If you are in any way like me, you have probably watched an endless number of van build videos on youtube and are following countless accounts about #vanlife and self build campers.
What I have noticed is that seldomly people stay with their original first van or overland 4×4 for long. Change is inevitable once your experience grows. I myself had a time, where I wanted to sell my car to start over. Actually a few times.
With my first interior setup, I was so sure I knew what I wanted and spend hours on nitty little details to make it perfect. I really like attention to detail and therefore can spend a lot of time on things no one else sees or seems to care. Only to gain experience and ending up wanting/needing something different. I wanted to change things.
Those hours spend on making things „perfect“ in my eyes, are adding up pretty fast. When I demounted the old interior and started new, I decided I will continue to see it as a prototype. Making it work is primary goal, while the second goal is to build it in a way that is easy to adapt or modify and will grow with my experiences.
My attitude these days is quite simple. I build it to work and if its not taking me longer than around 30min to fix or get rid of something that bothers me I will do it while I build it. If it takes longer, I say fuck it and continue. I will always be able to change it later if it really works and there is still something that bothers me. But in the meantime I make faster progress, which in turn gets me to test it out sooner rather than later.
Let me show you an example. In the middle of building the far rear left side cabinet that houses my switches and monitoring, I noticed it being not level. Previously I would have started from scratch and discarded, knowing I would probably have to rebuild the cage made out of extruded aluminum. What a waste of time that would have been, just to have something to be level. As if the car will be level at the campground anyways. So instead I went to make two slightly angled cuts and it is barely visible now that it is mounted.
„Didn’t you just lower your quality standards?“ you might ask? And I agree. I did. On purpose. And that is where I see a difference. And the current trade offs are worth it to me.
On top of that it’s really hard for me to not make it as best as I can and have to force myself to move on.
Another example here is the usage of wood filler. Sometimes I either accidentally or involuntarily cut the wood from the wrong side and get an unclean cut. Most of the time it’s quickly corrected with a little bit of filler and some grinding. But to even out all the wood surfaces would just be too much effort. Especially if you consider using a „cheaper“ type of wood first, just to see how the overall concept is working out.
Another example are the recesses on the non-visible side of wood panels. Its easy to save weight doing it, but making it look nice and professional is a very time consuming task or requires expensive tools and the experience to use them. For more information on that topic, feel free to look here: Saving Weight Building Your Overland Camper
So, is it a fancy name to get away with low quality or is it a time saving, interim solution? Whats your style, how would you do it? Let me know in the comments!
