Van Tour Pt 2: Order From Chaos
(or, a clumsy writer bangs his thumb a bunch and accidentally does cool stuff)
BACK TO THE BEGINNING, VIZZINI
So when I landed back in Cleveland and in the warm embrace of my buddy’s driveway, I stripped everything out of the van, pulled down all of the shit on the walls, unstrapped all the crap from the ceiling, and cleaned that son of a bitch within an inch of its life. It was incredibly carthartic! Felt a lot like it feels to throw away a first draft of a book; scour the page down to only what shines, and rebuild from there. It’s one of my favorite parts of writing, and stripping this van down was one of my favorite parts of this adventure so far. Just sitting in that bare space with a pen and paper, looking at it, thinking. Planning.
Dreaming.
I felt like I was going to war, in a silly little sense; war with the chaos that had dominated my life for the last month. And, to get needlessly deep about it, I felt it was bigger than that: I felt like I was going to war with the chaos of the last few years, the slide into depression and lethargy that I’d been fighting a slowly losing war against. I hadn’t really been excited about much for a while. But just then I was excited; I was excited to build something. I haven’t built anything in a long time, you see, outside of like, Minecraft. Looking at that empty van, I got the same feeling I used to have when me and my teenage friends would look at a fallen tree in the woods, and decide that this was going to be our new treefort.
I’ll never in life be as happy as I was as a kid, building elaborate treeforts on public land (true story: people called the cops when we started lugging ready-mix concrete out into the woods. That was a hell of a treefort) and I’m not saying I was that happy, figuring out my plans for my little ol’ van, my fort-on-wheels, but I wasn’t sad.
And I sure as fuck wasn’t depressed.
STICKS AND STONES
Everybody knows the first thing you do in Minecraft when you’re building a fort is to walk up to the closest tree and punch it until it turns into logs, which you can turn into sticks and wood and, eventually, like dragon-killing skyships and shit. Nothing happened when I punched a tree, so I decided it was time for Menards, and shopping, and to see what kind of sticks and stones I could build this van out of.
So here were the goals for the project: I wanted to turn my van into somewhere that I would enjoy writing inside for about two hundred bucks. It was an arbitrary number, but seemed appropriate and I needed a limit; I work in construction estimating and I know all about how fast construction projects can balloon their budget. It would be very on-brand for me to finish the project with a finely machined mahogany interior, polished brass fittings, and no money left for gas. So I had my budget, I had a ghost of a plan, and it was time to get some wood.
But which wood? Y’all, there is so much wood. And the cool stuff got really expensive in the three decades or so since I’d bought any! It’s almost like it’s a precious and finite commodity; who would have thought. So this was going to be a delicate dance; how could I get the most woody bang for my buck(s)? I was doing my own hillbilly version of Extreme Home Makeover. EHM: Van Edition.
In my daydreams of this winter, this was going to go differently. I would slowly accumulate super cool authentic woods from diverse craft fairs, kindly old farmers, buildings that were in the midst of being demolished that I just happened to be driving past, and maybe just lying along the side of the road. Then I would assemble these ultra-unique and lived-in woods into a piece of art that would drive even the most stoic of weightlifters to their knees, weeping and asking me to tell the tale of every last piece of my otherworldly van build.
However, as it so often does, reality ran in, gave my daydreams a quick elbow to the teeth and a curb stomp for good measure, and yelled something about men’s rights before running away. An asshole, reality. I had no time to accrue wood with stories. I couldn’t slowly build this van out over the course of a year. For the sake of my sanity (and Book 2) I needed some chill in the van. So, the second best thing to authenticity: Menards.
Still, I didn’t want to do particle board or anything laminated; I’ve been buying and throwing away IKEA furniture for twenty years now and I didn’t want any fake wood in my van if I could help it. The Construction Cousins(tm) had got me a lovely knotty pine ceiling for my birthday, and I loved it. When things were at their worst out on the road, I’d lay and look up at that wood ceiling, and I’d feel better. So if I could make it work, I wanted some real wood on my walls. But all of the veneers, cladding, treatments, ect. that I could find were outside the budget, and anyways so many of them were fake; one material ginned up to look like another. Plastic in the guise of beat-up barn siding. Plywood embossed to look like oak. Not my vibe.
Not my tempo.
And then I found my destiny:
Edge glued pine shelving! It is so cheap! It is so beautiful! I was a total asshole and took down the entire stack, sorted through it all, and found the five prettiest boards. I had my wood. I got a big piece of HardiBoard for filling in blanks, got some screws and glue and everything I thought I would need and loaded up the van. It was time to get to work.
THE THIRD CONSTRUCTION COUSIN (TURNED OUT TO BE ME!)
So, I used to know how to build stuff. Me and my dad built an entire house by ourselves when I was fourteen. I used to be a drywall hanger. But man, it had been a long time. And building more or less straight shelves into the walls of a very twisty and curvy and off-angle van was going to be… A challenge. But I set to work; I would just figure it out. And if something wasn’t quite right, if I drilled a hole in the wrong piece or a joint didn’t fit or something just looked bad, well?
It would still look a whole hell of a lot better than it had. I got my trusty tape measure and got to work.
It was intense. I got a bit hyper-focused. Put in a couple of 13 hour days in 95 degree heat; when I laid down to go to sleep I passed out so quick I thought I might be slipping into a coma. But it was fun, too. It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with my hands, and there’s a certain satisfaction to it that I need to remember. I love building worlds on the page—and that will always be my first love—but man, it’s fun to bring things into the real world, too.
