DIY Campervan Conversion UK – From Start To Finish

Last Updated on 23rd September 2023

This post about our DIY campervan conversion UK process from start to finish contains affiliate links. Please see my disclaimer for more.

Are you wondering what is involved in the process of a campervan conversion UK? Check out our huge van to camper DIY conversion below!

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll have likely seen my many posts about our recent campervan conversion as it’s pretty much all I’ve talked about over the last 6 weeks or so. Owning and converting our own campervan is something that Matt and I have discussed for several years now, but it always felt like one of those things that you always dreamed about, but never actually fully committed to.

That is, until we had to come back to the UK in March 2020 due to the Coronavirus pandemic and I started to think more and more about van life and the possibility of us either buying a fully converted van, or completely converting one ourselves entirely from scratch. However, with a pretty hefty price tag for most vans online, I sort of pushed the idea to the side again, until we were out walking on the May bank holiday just a few weeks ago and came across a 1997 Toyota Hiace for sale for just £1,800. It was quite literally love at first sight and we drove it away just a few hours later, now the proud owners of a project that we’d wanted to do for years.

Neither of us had ever done anything like this before, we’d never even decorated the apartment we lived in before we went travelling, so a full campervan conversion was sure to be a challenge, but it’s one that we completed in just over five weeks and with a total final spend of just £3,500.

I’ve already shared in extensive detail the cost of converting our campervan, so I won’t go into too much detail regarding costs in today’s post, but I am going to share the entire process for our campervan conversion UK, from the very beginning of seeing the van for the first time, all the way to our first little trip in it!

Buying the van – DIY campervan conversion UK

We stumbled across our beloved 1997 Toyota Hiace (named Celeste after her previous owner) completely by chance on a Sunday morning while on our daily “pandemic walk”. We walked into the next village over from us and took a route that we never normally take, so in typical circumstances, we would have never even seen the van for sale.

As luck would have it, the owners had only just parked it outside their house and put up the ‘for sale’ sign, so call it fate or karma or whatever you like, but I took it as a sign from the universe that it had to be ours.

I knocked on the door, asked for a few more details about the van and then we quickly headed home to collect Matt’s stepdad who has much more experience in vehicles than us so that he could give it a quick once-over to check that everything was as it should be.

We then left and said that we wanted to think about it, but as soon as we stepped through the front door back at home, I said to Matt that I was having that van, so I called the owners and told them we’d take it, we headed back round to collect it a few hours later and the rest they say, is history.

Planning the van design

As the purchase of the van was so random and spontaneous, we didn’t actually have in mind what we even wanted to do with it at first, but Matt’s the type of person who can very easily visualise things, and before I knew it, he’d put together an awesome van design in a free CAD programme that perfectly encompassed our ideas for the van (even though we’d only had them for less than 24 hours!).

While we both discussed in depth what we wanted the van to look like, the entire design was very much Matt’s doing and even now, it still thoroughly impresses me that he managed to design something so incredible and then completely convert the van almost exactly to his designs.

Deep cleaning the van – campervan conversion UK

The first proper stage of our campervan conversion process was to give the entire van a thorough deep clean. While it was in pretty good shape when we bought it, the previous owner used the van for her gardening business so there was an awful lot of mud and dust that you couldn’t quite notice upon first glance.

We spent hours deep cleaning the seats, scrubbing and hoovering the floors, polishing the handles and dashboard and cleaning the windows.

We also took the van through a proper car wash and then scrubbed the wheels to eradicate as much of the dirt and rust as possible. While the van still isn’t spotlessly clean now (there are numerous stains and rust marks on it), it looks pretty damn good to me and it’s more than clean enough now.

Stripping the van

Our designs for our campervan conversion included ripping out the middle set of seats in the van. It was originally an 8-seater, with two seats in the front for the driver and passenger and then two sets of three seats in the middle and back.

We decided to leave the three back seats in to use as actual car seats for other passengers and we also decided that they’d make up part of the bed. We (meaning mostly Matt’s stepdad as he had the necessary tools, skills and equipment to do so!) then ripped out the middle three seats. It certainly wasn’t an easy task to carry out as the seats are placed on sliding rails, so it meant that we had to try and prise them out from underneath the rails.

