Van-provements

It’s been almost a year of living out of Geronimo the Vansion, and with time comes experience. If you’ve been following this blog long you’ll remember the renovations I made to Geronimo when I first got him.

Day-bed type setup. The bed slid out to create a full sizer

Full-size bed mode

Having never lived in a van before (moved out of a Toyota Matrix into this rig) I thought this was a great set-up and was proud of my design.

But after spending rainy days in squish, windy days in Hueco and countless hours working from inside my van, I came to the conclusion that this design just didn’t suffice. While it created optimal storage space, head-room was seriously limited (I couldnt even sit up straight) as was general hang-out room.

So I decided to rip it all out and start over. With a primary goal of making it as comfortable as possible to hang out in. Using the folks at KearneyJourney as my muse (Those kids have a collective van living experience of close to 20 years)

My main points of comfort-ability were:

• Maximum headroom (becuase the next best thing to standing is almost standing)

• The ability to cook inside (RE: rainy squish and windy Hueco)

• Party-mode-ability (Because you need somewhere to hangout when you’re not climbing…)

• Accommodations for Solar

So with these in mind I started ripping and screwing and came up with this set-up, which Im much more happy with…

solar-power! The panel sits in the storage box on top when not in use

And on the inside:

New captains chair configuration.

Position 1: Chill mode. Mad head room and large area to hang-out in

position 2: cook mode. way more counter space than before.

position 3: sleep mode. The whole back turns into my comfort zone

So basically I negotiated less storage space with more chill space. Which means I had to get rid of more junk, and put the rest of my junk in the box on top. Twas another good exercise in what I need versus what I can live without.

I found I was able to sleep on the floor using just a shelf in the back to store all my foods and stuff behind.

behind the back-shelf. From left to right we've got water tank with pump (mad handy), Small cooking chair, propane, foods, then solar items (charge controller and battery)

While this set-up isnt perfect, Im much happier with the extra space I now have for activities and what not.

Have any questions, ideas, or recommendations on how I could improve my shish? Feel free to leave a comment. I love comments…