Five Reasons We Love Our Custom Van Design - written by the owners of Rory the Renault
We endeavour to build meaningful relationships with each and every one of our clients while we execute their van conversion dreams with care, and we LOVE receiving their email updates and social media tags showing us what they get up to on their travels.
We asked the owner of the Rory the Renault (a 2020 build), if they would be happy to write something about their van and their experience working with us so we could share it with you. After all, they are an so who better to put their experience into words.
Read what they said below:
Five Reasons We Love Our Custom Van Design
We’d already done quite a bit of van travel, when we started looking into getting our own. We’d rented vans in Iceland and New Zealand and Australia, done long hauls and short trips. We knew van life worked for us—we loved having everything we needed to hand, and waking up to new scenery every day. We loved pulling over to a stunning view and pulling what we needed out of the fridge to make up a picnic. We loved the way it made the world much bigger, but the list of things we needed to worry about much smaller.
Our adventures in our own van haven’t been what we dreamed—they’ve been better. But if you’re reading this, I probably don’t need to sell you on van life. I want to tell you, instead, about why we loved getting a custom design and build, and why I’d recommend it to anyone. I’ll say this, too—I’m not being paid, or compensated in any way for writing this. I’m doing it to talk about what our experience was like, and pay it forward by answering the kinds of questions we had before we started. Here’s why it worked for us.
1. The design advice we didn’t even know we needed…
When we jumped on our first Zoom with Jesse and Sam, I was clutching my scrawled notes, full of ideas and questions and layouts I’d seen on Instagram, stuff we’d liked on past trips. In the process of trying to pull it all together, I’d realised just how much I didn’t know.
It took less than five minutes of talking before I just stopped worrying. They had a comprehensive list of questions that took us through everything we needed to consider, and a bunch of things we had no idea we needed to consider. From sound-deadening to induction stoves to where the power points needed to be to, whole worlds opened up.
They also had so many practical ideas we’d never considered—small things that make a big difference, like putting the sink near the door, and choosing a tap on the end of a pull-out hose, so we could wash off sandy feet after a day at the beach. I think of them every time I use that one, which is often!
They suggested storage everywhere, including in places we wouldn’t have thought to put it, and added so many small, thoughtful touches. We have big drawers that pull out of our garage, so Jesse put an access panel in the floor above them – so if something falls out the back of the drawers, there’s an easy way to retrieve it. During the build, they even added a folding table that we can access while we’re sitting outside the van—and didn’t tell us about it until they delivered! Anywhere they could find an extra, thoughtful touch, they went for it.
2. It’s literally customised, just for us.
Someone else’s dream van isn’t the same as your dream van—and if you’re seeing it on social media, it’s not even the van you think it is! Photographing from just the right angle can conceal a lot! Having a customised design means our van is laid out in the way that works best for our family.
My husband and I are both tall, so we knew an east-west bed (oriented across the van) was never going to work. It would have to be north-south, along the length of the van. But that takes up a lot of room.
We also knew that we needed a great table. I use the van as a day office all the time – I’m backed up to the beach as I write this – and I didn’t want to be hunched over something inadequate. Beyond that, our time in a van in Iceland had taught us that sometimes when the weather sucks, being able to huddle inside one van with your camping buddies can really rescue the day.
So we put all this to Jesse and Sam, and they came back with a table that seats three adults down each side (it’s friendly, but we fit!) plus a kid at each end – we can host eight people for dinner in our van, and then lower the table to turn it into a queen-sized bed at night. They sourced a leg for our table from a marine manufacturer, and it means the table doesn’t just go up and down, but side to side and also rotates, which makes it much easier to get in and out of the benches.
We have so many more customisations that are exactly what our family needs – we wanted a separate bed for our daughter, so Jesse created one that folds away inside an invisible wall panel, then extends at night – we draw a curtain around it, and she’s ready to sleep while we have the light on in the other half of the van. BFA broke the lights into two sections as well, meaning we can turn hers off and leave ours on. They also organised the installation of her seat behind the driver’s seat, along with getting it engineered properly, and safety-checked. We knew we wanted to barbecue a lot, so Jesse got the dimensions of our little Weber, and made sure we had the perfect storage place for it.
The list goes on and on – I’m obsessed with open windows and I’m also mosquito-bait, so they humoured me with a zillion flyscreens – and it’s all stuff that makes this not the perfect van, but our perfect van.
3. We have a back-up team whenever we need one.
This point is short, because it makes me sound bad. Let’s just say that if you were to somehow break an entire window while trying to park your van (leave me alone – later that day I started feeling terrible and failed a RAT, which is my excuse and I’m sticking to it) – if that kind of thing were to happen, you’d need it repaired. Pretty urgently.
Being able to just text Jesse and Sam with my wail for help, and having a quote I could use for insurers land in my inbox half an hour later? And knowing that they knew exactly what window to source, and had an inside line to the manufacturer to get it rushed? Priceless.
4. It’s a money-saver.
We saved money on a bunch of stuff in the van, from our fridge to our stove to our solar, because Jesse and Sam had a trade discount. They’d also done the groundwork on where to find the best brands. I am an expert on many things, but what brand of extractor fan to use in a van? Not on the list. They had a recommendation for everything, and knew where to get the best price on it – and when I showed our specs to my grey nomad father-in-law, who is a researcher, he was super impressed with our set-up.
5. It looks just the way we want it.
We knew we wanted a lot of timber finishes in our van, and that we wanted white. As I said at the start, I arrived clutching piles of pictures. I only found out after the van was finished that Jesse and Sam experimented over and over again to find exactly the right shade to stain our ceiling. I was absolutely determined to have live-edge timber, which is when the edge of your benchtop looks like the edge of the tree, rather than being smoothed down. No problem—they made it happen.
A van isn’t just a thing you drive around in. It’s a kind of home. If you’re lucky, it’s a place you make some of the most incredible memories of your life. So it should be what you want it to be. It should have the little quirks and design features, and a look that says it’s yours. It should be made for the way you want to live in it—that’s what happened for us, when we customised our van. And travel in it is even better than we imagined.
A note from Jesse & Sam:
As you can imagine, these words made our heart swell. They completely re-affirmed why we love doing what we do and why the late nights, stress and dedication are all worth it.
We hope you enjoyed reading this as much as we did <3