BED SLATS FOR THE WIN
So, remember these things? I told you to remember them in the last post? Triumphant return and all that? So, this is the kind of accident that sparks real joy, Marie Kondo. These bundles of wood are the springy, slightly curved slats that hold up your mattress in certain kinds of IKEA beds. I had every intention of storing these with the rest of my bedframe at my buddy’s house (the same absolute UNIT of a mensch that was allowing me to work 13 hour construction sessions in his driveway and would bring me jars of water so I didn’t pass out from the heat and made me steak and generally made this week of construction into a forever-memorable joy. I try not to name people in this blog that haven’t agreed to it, but fuck that, Shawn Brewster was the VIP of this project and if you see him, buy him a beer for me) but I forgot to drop them off before I left. If I had been able to throw anything away, I would have ABSOLUTELY thrown these away. But I couldn’t, so I strapped them to the wall and would occasionally look at them.
‘Man,’ I would think to myself, ‘for bed-slats, those are kind of pretty. I wonder if I could do anything with those. I already ruined my bed by hacking a Queen into a Twin; it might be cool to use them somehow. But how?’
This is how.
I’m not gonna lie, I wrote an enormous epic fantasy novel that one of my childhood heroes said was good, and I might be more proud of these fuckin’ bed slats. You’ll see in a second; they’re so cool. Garbage wood, never meant to be seen, buried under a mattress, and almost thrown away twenty times. And now they make me smile ear-to-ear every time I see them.
Well, so… okay. I’ve written too many words and I have my 3k to get in on Book 2 tonight; let’s finally cut to the chase. Let’s take a look at how my treefort turned out, shall we? But first, a quick reminder of how it started:
CHARTS, MAPS, FINGERPRINTS, AND PORTS-OF-CALL
And so, like… You wanna see the van? Enough of the teasing, right? Let’s go see the van. I hope it can live up to the suspense. AAAAH! I’m nervous. Ok. Ok, ok. Click.
I can handle it. Go ahead and click.
Right? Right?
Man, I love walking into that fucking thing now. I love waking up inside it. Love going to sleep in it. It’s far from done! I got the whole other side and back to do… but I can live with this. I can live in it. I can take this shit west.
(Well, as soon as I solve the never goddamn ending electrical problems, but we’re being positive right now! Disasters are for next week!)
THE CENTERPIECE
Not gonna lie, kids; I’m proud of this. All credit to Rick Fournier for the idea; he’s been tracking his travels in highlighter on a map for many years, and it is so cool to see where he’s been and what he’s done. I’ve also loved maps since I was a kid; one of my favorite jobs I ever had was as a cartographer. This National Geographic road map was the most expensive part of this whole build and it was WORTH EVERY PENNY.
It’s also a hell of a spot to sit and write… Or maybe even read. While it’s lightly raining outside, perhaps? With mountains in the background? Romantic, right?
SHELVES AS ZEN KOANS
Not everything is in its right place yet. I still move things around a little; I need to add another magnet to the pantry door because EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE it will swing open. But nothing falls out! The only chaos is what I create myself… And I can live with that. I built a little shelf above my bed that is both soft reveal lighting and a little shelf I can put my keys and phone and such when it’s time to sleep. I got a little plate and magnets where I can stow my remotes (about half my day every day was finding those damn remotes). But I have a spot for my kettle; a place where my cast iron fits perfectly. My water jug is securely trapped in a prison of wood; no more artificial lakes in the van please! My clothes all fit above the headboard and if they start to not fit, I’ll throw some shit away. I built in and carpeted the headboards of the bed so I have room to stretch. My power station is up off the floor (and out of danger of floods) and most of the wiring is hidden and hooked up properly. I have a little power strip with switches for each thing, so I can lay in bed and turn off the internet up front so it doesn’t eat up my battery while I sleep.
It’s also so damn thrifty. I’ve never been a thrifty person. But I was able to figure out a way to build that map feature wall using bed slats, some cheap HardiBoard, and the remnants from the knotty pine ceiling. I was able to build the shelves of the pantry with the plywood that had been hanging from the ceiling for a whole month. I used every bit of the insulation I’d been lugging around. I found ways to use offcuts of the shelves to build the power station enclosure. I used every part of the buffalo.
TATANKA, bitch!
I’m feeling a little embarrassed by how proud I am, but you know what? This is my victory lap. I’m really damn proud of myself.
God, damn. I just love it all so much. And you know what? I never would have built it this way if I’d had a bunch of time and money before I set out. I would have done something completely different; something a lot more like that bougie bullshit van I showed you in the last post. With all the time and money in the world, I would have built something I wouldn’t like half as much as this. I only knew what to build because I spent that month on the road fighting for every movement, every shred of space. I was only able to plan this out and get everything in its right place because I’d endured every possible combination of ‘wrong’ possible.
Dare I say it? I don’t think I could have built a space I love so much without enduring so much discomfort.
HOOO! Ha! You thought you were done listening to me talk about discomfort! No way, punks! I’m just getting started! Long live discomfort!
That said, one of the most wonderful things about discomfort is when it ends. And a certain species of discomfort, the rampant chaos I lived in for a month, is more or less at an end. I don’t regret it, not one bit. And I think it led to something pretty cool.
But god, damn does it feel good to wake up and see this shit every morning. Don’t worry, there’s plenty more discomfort ahead; there are mountains yet to climb. They’re called the Rockies, and I’ll be climbing up through them pretty soon now.
Thanks for coming along for the ride.
See ya next week. Got some ideas for the other parts of the van? Pop ‘em down below. Thanks for clickin’, thanks for readin’, thanks for supportin’. Woulda quit a month ago without you.
A worthy van, for a worthy man!
It looks incredible and the vibes are vibing. It went from uncontrolled chaos to charming and warm. I would be making everyone I know look at my repurposed bed slats. Impressive!