- 1 day ago
An $8,000 DIY RAM ProMaster conversion packs a comfortable bed, kitchen, air conditioning and a full indoor shower into a practical campervan built for travel. Builder Dwayne draws on his flooring and stone-fabrication experience to create a space that seats three and sleeps three without the cost of a six-figure RV.
Join Patrick for a detailed campervan tour, from the 32-by-24-inch shower with quartz walls and Nature’s Head toilet to the Bluetti power station, electric cooktop and cleverly arranged storage. Dwayne explains how he planned the layout around comfortable sleeping, family trips and making the most of every inch. This budget van build tour is for viewers exploring DIY campervan conversions, RAM ProMaster builds, small-space layouts and affordable RV alternatives.
Join Patrick for a detailed campervan tour, from the 32-by-24-inch shower with quartz walls and Nature’s Head toilet to the Bluetti power station, electric cooktop and cleverly arranged storage. Dwayne explains how he planned the layout around comfortable sleeping, family trips and making the most of every inch. This budget van build tour is for viewers exploring DIY campervan conversions, RAM ProMaster builds, small-space layouts and affordable RV alternatives.
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TravelTranscript
00:00I started out in pop-up campers and travel trailers and then as I got older
00:04we're like okay we're going to here to there let's not make a big deal about
00:07this so let's just set this van up so we can go here and go there and then with
00:11my background of countertops and remodeling kind of fused everything
00:16together. This is Patrick with New Jersey's Outdoor Adventures YouTube
00:19channel. On today's show I meet up with Dwayne. Dwayne has a really cool DIY Ram
00:24ProMaster 159. This thing sleeps three, seats three, has a shower, toilet, kitchen
00:29and a bed in the back and he did it all for eight grand. Today he's going to
00:33give us a tour inside and out so join us. Hey Patrick I want to thank you for
00:38having me on Outdoor Adventures. I've been watching these videos. Starting this
00:42build I used other people's ideas kind of worked it into my own mix of me being a
00:49flooring guy slash stone fabricator. We wanted a nice sized shower with a good
00:56sleeping area really comfortable sleeping area and be able to cook and just have
01:02the things to get from point A to point B and not really live in it but travel and
01:08get to family members houses. So that was our main focus on it and I didn't want to
01:13go too big. We kind of stayed with the 159 inch wheelbase. I upgraded the wheels to
01:22aluminum kind of gave it a little I wanted to stay kind of stealth a little bit
01:26like give it you know a little bit not the camper look you know I that's why I
01:30went with this gray. Well you'll see later in the video I went with a Blue
01:34Eddie power system but this is my I get 1300 watts when I plug in so if I'm at a
01:41family member's house I'll plug this in and I'll get 1300 watts going into my Blue
01:45Eddie. You know yeah this is the bed area so you know you'll see I saw actually on
01:54most of the other videos yeah this is important to have you know a small area
01:58to get ventilation and to look out so that was that was like one of the first
02:04things I did was really the windows and the placement of the shower and I kind of
02:09worked off that so here's kind of like my my garage area we put our electric bikes
02:20in there and this is my 20 gallons water tank it's built around the wheelbase so
02:29it it's custom fit in there I have a small 12 volt system that goes to the Blue
02:35Eddie so the only thing I'm running my 12 volt off of is my my my puck lights my
02:42ceiling fan and my igniting area for my my suburban hot water heater which runs
02:49continuous hot water perfectly with the propane so I'm not drawing down my my
02:55Blue Eddie system which is 3000 watts so like I have not had an issue that thing
03:01will run and when I'm traveling it powers up 300 watts as I'm driving so like I
03:08really have not this whole trip has been no power issues you know I wanted to
03:15leave this I wanted to leave this wide open underneath here so what I did with
03:19the bed I put angle steel on the frame of the truck I doubled up furniture grade
03:26three-quarter inch plywood liquid nailed them and shot them together stained them
03:31and so really they're like small joists like as you would see in a house and I
03:36kind of use these boards here to just kind of interlock stuff together but the
03:43mattress this was the mattress and the shower were the two things that were
03:48super important this mattress is like sleeping in your own bedroom it's 12 inches
03:54thick memory memory foam mattress here's the it's just it's amazing it's a full
04:03it's 55 by 75 me and my wife can both fit in there perfectly we sleep fine so yeah me
04:12me being a flooring guy I use this lock this is meant this is a synthetic kind of
04:19breathable material slash like flooring and so it's really like you could really
04:26clean it and wipe it down and that's really that's my access panel also and a
04:30headboard so like we can sit back here and watch TV
04:35I framed everything you I used ceramic coated LVT with framing and insulation
