why a van?!

It’s a common misconception that this was all Trevor’s idea and not mine. This is the story of how it all started and how we moved out of our Portland townhouse and into a van in less than a month.

This all went down in 2020, the year the COVID-19 pandemic rocked our world. I was working for a vacation rental/ property management company in Customer Service. March was a hot mess for the company, with hundreds of calls on hold and everyone working remotely for the foreseeable future. Most of the staff was furloughed for all of April (we didn’t know how long it would last, they just said it could be 6 months, so we were all freaking out). It only ended up being 4 weeks and we were all called back to help with the mass amounts of calls and emails that had piled up. It was around May when I got the idea for the van. I was scrolling Instagram and kept seeing these van builds that were DIY yet look soooo damn good, and people were living and traveling the world in vans. I thought “why can’t we do that?!”

Our photography business was on hold since the size of events we usually photograph was not allowed in Oregon (and most states), so Trevor was not working. While I was trying to figure out this new normal of life in isolation and working from home my aunt suggested that I call her life coach who might be able to help. I had never done any sort of coaching or therapy but it ended up being a great fit and we started sorting through my ideas and she helped me conceptualize this dream.

After a few sessions, we got to the heart of why I wanted to do this: connection. Connection to myself, to Trevor, to friends and family, to the country we live in. We covered all the possible scenarios: what if it actually happens? what if it never happens? what if Trevor doesn’t want to do this? I had to come to terms with all of it, which was good because it nearly didn’t happen. Trevor was not on board with this idea and at one point I was actually banned from saying the word VAN for about 3 weeks! Trevor was soooo sick of this idea and did not think it was possible, at all. Once I surrendered the idea that it really might not happen, Trevor said one day “so I’ve been doing some research on vans...”. This was music to my ears, he was IN!

By the time he said yes, we were running out of time. We had a wedding to go to in Virginia in early October, so we had a date set to pack up and leave. I had this idea in May and Trev was on board by September… so, that left us less than a month to buy a van, do a basic conversion (insulation, floors, walls, build a bed), and pack up our entire lives in Portland. Yikes.

It all happened really quickly after this. We did a lot of research online, went to a few car lots, found a van, got a loan, traded in our Jeep (so sad, we miss you jeep!), and then went straight to Home Depot to get materials for the conversion. Anyone who has built out a van will tell you, you should just live in the Home Depot parking lot because right when you think you have everything, you need more or a different type or you bought the wrong screws — again. It’s a long process that is really hard to do in 3 weeks (especially when a forest fire was raging in the mountains near Portland and the air quality was one of the worst in the world and we had to be working outside on the van to get done in time, mad props to Trevor! that was rough…)

In hindsight, I would not recommend doing a van build and packing up a townhouse in 3 weeks, but we did it and had some amazing help along the way from friends sharing their time, their knowledge, their tools, their driveways, their packing, and organization skills. We will never forget those who rallied around us those last few weeks.

Given the stress we were under, we didn’t do a full documentary on our van build as some vanlifers do, but we took photos along the way and look forward to sharing a few blog posts on what we think we did right, what we would do differently next time and how you can learn from our experience if you are looking to convert a van too!

Bottom line, it was hard, and there were moments of doubt that I didn’t anticipate, but I’m so glad we did it. It was one of the greatest adventures of my life and I look forward to sharing it all here with you, very soon!

Home Depot run #73; Cleo, our supervisor; N95 masks for poor/smokey air quality

Trevor working on insulation; the empty van

Packing the townhouse; our storage unit; saying goodbye to Portland