Driftwood

Driftwood is a 159 Extended built for full-time living rather than weekends away.

The Build

Most vans this size make you choose, and this one chose early. There’s no wet bath and no indoor shower, because in a 159 a bathroom takes the room you’d rather sleep and cook in. What that bought is a galley with real counter space, a bed that doesn’t fold away every morning, and an electrical system with enough headroom to run hard in the heat.

The galley runs down both sides of the aisle. Sink, bamboo counter and two lift-up uppers on the passenger side, fridge and counter on the driver side, and a 120V outlet in the galley for a portable burner. The cabinets are powder coated aluminum in Sandstone. They’re lighter than plywood, they wipe clean, and in five years they can be recoated in a new color instead of torn out and rebuilt.

Behind that is the part that got the most thought. 400Ah of lithium and 480W of solar is a lot for a van this size. It’s there because the air conditioner has to be able to run for hours on a hot afternoon, parked, with no shore power and nothing else to fall back on, and because a full-time fridge sits on the same system and never gets to switch off. Every number was worked backwards from that.

The walls and ceiling are cedar tongue and groove, wrapped the whole way around. Warm wood against Sandstone, with recessed warm white lighting on two zones, one in the ceiling and one under the uppers.

Why This Build Works

The van came to us with wall panels already in and no insulation behind them, so the panels came back off. Thinsulate and sound deadening went on the bare metal first, because that’s the one thing you can’t add later once the cabinets are up. The floor is hex ply, which holds up to daily use better than anything else that would have gone in here.

The rest is ordinary work done properly. The water lines get pressure tested before anything closes up, the whole electrical system gets load tested before the van goes anywhere, and the outdoor shower at the rear doors keeps the dirty work outside.

A van this size doesn’t need to be complicated. It needs to work every day.