04:41behind it here's my Dometic air conditioner I could run it as a nightlight with a fan or I
04:52can run my AC which all goes that back all is powered back to my bluetti here which I've seen
05:00on other videos people using bluetti and it has a 30 amp plug and a 12 volt output I can
05:08hook it up
05:10I can hook it up on my phone so when I'm driving I can actually see my power and I
05:14know a lot of
05:15people get crazy with these power systems but this is like I ran all my wiring to this area
05:21and went to the bluetti and like I pretty much can take this out of my out of here and
05:25use it in my
05:26house it's been great uh you know I went on the flooring I did you know what most people you'll
05:31see
05:31uh you know they'll they'll frame it with three quarter inch uh framing with uh insulation board
05:39then half inch plywood then LVT uh flooring so that was really my start that was one of the first
05:46things I did so I did go with Dometic AC unit that was rated it's rated 230 volts I have
05:53it going to
05:54a transformer to bump it up and actually I'm using 750 watts uh which is not draining my power but
06:01it's kind of underpowering the the Dometic but it's cooling my van perfectly fine it's not over
06:08cooling it so it's really uh you know I went with a typical roof fan I didn't really go with
06:15the max
06:15air fan I kind of just went with a your standard fan and it's perfectly fine I mean I get
06:20good
06:20ventilation with the the two windows and and uh the Dometic has a fan also built into it so uh
06:30yeah so then um so from that point yeah I guess I would go into my shower uh which was
06:37it was just
06:3832 inches by 24 deep so I have that running to my gray water tank which uh I have hanging
06:48on it so
06:48this is 10 gallons and there's so really it's just gray water so I can just I don't I I
06:55don't really
06:55the the uh toilet area is nature's head so really this is just gray water okay so Patrick now let
07:03me
07:03let me take you inside um this uh this is our area where if we're pulled over and we're taking
07:11a break
07:11this is where me and my wife will sit um I just went with um this is called Thinscape so
07:18it's made
07:18by Wilson Art and this is uh really thin and strong so I have that as my tabletop and it
07:24doubles as
07:26my son so my son's a little older he he's a little big uh you know probably most people wouldn't
07:32have
07:32a kid so large maybe but like so so I take this out and we have a platform that goes
07:39across and we
07:39have a mattress so he's not with us on most trips but uh it works like he can sleep there
07:45for the four
07:46hours that we're on a trip and we're we're kind of resting for a while and we continue on and
07:50then throughout the day he'll just hop back there and and sleep but in the evening me and my if
07:56we're
07:56pulled over yeah me and my wife are back here and my son will stretch out here and he can
08:00pretty much
08:02uh stretch out there and um I put I went with um you know this outlet that has a night
08:09light with the
08:09usb so like he can be doing his uh his laptop work uh while we're driving and um this was
08:18hard to find
08:19I found this like small chair it's 27 it's 27 inches by 26 so I wanted I wanted to have
08:29like a feeling of
08:30kind of like at home the the first chair I made I made it at a three quarter inch furniture
08:36grade and
08:36kind of look too industrial and homemade so I came up with this and it's super comfy uh uh and
08:44then you
08:45know these platforms you know you see them a lot in videos so I kind of I know people put
08:51um you know
08:52storage and stuff inside these and you know I just wanted it so when I turn around my feet can
08:56touch the
08:57ground I didn't want to have my feet hanging so that was uh important uh you know then we're pulled
09:05over
09:05these are pretty inexpensive I think I paid like 34 bucks for this little blind and you know at night
09:10we just roll it down and going into the ceiling area uh you know I insulated everything uh I all
09:17this
09:18wiring there's nothing wire nutted everything's crimped and and as one for the wiring so you know
09:24on most of these vans traveling uh with the vibrations of the the truck moving you'll you can't
09:31twisty tie stuff it all has to be crimped together so um I went with uh a thin luon paneling
09:39painted
09:39black and then I cut down these strips to kind of hide uh having to well having to to cut
09:46up two
09:47things like my my shower area this this ceiling is locking in my a lot of my shower because I
09:56have
09:56my shower supported behind this but also my ceiling goes up to these half inch quartz panels so really
10:04I made these at my shop uh it's half inch thick I did two mitered cuts here that are three
10:12inches
10:13one side acts as a space saver and it kind of thickened it makes it look symmetrical here
10:20and this side is a is also comes in three inches but this is my inside cavity for my wiring
10:27and my
10:28plumbing so that that really uh worked out good uh this here is uh 32 inches by 24 uh when
10:41it's time
10:41to take a shower we just pull the the nature's head toilet out and um I slide it right back
10:48here and
