Hello!

My name is James, and this blog is a record of how I converted my Nissan NV200 small panel van into a camper van.

I also have a YouTube series on the build, which you can check out here.

Why did I buy a van?

Having a van has long been a dream of mine, and in 2019 I was finally able to fulfil it. I bought Yogi, a 2015 Nissan NV200 and have slowly been insulating, carpeting and adding the essentials to make it into a comfortable camper.

My intentions for owning a van are fairly simple; I want to kit it out in such a way that I can use it for camping holidays, nights by the coast, surf trips and days out, whilst being able to use it as a day-to-day vehicle for work too.

The conversion process

I started converting the van shortly after I got it in March 2019, beginning with insulating the floor, some parts of the walls and by building the bed. My partner and I took three holidays in the van that year and whilst it was comfortable (mainly thanks to the bed!) it was basic, and didn’t fell like a camper. In addition, when morning came you could guarantee that the walls and ceiling would be dripping with condensation.

So I decided to go back to the beginning and start kitting out the van to create a homely, cosy camper that we could enjoy for years to come.

This is the point at which I find myself now; with a dedication to document my future progress, though I’ll try to cover everything I’ve done prior to now (such as the bed and floor) too.

Van build priorities

My priorities for the build will be:

• doing it cheaply
• doing a thorough job
• keeping things easily removable

These first two factors can sometimes be at odds with each other, but where possible I will always try to let the quality of the van come first. Hopefully, with so many different ideas, options and materials out there this shouldn’t been much of a problem. The third factor may cause a few dilemmas along the way but nothing, so far, that I haven’t been able to work around.

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I hope that this blog and my videos might be of use to some future van builders, however if not it’s just nice to have a record of what I did and how far the van has come.