The following is a complete breakdown of the materials and cost for building out the van from scratch. The first table is an overview. Any item in bold in the first table has a more detailed table below covering individual items and associated costs. We spent a total of $7,354 purchasing the van and outfitting it entirely. These numbers do not include any mechanical repairs that were done to the van prior to leaving. We spent close to 5k more replacing the head gasket and having the transmission rebuilt among other things bringing the grand total of the van to approximately 12k.
Storage
Finally… The Bed!!!
Or at least the bed platform. Unfortunately we’ve had to sleep on the floor several times which is a pain with all of our climbing and camping stuff, but the bed really couldn’t go in till now. I sort of had to make sure the other things fit and provided other essentials (propane, electric, kitchen, etc) before I even knew how much room would be left for the bed, what height would make sense in case we want to throw the futon we bought in there (which we surely will be trying soon), and a bunch of other small considerations. (more…)