the rails! The van’s light fixture, however, is just barely too close to the rails and blocked us from being able to do things the easy way. Anyone noticing a theme, here? On to plan B for the garage door: we’d remove the rivets that hold the rails in place. With the weight of the door, we hoped there would be enough of an angle created to avoid the light fixture. So we got straight to removing the rivets. If you remember from our last post, rivets are the enemy. Therefore, we spent another Saturday just drilling through rivets. For the particularly stubborn rivets, we got out the dremel. By the time we finished, it was dark and we had to call it a day. So rather than finishing in just one Saturday, we are now several Saturdays into this project and just now ready to remove the garage door. Removing rivets did the trick and the garage door was finally off the rails! We felt elated for about two minutes, but then it was back to work. Now we needed to build the frame and get the doors all set up if we didn’t want a giant hole in the back of our van! This is right around the rainy time of autumn, might I add. As if we weren’t stressed already! To start, we made a couple measurement errors. Then we made what feels like the 700th trip to Home Depot. Next we threw in some screws that weren’t strong enough for metal. Skipped dinner. Mixed in as many lanterns and flashlights as we could find. And voila! We had a frame! And by that I mean just a frame. Exhausted and hungry, seeing that it’s about 10 p.m. at this point, we left the van behind with doors clamped in place and a hope that they’d still be there when we got back. Luckily, the doors were still in place the next time we were able to work on the van. We purchased hinges, shims and one of my now favorite tools: a chisel! We opted to carve a notch on the wood frame but not on the doors themselves, leaving a gap should we opt to add metal edging. Then, using shims, we positioned the doors in the exact placement that we hoped to install. This is when we realized that our free doors from Craigslist weren’t exactly even and corners weren’t perfect, 90 degree angles. So that was interesting! We marked where hinges should be installed and got to drilling! Finally, it was time to see if all this work was worth it. I hope the boomerang above gives you an idea of how stoked we were that IT WORKED. We still have finishing touches, such as adding seals and the metal edging mentioned earlier, and of course we’ll paint the frame at some point. But for the first time, it feels like we really accomplished something - regardless of how imperfect it is! And that's the latest news from our van project! Next up on the to do is probably installing windows... that will surely be interesting! I hope to get back to you all with another update soon - definitely don’t want three months to pass by again ;)
Till next time! The Phillips Pack One small step for the van, one giant leap for vankind. Well hello again! We’re back, exactly two months after purchasing the step van, to share the progress we’ve made thus far! Words cannot express the excitement we feel to finally see some momentum. First things first: tear down. As you may recall from our “before the conversion tour,” the van has many shelves that need to be removed. The wall panels, while we’re still debating about repurposing or building out new walls, also need to be removed so that we can check out the brackets and be sure there isn’t any hidden rust. The wall separating the driver section and the living section is covered in a gray-fabric that needs to be removed, as well. These are all things that sound easy, in theory. We learned quickly ;)
While Tanner is naturally handy and just understands how to do things, it’s taken some patience from both of us while I try to figure things out. One Saturday, I broke three drill bits. What did we do? We went to Lowe’s and bought titanium drill bits. Ha! Take that! No struggle has seemed too big, thus far. A big reason for that, I have to admit, is that we’re blessed to be parked in Jim and Anne-Lise Sellers’s driveway and have access to the tools they’ve collected over their 15 years of marriage. Jim, my step-dad, often comes out with a tool in hand that proves super helpful. Anne-Lise, my mom, comes out to brainstorm, talk through ideas, and jumps into to help now and again. Having both of their support has been amazing! It’s taken us a total of four weeks to complete the teardown process. There are still a few things here and there that need to be removed, but we’re now ready to move on to installing new doors, adding windows… and maybe even get started with insulation! We have no expectation on how long these next steps will take, or even if we’ll get them right the first time around. Either way, we’ll be back soon to keep you all posted! Thanks so much for following along in this crazy project.
