How I Built a Van With Thrift Items

Counting the number of times I’ve made random spontaneous purchases in thrift stores is like counting pebbles on the beach. From old typewriters to vintage shirts, to cups, to cheap books, to jackets, to mirrors and buckets. I consider myself to be the ultimate thrift shop raider.

One time, I got so bored of buying sensible items that I almost purchased a wedding dress. And no. No one has ever proposed to me, and I don’t even have a partner (although if someone proposed to me in a thrift shop, I’d most likely find it romantic and say yes). But I remember seeing the dress and thought, oh! what a sweet bargain for an unmarried woman with terrible potential for a successful love life. The only thing that actually discouraged me from buying the wedding dress was the fact that it was around 3 times my size. That in addition to my friend’s very unenthusiastic response to what I thought was a once in a lifetime find.

Thrift shop items are the equivalent of designer items to me, no matter how cheap they are. And every time I make a purchase I have this huge smile on my face and a sense of accomplishment as I make my way home. This is because it feels super good to find an item that would otherwise be hundreds if not thousands of pounds more expensive for such a tiny fraction of its original price. For my guided-editing project during my masters, I thrifted all the items my actors used and that reduced the cost of making my short movie significantly. Everyone looked colourful like they were from a 1940s movie set and we loved it!

Sometimes I would take a trip solely to thrift shops to pick up £1 books. My favourite thrift shop book buy is the popular "Lovely Bones," if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend you check it out! It’s a good and emotional read. Thrift shopping to me soon became a lifestyle and a personality trait. It also helped with the emptiness and hollowness I was feeling after making some drastic life changes. I felt useful helping out with charities dealing with issues like cancer, dementia and mental health in my own way, no matter how small it might seem.

Now when the pandemic hit, the thrift stores around me were deemed non-essential and so all my fun suddenly came to a halt. But after months of being locked inside and with my mental health declining very quickly, I decided it was a good time to go solo travelling in the middle of nowhere in a van. I gave myself the all too familiar, “you’re a strong independent woman, you can survive alone in a forest” talk and decided that’s exactly what I needed. It’ll be fun to detach from the world (and my housemates), in a small van, so I could get to know myself a bit more and have my own space. The trouble with this perfect plan was: I barely had any money for this solo adventure I was about to embark on.

I watched a couple of van videos, and majority of them consisted of Mercedes Sprinter conversions, expensive American school bus conversions and the likes. That in addition to how much it costs to either renovate the interior by yourself or spend thousands of pounds hiring handymen to finish the job. You also need to consider things like emergency funds, petrol/diesel allowance, insurance fees, tax fees and money for food — because starving to death in a forest alone and cold definitely won’t be fun. Despite all of the associated costs and having barely any money, I was headstrong and decided I would go travelling in a van regardless of what it took.

At that time in my life, I was constantly searching for meaning and purpose and the idea of feeling productive and building something beautiful triumphed the obvious difficulties I was going to face. I was going to find a way around my very tight budget, one way or another. So the solution I came up with to reduce my costs significantly? Thrift shopping. A pandemic style thrift shopping by the name of Gumtree. Now if you don’t live in the U.K., Gumtree is very close in function to Craigslist or the used items version of eBay. Here you can find anything second-hand from individual sellers or businesses. There’s home decor, repurposed wood and building materials, furniture, clothes, vehicles, books and everything you could possibly think of.

Luckily for me, I already had a few home decor items from my previous thrifting purchases so what I needed were items to build the van itself. That in addition to plans of securing scraps from construction shops, made my plan more feasible than it was at its inception. And so I put my accounting glasses on, set my very minuscule budgets and went to work.

Van and insulation

The first thing I purchased was the cheapest and smallest van I could find on gumtree. It was a minivan called Diahatsu hijet, it ran on LPG and looked like a box of some sort. It was so small I had to sleep sideways in it, to give you a clear idea I am 5 ft 5 inches and I had to bend my neck like a giraffe every time I tried to stand upright.

Nonetheless, I convinced myself I preferred this pending adventure over my comfort, and as long as I have a place to lay my head at night, I’ll be content. After my first big find, the second thing I needed was something for insulation. It’s cold most of the months in the U.K. and I didn’t want to end up with pneumonia or die of hypothermia. If I had gotten insulation from a shop like Homebase, it would have cost me around £150 to fit the whole van. But luckily for me I found a seller on gumtree who had excess from his old job, he was very glad to get it off his driveway and I picked up just enough to cover my van for £30. My plan was going along smoothly.

Tips - If you’re going to purchase a second-hand car from gumtree or the likes, you’d save yourself from so much headache if you pay about £50 to get a mechanical engineer or a mechanic to look over it before purchasing. You’ll feel very confident about not breaking down or hidden issues popping up later during your travels.

Interior

The next thing I needed was wood pallets to cover the whole van. I was going for the cabin style look (Not that I had much of a choice) and I knew buying wood pallets in addition to hardwood I needed for the flooring from the shops would eat away my interior budget. And so I decided on covering one-quarter of my van with wood pallets, the other quarter with large mirrors and the rest in wallpaper. I set off to gumtree, I found some repurposed wood for about £15 per bunch, and a set of very large vintage mirrors for £30.

I ended up using only two of the mirrors and left the third with my old housemates. The wallpaper I got from Homebase ended up being the most expensive of the bunch. All in all, I was ecstatic that I had saved at least a thousand just by doing these.

