January 2026 Update and Van Build Expenses

On January 1st, we moved to a new house sit in Crozet, Virginia, a little over a couple of hours away from where we were in Dumfries, Virginia. It was nice to have a short trip after our long drive to get to Dumfries from our house sit in Beaufort, South Carolina. Greg left early in order to have an orientation with the homeowners before they left on their vacation at 10 am. I stayed in Dumfries, did the morning cat chores, and made sure the house looked perfect before I left sometime after lunch.

When I got to Crozet, I was pleased to meet Penny, our newest charge. And Penny was ecstatic to meet me.

Penny loves to lie in the sun.

Running along the shared lane that leads from the driveway to the main road.

Hanging out back when the weather was nicer.

Striking a pose.

Penny is a thirteen-year-old Vizsla, a Hungarian hunting dog. She loves people and her meal times. She is fed three times a day because that is when people eat. The property where she lives is a non-working farm, and she goes out to roam whenever she wants. But mostly she sleeps, often emitting a deep, raspy snore. She loves to sleep on her blanket on the couch in the office or on the rug in front of the front door where the sun shines in. She has a bed in the mudroom that connects to the kitchen, which she uses when we are out and she is locked in the kitchen, or if she wants to be near us when we are eating. In the evening, she follows us downstairs to the TV room. There, she snoozes on a mat on the couch while we watch our shows. She remains there until the morning.

She is ready for her breakfast as soon as she hears Greg come down from the second-floor guest room. She makes this known with Scooby-Doo-like vocalizations. “Rime rungry! Reed re row!” After breakfast, she visits the yard to potty. She runs outside barking, letting everyone know she is on the job.

Penny gets a walk every day around 4 pm down the lane from the house to the mailbox. It is about a 1/2 mile round trip. She loves this and will run in the adjoining fields, occasionally stopping to sniff things.

When she is excited or happy, she will wag her tail, which is shaped like a thick, stubby drumstick. It goes thump, thump, thump against whatever she is lying on or standing near—the couch, the floor, a cabinet, your leg.

She is a joy. I have absolutely fallen in love with her.

The house is a big, brick, stately-looking structure with two stories and a finished basement. It is light-filled with lots of windows. There is a big driveway and a half-empty garage, which Greg has been using to work on the van build. The property stretches out a quarter mile to the main road. Behind the house is a golf course and a small lake. We can see Canada geese on the lake and the warmth of the sunrise from our bedroom in the mornings. Golfers trickle past the backyard in the afternoon.

Pizza at Pro Re Nata.

Us at Pro Re Nata.

Line dancing at Pro Re Nata.

We have eaten out a handful of times and have discovered a new favorite pizza restaurant, Pro Re Nata, with good beer on tap for Friday date night. The last time we were there, they had line dancing. It was fascinating to take in such a unique bit of American culture. We also had the opportunity to take part in an exercise of American free speech, protesting alongside the road in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Virginia.

But our big excitement this past month was the snowstorm.

We have spent the last 14 years trying our best to avoid snow. We have failed a few times. In Colorado, we had to turn around on an outing once and walk a cat on a leash through the snow at a house sit, but none of these had much of an impact on our lives.

I was actually looking forward to the snow. We went out days before its forecasted date and stocked up on a week’s worth of food and drink, including a bottle of peppermint schnapps. Hot chocolate and schnapps seemed like the perfect thing to drink on a snowy winter night. It started snowing late Saturday and continued until the next morning. I didn’t venture out that first day, and Penny was not happy, only running out for a super quick pee. As the snow abated, Greg started shoveling the walkways and parking pad. The regular house cleaning crew was supposed to come the next day, but the homeowner postponed them until Friday.

Monday morning, I bundled up and walked down the lane and into the fields, taking pictures of the changed landscape. It was a winter wonderland. Ice crystals coated every tree, and the ground was a smooth, undulating blanket of white.

View of the start of the lane from the main road.

The golf course behing the house.

