March 2026 Update and Van Build Expenses

At the end of March, we completed the last month of our 3-month house-sit for the lovely dog Penny in Crozet, Virginia. Our last days were spent cleaning, putting everything back where it belonged, packing, and getting the van, Periplo, ready for a short camping trip. Yes! We had enough done on Periplo to be able to take her out for a trial run!

And winter ended! Everyone was happy for that. It was easier for Greg to work outside, and Penny enjoyed her days supervising her entire outside domain. I still spent most of my time inside studying Spanish, researching things we need to buy for the van, working on the blog a little, being available when Greg needed extra help, fine-tuning Periplo’s design, and doing domestic chores. Twice every day, Penny and I would walk to the mailbox. Greg and I both spent a lot of time going to the closest town with big-box stores (about 20-plus minutes away) to make purchases for the van. And it seemed like most of the time we spent shopping was at Home Depot, scouring the plumbing aisle for the exact right little connector or valve. Towards the end of the month, I started making these outings on my own so Greg could spend more time working on Periplo. Greg would identify the parts he required online, and then I would email myself the links with pictures so I could find the exact things he needed.

Penny after a visit to the groomers.

Keeping a watch on everything while we work on the van.

Penny’s place on the couch.

Walking back from the mailbox.

Getting her bed just right.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have any leisure time and didn’t do any sightseeing while we were in Crozet. We continued to go out for dinner one night a week, though—mostly to our favorite bar, Pro Re Nata.

Van Build Expenses

Cost of the Van: $54,652.75

Cost of upgrade so far, 2/28/26: $21,309.49

*Numbers colored red-violet indicate an increase from the previous month.

We spent $1,866.75 on Periplo in March.

Thankfully, the Electric category slowed down. We only added $45.01 for switches (for the grey tank, water pump, and water heater), an outlet, and a switch plate.

In the Ventilation category, we added a back-door and a side-door screen ($135.84). This total only reflects the cost of the side door screen, as the back door screen was essentially gifted to us. When we received the first screen, I assumed that it would be installed with Velcro—the same way we installed our screens in our previous van, Ballena Blanca. But as we have been learning this time around, camper van upfitting has changed significantly over the past 10 years. There are now innovative products specifically designed for cargo vans.  This screen is installed beneath the door’s weather stripping! We have screen material, and I was intending on sewing our own screens, but after installing the gifted one, we decided we liked how it worked and just bought the other one. BTW, we got these screens from Amazon. They sell for almost $400 each on the big van upfit supply sites.

Rear screen. Center seam joins with magnets. And top flap can be a shade.

Side door screen.

In the Lumber category, we bought a nice 3/4 inch piece of maple plywood ($94.54). This will be our countertop and the top of our Lagun table (a pedestal mount table on a swivel).

For Tools, we spent $22.08 on a drill bit. $133.21 was spent on General Supplies (screws, wood putty, shims, glue), including $72.64 for a gallon of paint.

Hardware came in at a hefty $284.01. The majority of this was for our Lagun table. The leg cost $177.59, and since the tabletop of our Lagun table will fold, we also spent $8.41 on special hinges and $18.91 on supports for the unfolded table. The rest of the Hardware expense went to the shoe cabinet hardware and cabinet hinges. Hopefully, I will be able to show you some of the completed projects with these hardware parts next month.

Butler hinges for the lagun table.

Shoe cabinet hardware.

$279.72 was added to the Plumbing category. $252.35 of that was spent on plumbing hardware & misc. This was all just many, many small parts to connect our water tank, pump, heater, filter, and accumulator to our sink and shower sprayer. The other $27.37 was for a new sink drain. The black sink we bought came with a silver drain. I wanted the drain to match.

The biggest purchases we made in March came in soft materials. We had already paid for our custom futon mattress for our Murphy bed, but the shipping wasn’t due until the mattress was completed. We received the mattress just in time, 6 days before the end of our house sit. All the way from Montana in a UPS truck, the shipping cost us $321.00. We spent an additional $61.39 on good metal buckles and pad eyes to keep the mattress in place when the Murphy bed is closed.