Till next time! The Phillips Pack Thanks for tuning in again for our fourth blog, which will be the last “introductory” post - moving forward, we’ll be sharing progress of the conversion! Stick with us for this post, though, as we cover one of the most important topics yet: budget. Tanner and I are huge budgeters - each month, we allocate every dollar to a specific category and track our savings. I find genuine joy in reconciling our accounts, correcting our overspending, assigning dollars for next month, etc. I could talk about my love of budgeting all day, but sharing the actual numbers gives me some real anxiety. So please, bear with us as we try to be transparent through this process :) For the initial commitment (buying the van), we set our maximum budget at $8,500. We had been setting a portion of our income aside to buy a home, which is where most of the cash came from. We spent an afternoon moving around dollars from various budget categories to come up with the total. After doing a lot of research about the cost of converting, we settled at an all-in cost of $15,000. Once you exclude the amount for the vehicle, there is a leftover $6,500 to go toward to conversion. The step van, however, came in at $750 under our max budget… so really the conversion budget comes out to $7,250. Wanting to be strategic with the money that we have, and not shoot ourselves in the foot should any emergencies occur, we did not commit an additional $7,250 of our savings to the van. Rather, we’ve projected our savings over the next six months to reach that goal. We have an idea about the big ticket items and what they’ll cost. Adding AC to the van? Probably about $2,000. Adding a solar kit? Estimating about $1,500. A compressor fridge? Hoping for less than $500. Ventilation fan? $250. That leaves us with about $3,000 for other items that are mostly up in the air - we’ll do what we can with our budget, and opt out on things that take us over. We recognize that we might run into issues, or we may be completely off on some of our estimates (knock on wood). Also, it’s been important for us to remember that life happens - emergencies could occur that set us off of our timeline, if not entirely. Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. James 4:14 At the end of the day, we’re taking a chance with this opportunity because life is short. If we aren’t promised tomorrow, then we ought to live today! Alright, so that covers it! We can’t wait to come back to this post when it’s all said and done. We’ll either be impressed with ourselves or humbled by our failure to predict costs. We do want to give a shout out to YNAB.com - we have used the site/app for budgeting since we got married, and 10/10 would recommend. Next up, we’ll begin to share the progress we’re making on the conversion.
Till next time! The Phillips Pack At this point, you’ve probably gathered that we ultimately decided to purchase a step van (I mean, the name of this blog kind of gives it away). But what got us to sign the check? Was it planning or spontaneity? Was it research or a gut feeling? Was it mulling over every detail or was it going with the flow? Honestly - it was a combination of all of those things. Budget
So! Here we are with this hunk o' metal. While we are super happy with the purchase, the van does come with its own challenges. For one, the engine doesn't have the greatest reputation. The van also doesn’t have AC - in Texas, that's going to be an issue. It also has a ridiculous fold-down passenger seat that just won’t do for longer road trips. It may not be the absolute perfect van, but that doesn't stop our excitement; we're excited to tackle all the challenges together! Check out the video below for “before” shots of the van.
In our next blog, we’ll dive into the budget we have for the van (along with our savings goals). This is one of the blogs that we will look back at, once the project is complete, and either smile with pride at our accuracy… or laugh at how far off we were. Time will tell. Till next time!
The Phillips Pack Well, hello again! We’re back with our second blog post. If you missed our introduction, take a look to see how we got here. As mentioned in the intro, there were three main factors that we focused on fleshing out before making the leap: the layout, the vehicle and the conversion budget. We’ll dive deeper into the vehicle and the conversion budget in future updates, but today we’ll focus on the layout. Before you get too excited, we are not even close to a final layout. Rather, we made some priorities regarding the overall set-up to keep in mind when looking at vans. Height of the cabin
These are just a few of the things that we considered. Many of them, however, were less of a priority to us. Most of them, furthermore, we’re willing to adjust based on the final vehicle. We’re doing our best to not set ourselves up for failure by setting too many expectations. What would be most important for you? How would you make those attainable? Next up, we’ll share more details about the process that led us to purchasing the step van. Till next time!
The Phillips Pack So we did a thing. A wild, crazy, possibly reckless, oh-so-exciting thing. On June 27, 2017, we signed a check and drove away with a 2002 GMC Workhorse Step Van. In a previous life, she functioned as a postal service step van in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Next up, she’ll be our home on wheels! We are planning to convert this beauty into a camper van. While the adrenaline, anxiety and squeals that came from this purchase may have made it seem like a spontaneous decision, we did put a lot of thought into it. We are a pair of planners, Tanner and I, which led to discussion after discussion on how we might make the “van life” a reality for us. We researched, read countless blogs, reached out to a few full-timers with our questions, talked through what we anticipate to be our biggest challenges. Before we could pull the trigger, we knew we had to have a plan in place for some key factors. Below are what were most important for us to figure out before making any commitments, which we plan to delve a little further into in future updates.
But hey - what's life without a little risk? We’re excited to share this journey with you - the good, the bad, and everything in between. Come back soon for future updates!
The Phillips Pack |