10:49uh it's plenty of room we got the uh retractable you see these a lot and these are space savers
10:55these retractable shower doors uh so we don't have a huge amount of storage here because we're really
11:04we we put our suitcases in the back and we travel so I mean you probably could get into more
11:09shelving
11:10and cabinet space up here in the future but for now you know we just have our blankets uh and
11:16a few
11:16bathroom bags and really we got two or three small suitcases we have plenty of room back here and
11:21uh you know that leads into the kitchen area um so really um you know we added this
11:28uh extension which I got ideas from other people on and um this is also thinscape uh wilson art it's
11:38composite uh material really strong uh so that's another kind of countertop material
11:44that was like accessible to me for cooking we went with this electric cooktop it's 110 it goes
11:50directly to our bluetti uh we used a uh 12 inch by 14 little stainless steel you know I feel
12:00like
12:02people get really big with these sinks and I was thinking you know I'm not I'm traveling so like
12:09this is just something to rinse off a dish so we kind of stayed small on that we don't need
12:14huge
12:14you know we're not living in it but at the same time it's plenty of space some people use this
12:18size
12:19in their house uh and you know really I kept this simple down here I went with I see a
12:25lot of people
12:25do this differently in different ways but I really just did the gray water with my two uh clean water
12:33and I ran it to the bottled water dispenser uh which is 110 volt uh and it pumps the water
12:39right
12:40to my faucet and so I kind of keep it you know because we don't we don't really use this
12:45that much
12:46so it was you know just to rinse off dishes and fill up maybe the coffee maker because it is
12:52bottled water is coming out of this so when you get these cabinets they're either 21 or 24 depth
12:58I brought it in just a little bit to 19 so I did have to modify these drawers a little
13:05but
13:06um you know everything it you know by inches you know because really when you get into these
13:11these van areas inches are super important but um really um yeah just kind of like we got our three
13:18drawers for our space and we have some uh a bin down here underneath the refrigerator for for stuff and
13:25uh this is a 12 volt or 110 ever chill and it's been working fine I actually since I've left
13:33Chicago
13:33uh this thing's been running the whole time uh yeah you know like up here uh like I said you
13:42know we
13:42have their we're not living in it so like we just have a few things that we need for coffee
13:48and bread
13:49and jam and make some hard-boiled eggs and you know it's just a regular uh 12 by 30 cabinet
13:56duane thank you very much for taking the time today to give a tour of this awesome van creation
14:00I'm fascinated that you did all this for like eight grand yeah think about it you got a fan
14:07you got air conditioner you got two windows you got the note on this door yeah the induction cooktop
14:13sink faucet blue eddy uh-huh dc to dc charger off to alternator when you're driving yeah you got a
14:20lot
14:20of like hard components in here obviously your labors free yeah yeah but you did a great job and
14:27you could accommodate three people which is really good too yeah my big costs were you know air
14:31condition your power system uh other than that um you know my nature's head toilet was uh expensive
14:41but after those three things you know you could you could find these things on auction sites like
14:49store return sites and some of the stuff that were you know I can get into that later but uh
14:53a lot of
14:54the stuff I found on store returns sites but uh you know and the lvt was a good money saver
15:02this is a ceramic coat it's not the cheaper stuff but whenever I needed to to to make something look
15:10finished and I framed behind it it was good for me really and you know you can clean it wipe
15:15it and
15:15it's like it almost acts as like insulation also yeah you're pretty genius in how you save space in
15:21this I mean it's just the shower wall and then you got the the planks here on the side instead
15:27of
15:27framing it out and wasting two inches here two inches there yeah you really maximize the space inside
15:33of this I was yeah yeah this is awesome and you have like a youtube channel you did some of
15:39your
15:39build on there maybe something we want to put a link in the description yeah ang remodels I'm watching
15:44another one of your videos and I'm like wait a second I'm going to New Jersey like I wonder if
15:49Patrick would have time for me and man I really I was shocked I was like well do you have
15:54time to see
15:55my van and Patrick's like yeah sure I got that I was like you said you live not that far
15:59from here
16:00and I was just like I appreciate it and you know I'm glad we could connect my viewers love the
16:05DIY
16:06budget builds yeah yeah anytime there's an opportunity to showcase one that inspires others
16:11to yeah build something like it and hit the road and have a good old time I make sure I
16:16have them
16:16on the channel oh that's awesome with New Jersey's Outdoor Adventures YouTube channel thanks for joining
16:22us thanks