Vinnie the Camper?? - how it all began

Exactly a week ago we said our home goodbye and moved into 'Vinnie', our cosy 7-meter-long motorhome that we named after Vincent van Gogh, the Dutch painter, famous for his paintings on the French sunflower fields.

How it all began

Affirmations. The Joost of two years ago would be laughing hard at this. I can hear past-self mocking me.

'You are drawing stuff you like and it will come to reality?'!

But yeah, that's really how this story began.

We had enough of the rat race, the daily commute, the feeling of being stuck on groundhog day. Time was going waaaaaay too fast because of the absence of new stimuli.

Time for a change, Time for a new drawing.

Underneath the drawing we wrote things that are important like:

• Good engine
• Comfortable
• Spacious
• Safe
• Good workplace
• etc.

The camper

After weeks of looking at various ads, we found two suitable campervans. Both were from 1991 and in decent condition. Both had the same engine, an indestructible diesel from the early '90s. Those things are almost indestructible -so I've been told.

In the morning we visited the first. A small but lovely Fiat Camper with a bed above the driver seat. Being 2 meters tall, I immediately discovered that sleeping would become an interesting exercise. We thanked the owner and rode 1.5 hours to the next one.

When it was almost dark, we arrived. The camper was on the driveway and the first thing that we noticed was the shape. It looked sooooooo '90's. Epic!

However, the outside was looking like it missed some TLC for a long time. Dents, scratches and a lot of missing paint and ugly silicone.

The inside had potential but was not in our style. It had a panther-print decor with golden curtains and blue/red seats.

During a testdrive, felt stable and it shifted good. After we gave the keys back to the owner, we told him we were going to have a drink at the cafe around the corner, to go over the pre's and cons. Before we left, he showed us a Tattoo of the Camper on his leg (!).

We never reached the cafe. Instant fear kicked in. The amount of money that we were going to spend was all our savings.

We both agreed that this wasn't the camper and that we would find a new one.

But.... We did not dare to drive away either.

In the car, full of fear, we tried to convince each other to not give up on it yet.

'Sometimes we just need to gamble.', 'The people seem nice, the camper needs some love but we can do that'. 'If we don't do it now, when are we doing it? 'Life is about taking risks right?'

'Ok, we'll undercut their price and see how they react. If they accept, we got a camper'

.....8 minutes later....

The owner immediately jumped up to shake my hand. 'Congratulations! You got yourself a nice camper. I'll add a few solar panels and an inverter too'.

From his reaction I got that we probably paid too much but I was willing to ignore that fact. We got ourselves a Camper and therefore we could cross a huge milestone off our roadmap.

'Forget it! He's going to take it back!'

'When you park the camper, make sure the back-tire is on a brick'.

It was a text I got from the previous owner -3 days after I had parked it in a special Camper parking.

'Ok, I will check it this weekend' I replied. Four days later, we went back to the camper -again in the dark. It was a cold winter evening and we still hadn't seen the camper by daylight.

When I opened the side door, the first thing I saw was water on both the floor and the bed. I immediately knew, it was bad news.

Apparently, Burstner T620 Campers have a design flaw where water can't really leave the roof when it's parked perfectly horizontal.

So we made a call script, summarising all of our rights and the request to take it back. All prepared, we called the owner...

The man was devastated. This wasn't what he had intended. He offered to take it back -immediately.

As things were going super fast, we agreed to call him back in a few days to discuss the next step.

The next day, I went back to the camper and looked at it in daylight. It needed a lot of TLC but the energy was amazing. It sure had the vibe and space that we envision.

When we called back the owner, we agreed that he would fix the water damage and we would keep the camper.

He installed EPDM on top of the camper to make sure it couldn't leak any water but also to dampen sound of water/hail.

Oh, and the whole issue about water not flowing away? He build a drain on the roof. Now it always flows off the roof.

He did an awesome job!

'Yep, that has got to go'

The camper was grey-ish and not very good-looking. It missed paint, had chunks of silicone all around and broken caps on the exterior plugs. On the inside, everything had to go.

First, we had to deep-clean the camper.

'No half work'

It took 3 weeks to completely clean the in- and outside. It felt like it never had a proper clean in 33 years. So much dirt, dust and other stuff I won't name. ??

We threw away the mattress, curtains and stripped it of all the panther print. We then brought the cushions to an upholsterer and cut out all the excessive wires, funky lights and old (alarm)systems.

Then it was time for the most exciting part (for me): to test all the systems.

√ Lights

√ Radio

√ Fridge

√ Heater

Waterpump?

The waterpump made a buzzing noise and liters of water where pumped underneath the camper.

Sh*t.

Luckily, my dad discovered the Camper had a Wintermode on the waterboiler so by turning a switch, the onboard water system worked like a charm.

And within two weekends of hard work, we installed two 180W solar panels, a 3000w inverter and the new 200ah battery in serial with top of the old one of 50ah. We now had plenty of electricity onboard to really go off-grid for a few days.

All systems √

Time for the next phase!

'Time for a new colour'

The biggest job was to completely strip the van of all the excess silicone and paint. We sandblasted the outside and worked our way around the Van. Bit by bit, we were able to fix dents, scratches and silicone pile-ups.

'What colour shall we paint it?'

'Green'

'Nah'

'We're going to France, Sunflower Yellow'?

With a new colour and cool interior, we named it after Vincent van Gogh - Vinnie.

Now we just had to wait for the interior upgrade. We picked colours that came back in the wallpaper such as green, oker and taupe.

We will give you a tour soon but here's a photo for when the new cushions arrived.

So fast-forward, that was how it all went.

Do you have the same ambitions and do want to know something?

Ask me in the comments. ???

Next week -Starlink!

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