The mattress just arrived! Goes straight into the van.

Good fit.

Mattress-securing strap and buckle.

Anchor for the mattress strap.

The other entry in Soft Material and our biggest purchase of the month was for window covers. Back when we built our first camper, we made window covers out of Reflectix, a thin silver foam insulation. Now there are better options, and when I saw a whole set of window covers for every window in Periplo, including the rooftop fan vent, for $489.95, I thought it was a good deal.

Windshield cover.

Roof vent cover.

Window covers in their handy storage bags.

March’s Projects

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

The primary focus was the galley. Most of the wiring was already run over to the passenger side of the van, so that wasn’t a major effort. The two things to deal with were plumbing and the design itself.

First, the design. Look away from the blog to your nearest cabinet. Betcha five bucks the two sides have the same height and depth. I bet the front and back do, too. Well, while I am a huge fan of Duwan’s design, I will say it looks more like an Escher woodcut than the cabinet you just looked at. My mission was to make this Escher vision real using plywood. Everything usually works great until you try to bring that last corner together.

The second big deal was plumbing. We’ve purchased all the stuff we want, so it’s a simple matter of hooking it all together. And look, since the last time I worked on plumbing, Pex has become the pipe of choice. It’s flexible, versatile, and fittings can be crimped, clamped, or just reamed out to fit. Yet, for over a week, Duwan was making daily runs to the Home Depot with a bunch of returns and a list of new attempts.

Click on the pictures to enlarge and read the captions to learn more about how March’s projects all came together.

Building the galley

Basic galley set in place.

With the bed deployed.

Check out that 1/8th inch clearance between the galley and bed.

Still needs doors, a drawer, and all the plumbing.

View from the rear.

I used this Pex crimping tool to make most connections. We bought Pex-A, which is white, flexible, and can be used for any type of connection. Our plumbing runs are so short I chose not to use the red tubing for hot and blue for cold. I chose 1/2″ instead of 3/4″ because our needs are light.

Pex copper band and a test pipe crimped onto a T connector. Above is a test gauge. If it moves fairly freely around your connection, the link is good.

Why wouldn’t everyone just love plumbing? Here is one of the 1 1/2″ access points for our fresh water tank. I guess it’s not cost-effective to glue in threads for an empty hole.

My solution? Put a screw in and cut away the blockage.

Careful! Pull that out without leaving a bunch of plastic scraps in your fresh water. I wouldn’t call myself OCD, but some nights I will wake up, and one of the reasons I can’t get back to sleep will be knowing that this opening isn’t reasonably round.

Small batch of Pex fittings. Many trips to the store were required to get everything just right.

Thirty gallon water tank ready to slide into place.

Our water heater. Black knob on the top controls temp. Just below the knob is the hot water outlet. Below that we’ve capped off the connections to the engine’s cooling system. Below that pointing left is the cold water intake. And below that is the pressure release output.

Here’s the overflow valve for the water heater. It’s just a drain, and won’t be under pressure. But look. The fitting, which has a gasket inside, is too big to press up against the brass. We could have leaks.

I no longer even know where all these fittings came from. But I learned that they’ll go together to make a good seal for the water heater overflow.

Why wouldn’t everyone love plumbing? Here’s the end of a 3/4″ black hose. This 3/4″ barb fitting ain’t even close to fitting inside it.

After failing to find anything appropriate at a big box store, I went to the local Crozet Hardware, being careful to arrive early before the 4PM Saturday close. The helpful folks sent me out with a 3/4″ clear hose to attach to our sink’s Camping Barbie P-trap, and the proper adapters to send sink water outside to our gray water tank.

Wiring the water pump and waterproof on/off switch. The little Dymo device is our new bluetooth label maker. Gone are the days of punching labels into two-tone film.

Yay! These Pex connections fit our shower (which is actually a bidet sprayer).

Surprise! An easy plumbing connection between the accumulator tank and water filter.

Looking through the side door under the galley sink.