That afternoon, a tractor went up and down the shared lane that leads from the main road to the driveways of Penny’s house and the neighbor’s, clearing enough snow that the lane was drivable. Greg continued shoveling the parking pad. But the long driveway from the parking pad to the shared lane remained buried, and soon it would be frozen solid.

When I resumed my walks with Penny to the mailbox, footprints no longer followed us. We walked on top of the unyielding snow, being careful not to slip and fall. Greg was no longer shoveling snow but rather chipping out ice chunks with a flat-tipped shovel and throwing them aside. It became clear that it would take more time and energy to dig our way out to the shared lane than we had.

Frozen footprints.

Greg chipping ice blocks out of the driveway.

Three days after the storm, the plows finally came to clear the main road.

The temperatures were predicted to be below freezing all week. We kept in touch with our host, letting her know our status. By mid-week, I informed her that there was no way the house-cleaning crew would be able to get up the road on Friday. By Friday, we were wondering how we would get more food. We were also running low on materials for our van build, our main reason for being on this house sit. So we stopped hinting around that we were trapped.  I texted our host to tell her we needed a way to get groceries and a solution for clearing the driveway.

Our host sent me the phone number of the neighbors who shared the lane. I reached out and asked them for a ride the next time they were going to the store. A couple of hours later, I carefully hurried down the driveway to their waiting truck. At Harris Teeter, I rushed through the store, filling my cart. We hadn’t had a cart this full since the pandemic. I checked out with $300 worth of groceries, hoping they would last until the frozen snow melted.

Groceries loaded up in the tractor bucket.

Selfie of Enes taking me up to the house in the tractor bucket.

Finally the driveway is cleared!

Finally the driveway is cleared!

When we returned from the grocery store to the bottom of our iced-in driveway, we found our hosts’ handyman, Enes, using their tractor to plow through the solidified snow. Enes came, picked me and the groceries up in the tractor bucket, and took me up the still-ice-covered driveway back to the house. By dark, the driveway was cleared. We were no longer trapped. Yay Enes!

*All pictures are click to enlarge. You can also view them in a slideshow.

Van Build Expenses

Cost of the Van: $54,652.75

Cost of upgrade so far, 1/31/26: $15,383.70

We spent $790.41 on Periplo in January.

If you have been following along closely, you might notice that I have changed some of the expense categories. Since I have never tracked expenses for this type of project, I am learning how to do it as I go along. I decided to stop categorizing some things by their use and lump materials all together instead. So instead of a furniture, wall, or floor category, I have lumber and insulation categories. I also switched around what goes into some categories. Hardware is for specialty hardware like door bolts and hinges. General Supplies include all the many small hardware items, like screws and rivnuts, as well as items like glue and polyurethane. I hope this makes my tracking more useful for anyone who might attempt to build out their own van.

We spent $132.01 on Electric in January. We bought more wire ($28.42) and lights for the ceiling and a dimmer switch to control them ($73.48). The rest of the Electric expenses went to a few things that will be installed later: an outlet and box ($5.66), a USB outlet ($17.89), and some general electric supplies ($6.56).

Lumber was our biggest expense for the month at $245.91. Greg built the fridge platform, a cabinet, and installed the ceiling!

We spent $81.93 on tools in January. Greg needed a new saw blade and a hole saw to cut the holes for the lights in the ceiling ($29.42). I also threw a small space heater ($25.15) into this tool category. It is cold here in Virginia. The garage at this house is heated, but unfortunately, the heater we installed in the van is not working right now—something to be diagnosed at a later date. But the coolest new tools we bought this past month were for banding ($27.36). Greg will tell you more about that in the Projects section.

$44.87 was added to the General Supplies category for polyurethane to finish the cabinet interior, screws, and label maker tape.

Our new induction cooktop.

Making pancakes on the griddle.

The most exciting purchase we made last month was our new induction cooktop ($179). It comes with a griddle. We are super excited about cooking things like pancakes or making multiple grilled cheese sandwiches at once. The griddle also comes with a lid. With the lid, this griddle will be our new pizza-making machine.

