Back in late 2019, my partner and I made a wild move. We decided to buy a secondhand van. The new member of the family was a white Ford Transit that we rescued from the commercial shipping business and we renamed it as Mandalay. I love designing things from the scratch, I’m quite handy and I had some basic knowledge on woodworking but zero experience on van conversion. My partner was in the same boat, no experience. This page ain’t a classic “How to Build a Van” guide. There are loads of sites and tutorials out there that break it down step-by-step in a more professional way. Instead, I want to share our experience of building a van from scratch, the problems we faced, the mess-ups, and all the wisdom we picked up along the way. Click here to find out how this experience turned out.