Five-gallon gray water tank mounted under the passenger doorway. Port on the top right is an air vent. Bottom right is input from the sink and water heater overflow. Blue “Solid “valve on the left is an electric drain valve. By flipping a switch while we’re underway we can dump gray water into the road. Metal bands hold the tank in place (so far).

The lighted gray tank water release switch is mounted by the passenger seat. When it’s toggled on the light shows. We haven’t tested yet, but it may take up to ten minutes to drain a full tank. The light will help us remember the valve is being held open.

Our water tank fill will live on the countertop.

Some plumbing and wiring between the passenger-side wall and the water tank under the galley. I really hope we don’t have problems in this tiny space.

Plumbing! Left is the water tank with four vertical holes which probably won’t show the water level. Bottom left of the tank is the drain. Straight up is an air vent (raised so that water doesn’t slosh out of a full tank on rough roads). Big connection to the right is for intake. straight down is output. This goes to the orange and black pump. Output on the left of the pump goes to the accumulator. The two long pipes running to the right have shut-off valves now.

So much plumbing

Installing the door screens

Rear door screen installation.

We had a generous helping of black grease behind our door gasket. Most of this needs to be cleaned off before installing the screen.

The installation videos show an easy install of peeling back a small section of gasket, securing the screen with clips, and replacing the gasket. Half an hour, tops. We ended up taking the whole gasket off . Our job took half a day, and was as about as easy as the first few times we anchored our boat.

Fitting the gasket back on over the screen.

Installing the screen for the side door. This one had less grease in the door gasket, and the install was much smoother. The container of acetone on the right helped clean off the grease. Clothespins in the center of the screen help make sure there is enough slack for the two magnetic sides to close easily. Lawn chair on top of the van blocks the morning sun so we can see what we’re doing.

Building drawers, cabinets, and installing the sink

Cool type of latch that Duwan found for the cabinet doors and drawers. The open button serves as a pull handle.

When the button is pushed closed, a metal piece pops up to work as a barrier. This latch is fantastic for drawers. But doors come in at an angle, and require a lot of super-fine-tuning.

Galley door and drawer.

Credit cards make good spacers for the drawer front.

Positioning the sink (upside down).

Navigation

Behind the dashboard radio with the plastic cover on. How much space do we have to install a mount for a navigation tablet?

Here’s what it looks like with the plastic cover removed from behind the dashboard radio. The black bolts hold the radio in place.

Completed dashboard tablet mount. Duwan found a perfect long screw to replace one of the black bolts. It holds down a bit of plywood. Fed through the plywood from the bottom is a 1/4″ bolt serving as a standard tripod mount. There’s just enough clearance to screw the tablet mount onto that bolt.

Securing the Fridge

Fridge, strapped in from behind. The bottom secured by 3″ lag screws into 3/4″ plywood.

View of the fridge tie-downs from inside the cabinet. We’ll be able to release them to take the fridge out as needed.

Oops, we broke something at the house

“The Party Never Ends.” Trying to create a hose-bib saving drip during our lengthy freeze at the end of January, I broke off the handle.

So we ended up replacing the guts of this hose bib, a device as foreign to me as a snow blower.

Working Conditions

Composting Toilet Fan Vent Installation

Cut a vent hole into the composting potty.

Right center is the potty fan housed inside its vent hose. To the left is the fan switch.

Potty vented out through the wall.

Toilet vents out through this opening in the van’s underside.

This rubber cap was over a hole under the van. Here’s the hidden side of the toilet vent.

Murphy Bed Finishing Touches

Our futon mattress from Montana arrived! The straps hold it in place when stowed.

These L-brackets are only attached to the base. Their job is to help hold the mattress vertical when the Murphy bed is closed up.

We added two more legs to the bed. Each pair of two legs fold together, with Velcro straps to keep them from wandering.

Getting ready for a test camping trip

Unfinished countertop. temporarily installed.

Almost ready to camp.

Our sink on the temporarily installed countertop.

This USB charger was temporarily installed before we went camping.

Next Up

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 driving around Europe looking for a new camper, a home base, and taking in the sights!

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!