It was a difficult task, but we got there in the end and then we were left with four rail slots in the floor which look messy at first, but they’re actually an integral part of our campervan conversion.

Buying the materials

Next up was buying the building materials required for building the frames, benches, bed, kitchen and more. I honestly lost count of how many times we went to B&Q for “just one more bit of wood” or “just a few more screws and brackets”! We genuinely should have been given a discount membership by the end of it all!

We got the vast majority of our building materials from B&Q and then purchased the rest from places like Screwfix, Wickes, Amazon and eBay.

Bench/bed frames

The first bit of actual construction and conversion work that we did was making the wooden frames that would support the benches and part of the bed.

Again, we enlisted Matt’s stepdad’s help for the building of these benches (as well as the kitchen unit) as he has so much knowledge and experience building things and even though we didn’t want to hire a proper professional to do it all as we wanted to still have an awful lot of input into the process ourselves, it was amazing to have him on hand to help.

We built the frames into and around the existing rails in the van, largely because it would have been such a pain in the arse to pull them all out and completely start from scratch, but also because they actually provided great structural support for the benches themselves!

Storage benches – DIY campervan conversion UK

We then got to work on fitting the exterior cladding to the wood support frames and we just used white MDF for the benches which gives them a clean and polished finish, but it also means they’re structurally sound and supportive as well.

We then attached hinges to the backs of the two wooden benches so that we could access the inside of them to use them as storage. While there certainly isn’t a tonne of room inside the benches, we’ve already tried and tested them and we can fit everything we need into the main bench along the back of the front passenger and driver seats, and then we can fit our bedding into the other bench.

Bed construction

The bed construction part of the van build was slightly trickier as we needed to ensure that it could fully support both our weights. We used two large pieces of white-painted wood to make up the bulk of the bed frame and then we used the lips of the two benches to give them support.

Matt then designed a small box/table feature that we put together with screws, a rod and another small piece of wood and place it in the middle of the bigger piece of wood to give it more support and then we added an extra plank of wood to the underside of the bed frame which can also be removed.

Table construction

We then drilled a hole into the little wooden box and added a table leg to it that can also be removed during the day (all pieces of wood that make the main bed frame can be removed so there’s still plenty of room on the floor inside the van if we need it), and then we added a fixture to the underside of the bigger piece of wood that slots into the table leg to create a fully 360° rotating/removable table!

Campervan kitchen construction

Our next job was to get started on the “kitchen” and Matt and his stepdad did the vast majority of this part outside of the van so they had more room to work with and then they drilled it into support beams that we attached to the floor and walls of the van at the back to give the kitchen much more support.

We decided to separate the kitchen into four main sections, based on what we wanted to have in the kitchen. We’ve got a full-length space on the far right that makes up the sink, clean water and dirty water area, then we have a space in the middle for our coolbox.

On the left, we have a space for our gas bottle and extra bits of storage where we can put things like bread, pasta, rice and other food items and then just above, we created a flip-out table that we use to cook on. Just above that is a long shelf where our 2-ring gas cooker lives, as well as a storage box for food and cooking utensils and then we also have space for our cups, bowls, plates, mugs and frying pan and pot as well.

It might not look like a tonne of room for storage and cooking facilities, but it works perfectly for us and our needs and as we’ve already tried and tested it numerous times at the time of writing this post, I’m so happy we designed it the way that we did.

The only slight amendment that we might need to make is to reinforce the flip-out table a bit more as the current hinges aren’t quite as strong as we thought and we don’t want to risk it breaking, especially while we’re cooking on it!

Foam cushions for beds and benches

Moving on from the actual structural build of the van now, our next job was to buy foam cushions that would make up the bed’s “mattress” and seating on the two benches. We were going to buy foam that we could cut ourselves, but in the end, we decided to order foam that was cut and made to size so that it was easier and neater.