For my bed, I knew it would be expensive trying to build one, I didn’t have the technical skills and I would have to spend a lot of money on expensive tools. But I was so eager to get travelling that I had to come up with a faster and cheaper idea. The idea? I packed all of the items I owned, loaded them in square baskets I had thrifted earlier and arranged them in the shape of a bed in the van, creating a good base for a mattress topper and a duvet. The flat surface allowed me to lay some mats on it, I added a couple of pillows (£20–pack of 6 from eBay), creating a soft layer and voila! I had a makeshift bed! And guess what? It was very very comfortable.

Tips - The beauty of thrifting online is, it might have a set price, but you can always try to negotiate sensibly to save even more money. Majority of the time people just want to get rid of their second-hand items as soon as they can to save space or replace it with a new one, so they’re always open to negotiation.

Shower

Now you might be wondering, how did I have my shower in such a teeny tiny space. Gyms were opened for a very short period of time whilst I was travelling, when I had the luxury of using a gym, I would go in and have a thorough wash, and do my makeup and enjoy living a normal life for a bit. But when the gyms were closed, the weather was somewhat bearable, and no one was around, I would have my shower by reservoirs or by beaches or sometimes in bushes by my van.

When it was freezing, however, I had the luxury of using my very own makeshift shower I had built from thrift items and amazon finds. I found a galvanised second-hand bucket, just about large enough to accommodate me. That in addition to a shower curtain and some gold Hula hoops, I was able to make a tiny shower system.

Here’s how it works, I attached the Hula hoops to the ceiling of my van using some suction clamps, and then clipped the shower curtain around the Hula hoops in a circular motion. I made sure the diameter of the hula hoops was similar to that of the galvanised bucket, and so it made some sort of a small circular shower. Whenever I used the shower, I moved my “bed” to the side, laid some waterproof nylon on the floor and had my shower with water I had filled into my kegs! When I was done, I emptied the bucket in a waste-approved place and that’s it! That’s my shower done. The whole shower system cost me around £40. If I were to build a professional shower without the help of thrifting, it would have cost me around £1000.

Tips - If you found something you like on a site like Pinterest, one of the best thrifting websites to find very unique items is Etsy. This is because many sellers often connect their Etsy accounts straight to Pinterest, creating a direct link to the item that has caught your eye. From home decor, to very fashionable cardigans, or even zinc buckets to create a shower, you’ll find it there.

Kitchen

I wouldn’t necessarily say my food area would count as a kitchen, if there’s a smaller word for a cooking area than a kitchenette, it might be the right word. But as long as I could make some pasta or curry once a day I was perfectly content. I picked up some old slabs from the side of the road and used a collapsible hinge from amazon to attach the slabs to the wood wall I built earlier. That way I could put the kitchen away when I wasn’t using it. I bought some camping stove from eBay - £15, some gas cans, a second-hand keg with a tap to serve as my sink and that completed my kitchen build.

Advice - if you’re going to use this method, please make sure you’re using it on the side of your van that has a lot of ventilation. Camping stoves are not meant to be used indoors, but because my van had a door/boot that could open fully, I strategically built the food area at the back of my van to avoid any of the risks associated with camping stoves.

Tips - A lot of times people leave items outside on the street because it’s an easier way to get rid of their second-hand items. I find this happens a lot with furniture or home decor, and I’ve picked up many. If you need a wooden table or even a TV, take a walk around your neighbourhood, or visit your local construction shops, majority of the time they’d have defects or items they’re planning to throw away which would really come in handy for your build.

Decorations

Now here’s the fun part, the part where I got to use all my previous thrift finds to personalise my van to my taste. This included: mirrors, teacups, books, vintage kettles, jars, a ukulele and many more. All of these tiny finds created a somewhat fantastical vibe to my van, I also bought some tiny cabinets on amazon, a couple of baskets and some red fairy lights to finalise the look. All in all, I spent about £100 on decorating the space, and I absolutely loved the cosy look it created at night.

My favourite part of my van was creating what I call a “video painting.” To do this I bought a digital photo frame from eBay, embedded it with an SD card containing one of my old footages which I animated/cartoonized. I then looped the footage indefinitely on premiere pro and by using some of the wood leftovers from the wall build to create a wooden frame for it, I was able to create a moving painting look. That way when I hung it up at night and connected it to my portable charger, it gave a gallery type feel to my van.

The last thing I did was spray paint my van an orange colour—I won’t lie to you, I did a very very terrible job with this! But it meant the chances of someone stealing my badly painted orange van was slim to none.

Tips - Porcelain items like cups or jars or teapots are items you’d find very very cheap in most charity shops around town. If you collect enough, they could make a difference to your space. A design idea is creating a floating shelf and glueing down your porcelain wares. You could also arrange them into a shelf with a mirror.

That concludes how I built a van using thrift items. I would encourage everyone to go on this kind of adventure at least once in their life, even if it’s for short periods of time. I learnt a lot about myself including how to be self-sufficient and how to be resourceful with very little. I also met some of the kindest and most amazing humans on my travel. Every single item I thrifted ended up creating something that will forever be of irreplaceable value to me. There’s a sense of joy knowing I was able to build something that created an unforgettable adventure from items that has at some point in their existence, been deemed useless. Even if you don’t build a van, you could decorate your shelf, build a space dedicated to your thrift finds or even a bookshelf with books from charity shops! Creating something meaningful out of thrift items is the most thrilling thing I’ve ever done.

Unfortunately, I had to stop my travels when I realised I was fast approaching my quarter-life crisis and needed to get a job to save up some money to get back travelling again. That in addition to the fact that my van who I named Bertha kept overheating and increasing my journey times in between stops. But I would truly value this experience for the rest of my life, and I’m sure you would too. The best part of it? it was all made possible with thrifting!

Thanks for reading!