Included in our $101.69 hardware expense were specialty drop hinges ($65.93) for our benchtop and bolt locks ($35.76) for our sliding cabinet shelves.

Since we are staying in one place for 3 months and no longer need to test our Starlink, I have paused the service, which costs $5 per month.

12-volt USB charger outlet.

Drop hinges for our bench lid. More about this project in February’s update.

January’s Projects

And now Greg will tell you about January’s projects…

This month’s focus was on the ceiling and the driver’s side. The main challenge was dealing with the van’s interior curves. But there were new toys to play with as well.

First, we finished out the driver’s side base. The new process used here was banding. No one wants to see the ugly edges of plywood. So Duwan found birch banding material online. The underside of the birch strip is glue. You iron the strip onto an exposed plywood edge. Next you use trimming tools to strip off any excess. Then you sand the edges lightly.

Ironing on a banding strip. I heat up the end to anchor the strip in place. Then slowly iron the length of the board. The strip sticks out slightly from the edges.

Top left: flush cutters. Top right 1/2 inch band sitting on 3/4 inch band. Bottom left: Trimming Tool.

Next up was the curvy ceiling. We have a tool that helps track a curve in the wall or ceiling and draw it onto a pattern. It works best by drawing onto something firm, so I used 1/4 inch plywood scraps for the patterns. It was basically a process of draw, trim away with a jigsaw, repeat, until the pattern fits. Then transfer the pattern and cut the real piece.

Once the three ceiling pieces were cut, it was time to wire the lights. We have LED ceiling lights on a 12 Volt dimmer switch. After figuring out where each light goes, I measured, cut, and connected the wires to the switch, and tested. I marked and cut holes for all the lights, then put the ceiling up temporarily. Using a silver marker, I drew where each light goes on the insulation under the roof. I took the ceiling back down, and sewed the wires for each light to the insulation. I put the ceiling back up, connected each light, and pushed it into its hole. Springs hold the lights in place.

Securing a furring strip for the aft ceiling panel.

Scribe tool with stubby pencil screwed in to help draw curves.

Dimmer switch and LED light temporarily hooked up to a house battery for testing.

Testing the ceiling panels for fit with lights and roof vent.

Our Murphy bed will be supported by a vertical piece in front and the side of a cabinet in back. I cut the front piece. Then I started on the cabinet.

The cabinet, like everything, has a curved back and top, so it can fit against the wall and ceiling. I was able to use a table saw to cut the sliding shelves, though. These shelves have locks on the front to keep them in place while we roll.

Duwan found a nice cabinet jig and some 180-degree hinges for the cabinet’s front door. The door isn’t mounted yet, but I’ve experimented using the jig with scrap pieces to fine-tune it to the correct millimeter.

Oops! Need to set it on the forward bottom edge and tip it back to get it in place. This way won’t work.

In general, having curved sides and roof makes it it difficult to square things up. But once we construct a “true” line through the center. this will all be easier.

Fridge fits!

Installing sliders and hoping I’ll be able to clean all the sawdust off the owner’s electric BMW.

Locks for the sliding shelves. In our last van build we wrestled with securing anything that could slide.

Jig for sinking cabinet hinges into doors. Push down the red handle to clamp onto the door’s exterior. The drill bit at the top of the pic cuts a hole in the cabinet door. Golden bolts secure the bar which holds the drill bit out 3-6 millimeters from the edge of the cabinet drawer.

Some of our hinges came with instructions. For others we needed to experiment. Here we’re lining up the jig to compare different offsets.

Top: a 180 degree hinge. Bottom a 165 degree hinge.

To see all of our van build expense reports, click here.

To see our travel expense reports, click here.

If you are interested in reading other expense reports from nomads who really know how to live cheaply while still having a good time, check out the blog from our friends Mark, Liesbet, and Maya at Roaming About. They are currently traveling in their truck camper in South America!

If you are interested in becoming a Trusted Housesitter or having a Trusted Housesitter take care of your pet, use our Trusted House Sitters discount code for 25% off!