How long does a campervan conversion take?
It’s not quite that easy to quantify how long a campervan conversion will take. It depends how much time you have, how much money you have, how much experience you have, how complicated your design is, how well you’ve planned, what kind of finish you’re going for and how motivated you are to get it all done.
Some people will complete a van conversion in just a few weeks, while the rest of us will still be ploughing on years down the line! But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Follow Driving and Skiving on Facebook or Instagram
If you’re really motivated, you know what you’re doing and you’ve got the time and money to pump into it, then there’s no reason why you couldn’t smash through a conversion in as little as a few weeks. Many people have, and this is the direction that many want to take. But this isn’t the only way and there could even be benefits to taking a more relaxed approach, especially if it’s is your first conversion.
Our conversion took cough five years cough and while we wouldn’t necessarily recommend dragging your heels as much as we did, we did discover some benefits to taking it slow. We spent lots of adventures in an unfinished van, making plans, talking things through and tweaking our original design. So while many people want to cross their T’s and dot their I’s before their first trip, the more relaxed approach worked for us and we’re proud of the end result.
Taking the slow road
The main reason our van conversion took as long as it did is because we don’t have loads of free time and we took on a few big projects at once. This didn’t stress us out (much) but we did have to prioritise and decide where to focus our efforts.
We bought our Citroen Relay, Fleur, two weeks before we moved into our first house. The house was a project itself and consumed a lot of our spare time before we resold it 18 months later. We did still manage to work on the van, getting 2 windows fitted, insulation in, roof vent fitted, floor down, vapour barrier installed, ceiling clad, walls lined and the bed built within 4 months of buying.
In our opinion, this part of the build is really worth ploughing through. These are the elements that make the van usable and habitable, while the rest can come later on. It’s worth noting that this 4 month timeframe was with 1 person doing nearly all the work, which reduces efficiency and more than doubles the time everything takes.
We got the leisure batteries and split charger installed shortly afterwards. The seating, kitchen unit and an overhead locker were then built before we moved into our new house. The second house was in a worse state than the first and work on our van ground almost to a complete standstill.
So for a couple of years we simply used Fleur in her existing state. We had a comfy bed, a bench, insulation and electrics. We had no gas or water and Fleur didn’t look pretty, but she worked and we loved her. We spent more time in the van than we did in the house during those summers (which also didn’t help with the delays…!)
Since last summer, we’ve refocussed our efforts on the van. Now, five years on from buying her we’ve very nearly got Fleur to the point where we can say she’s finished (not quite… but almost). We’ve got gas, solar, water, upholstery, proper curtains, under-bed storage and a completed kitchen – luxury.
Are there advantages to taking it slow?
Although it was never our plan for the conversion to take quite as long as it did, we discovered that there were actually some advantages. While we understand that not everyone is free from time constraints, and many will have a fixed deadline (maybe a move-in date or a set travel itinerary) we know we won’t be the only ones with a flexible timescale. If you’re in the latter category, these were the benefits that we experienced in taking it slow…
1. Enjoying the van
The first major benefit for us was being able to spend time enjoying Fleur even though she wasn’t finished. Because we weren’t pressuring ourselves to get our conversion finished within a fixed deadline, we didn’t beat ourselves up if we decided to spend a weekend away in the van rather than working on her.
As a result our love for Fleur grew ever deeper, even in her dishevelled, half-finished state.
2. Changing our minds
This also gave us loads of time to work out exactly what we needed. As we used the van we figured out what was / wasn’t working, and we discussed ways to improve our original design. We realised that the kitchen was lacking workspace, so we made a fold-down worktop. We found that the location of our USB ports (near the front of the van) was convenient during the day but a pain overnight, so we installed additional ones by the bed whilst running cables was still easy. These are just examples, but there are a million details, big and small, that we’ve tweaked along the way.
We had the time and space to ponder and get creative, which was great. This meant that we’ve ended up with a space that really works for us.
3. Enjoying the conversion
Taking a more relaxed approach has also meant that working on the van has never turned into a chore for us, and it hasn’t stopped being fun. As a result, we’ve remained motivated to see the project through, even when life occasionally got in the way.