So why exactly have I chosen to spend a not inconsiderable amount of time, effort, and money, building out my own camper van?

There are actually two parts to that question, which I’ll answer separately.

Firstly, why a camper van?

Like a lot of people in this neck of the woods of Colorado, my wife and I are outdoorsy people who like to spend time in the mountains doing (mildly) adventurous things. Typically this will include some mountain biking and rock climbing, but also plenty of just hanging out with friends, cooking food, making fancy(ish) drinks, and singing songs around a campfire. Camping is a way to get close to those outdoor places we want to be, and also a fun thing to do in its own right.

At the same time, especially as the decades have piled up, I find I really appreciate such niceties as sleeping in a comfy bed, having a decent space to shelter from the elements, and being able to make a proper cup of coffee in the morning. In other words, a tent ain’t gonna cut it anymore! A camping vehicle of some kind provides a welcome upgrade in comfort level, and the ability to bring many of the conveniences of home with you on the road.

Within camping vehicles, there’s a huge range of choices: teardrop campers, popups, truck campers, small tow hitch trailers, giant 5th wheel trailers, motor coaches, converted school buses, class C RVs, and of course, camper vans. All of these choices come with different sets of tradeoffs regarding comfort level, cost, storability, carrying capacity, convenience, and so on. Since different things are important to different people, there’s no single right answer, but for us, it seemed like a camper van would hit the sweet spot:

• Fewer storage hassles, since it can be parked in the driveway.
• Easy to drive.
• Fits into normal (in the US anyway!) sized parking spaces.
• No problems turning round on narrow forest roads.
• Good enough comfort and storage capacity.
• Fast and easy to set up for the night, with the option of “stealth” camping in urban areas if necessary.

So, a camper van it is!

Secondly, why build it out yourself?

As anyone who has looked at You Tube in the last few years is aware, camper vans have exploded in popularity over the last decade. As a result, there is no shortage of companies willing to sell you a fully kitted out camper van. There are at least half a dozen custom van builders within a few miles of my home here in Boulder, CO, and established RV companies like Winnebago and Thor have also joined the fray with more “mass market” models (though camper vans are still a pretty niche-y product).

To the uninitiated, the list prices on most of these vans are jaw-dropping, to say the least. A basic new camper van might cost $120,000, and the prices go up from there. They are much more expensive than, say, camping trailers. A trailer, of course, requires a separate vehicle to pull it, but on the flip side, you can use that vehicle for things other than camping!

Given these prices, it’s tempting to think that the main motivation for building out a camper van yourself is to save money. But let’s analyze that thought in some more detail…

For starters, you’re going to need a base van to build on. A new cargo van costs between $60-90k, depending on the model. The raw materials for a full camper van build will likely cost you another $10-30k, depending on how carried away you get. And unless you already have a well-equipped workshop, you’re probably going to buy some new tools, probably another few $k there. So, you’re already heading towards $100k, before you even start to consider non-monetary costs (see below). You could start with a used van to save some money of course, but then you should probably also be comparing with used camper vans, which are often quite a lot cheaper than new ones.

In addition to the pure financial cost, a DIY van build sucks up an enormous amount of time. There are apparently people who can complete a full van build in three months of solid work, but I have no idea what planet they are from. I could spend three months trying to figure out what color to make my countertops… For lesser mortals, a year to two years seems to be pretty common, though this depends a lot on what you’re building, and how much else you have going on in your life. Putting a value on that time is tricky, but, for one extreme, if I used my (former) hourly rate as a software engineer, I’d be looking at, well, a lot of money!

Finally, beyond even the time taken, there is the physical effort. Building things in the real world is much harder than building software! You spend lots of time carrying heavy sheets of plywood, drilling holes, tightening bolts, working in awkward spaces, scraping skin off your knuckles, and making endless trips to the hardware store. And if you don’t have the benefit of a climate controlled high ceiling garage to work in, there’s a good chance you’ll be doing all that in uncomfortably hot or cold temperatures. This too is a effectively a cost.

So if the effective costs of a DIY van build are as much, or more than the cost of buying a camper van, why do it?

Well, going the DIY route does come with some benefits:

• You have full control over the design of the camper van. In theory at least, you can build the exact van that matches your own unique requirements.
• You can try out crazy ideas that no traditional van builder would touch with a bargepole.
• You can build out the van incrementally, gradually adding bits and pieces over time, allowing you to defer costs until later.
• You can change the design whenever you want, as you learn more about what’s important to you in a van build. All it costs is time and money!
• You get to solve hundreds of interesting little design problems.
• You can justify buying a bunch of shiny new tools.

Then there’s the time issue. Yes, building out a van yourself is going to take a lot of time. But if you’re in the fortunate position of having a good amount of free time, and you’re not worried about the opportunity costs of not spending that time on things other than van building, or, even better, you enjoy van building so much that the time spent is effectively a negative cost, then a DIY build looks a lot more attractive!

You can even put a positive spin on the physical effort. It’s got to be better than sitting at a desk all day staring at a computer screen, right?

Ultimately, I decided that these vague and subjective upsides made the DIY route more interesting to me than the ready alternative of buying a used camper van. When I started out, back in late 2024, I had recently quit my job as a software engineer, and I wasn’t looking for paid work in the foreseeable future, so I had plenty of free time. I had some ideas for creating a camper van that would be fairly different from every other van build I’d seen, and I was looking forward to trying them out. And I liked the idea of taking a break from sitting in front of a computer to do something more physical.

And if it turned out that I didn’t like it, well, the whole project shouldn’t take more than a few months, surely?…

^*Recreational Vehicle, for the benefit of any non-Americans reading this…