Once the foam arrived, we enlisted my grandma’s help to make cushion covers out of old curtains we had and we were so surprised at just how well they turned out; they look so smart and they’re surprisingly comfortable to say that they used to be curtains!

Purchasing of soft furnishings – campervan conversion UK

We then got to work purchasing the soft furnishings that we needed to make the van comfortable and cosy. We bought our duvet, pillows and bedding from B&M and then Matt’s mum found this really cool storage holder that you attach to the back of the seats at a car boot!

For now, we’ll just be using the duvet set that we bought, but when we travel in the campervan in the colder months, we’ll probably invest in a couple of blankets and maybe more cushions to make it extra warm and cosy.

Purchasing of kitchen equipment

Alongside purchasing the soft furnishings for the van, we also had to buy all our kitchen equipment. We already had a lot of cutlery that Matt’s mum gave us as she has so many spares, and then we purchased other cooking equipment and utensils such as cups, bowls, plates, a frying pan, a pot, a 2L whistling kettle, a coolbox and of course, a 2-ring gas cooking stove so that we can actually cook all the food!

We bought everything from Go Outdoors, Amazon, Dunelm and B&M.

Lighting and finishing touches

As we cut some of the pieces of wood ourselves, they had rough edges on some of the bits of wood so we painted them white to give them a more “finished” look. They still look a little bit rough around the edges, but the white paint has made them look much more polished and neat.

One of the things that Matt was adamant that he wanted for the van was LED lights and being the ever-obliging girlfriend that I am, I agreed to get some. I was apprehensive at first as my sister had some in her room and they just didn’t stick very well, but once we reinforced their stickiness with some double-sided sticky tape, they now look so cool!

Window covers and kitchen curtain covers

Our final task for our campervan conversion process was to make our own stick-on blinds. We did look into buying them but they were so expensive for the type of van that we have and as there are eight windows on the van, it was going to cost us a small fortune so we decided to make them ourselves.

To make the blinds, we bought a tonne of insulation foil, a huge roll of black cotton fabric, some spray-on glue and little suction cups that would stick the blinds to the windows.

We spent a full afternoon making them and it wasn’t the quickest or easiest process, but they turned out much better than I imagined and they block out light amazingly!

We did consider getting curtains instead at one point as there was already a curtain rail going around some of the back windows, but we wanted to ensure that we could block out every bit of light so that it’s pitch black inside the van at night, so the DIY black-out blinds option was our best bet.

As they’re pretty bulky (and the fact that there are eight of them), we knew we needed somewhere to store them so we bought a cargo net from Amazon and attached it to the roof of the van by hooking it onto the handles above the doors and windows and it makes for the perfect storage place.

Celebrating the success of our full campervan conversion UK!

Once we were happy with every bit of our campervan conversion, there was only one thing left to do; celebrate its success!

I’m so delighted and actually pretty overwhelmed that we managed to do it so quickly and on such a tight budget and while it might not be entirely perfect, I’m utterly in love with our little home on wheels and I’m so pleased and proud that we did the whole conversion ourselves!

Heading out on the road for our first trip in the converted campervan!

A few days after the campervan conversion process was complete, we took Celeste (the van!) on her first adventure. We only popped to the nearby seaside town of Whitby but as neither of us had been there in years, it seemed like a great place to test the waters with the van and see how she performed on an actual campervan trip!

I’m pleased to say that the trip was a roaring success and the whole thing felt so utterly surreal to be staying in our very own campervan that we converted ourselves entirely from scratch. Since then, at the time of writing this post, we’ve also been to the Lake District in the van which was also incredible, and we plan on exploring much more of the UK and beyond in our little van very soon!

Related posts:

• How Much We Spent Converting A Campervan – What You Need To Know
• How Much Money We Spent On A 3 Month Trip Around New Zealand
• Why A Campervan Road Trip Needs To Be On Your Bucket List
• Hiring A Campervan In New Zealand: My Top Tips
• 7 Things I’ve Learned About Myself Since Living In A Campervan

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Is converting a campervan something that you’d like to do one day? Let me know in the comments or on Instagram at @imjustagirl_16.