Here she is!
We worked with Open Road Campers to bring our dream van to life. The layout stayed close to our original vision but of course changes were made along the way.
The one factor that played the most into our final van layout was the need for a seating and sleeping area for 5 people. It was for this reason that we opted go with the Mercedes Sprinter Crew van over the cargo van. The crew van comes with a bench seat already installed from the factory. The cargo van only has the driver and passenger seats. We considered going with the cheaper cargo van and installing a bench but the price difference would have worked out to be about the same. We felt better knowing the seat was DOT approved and installed professionally from the factory and would be safe for our children while we drive.
Behind the bench, you get into the “living area” of the van. We have a fridge, sink, and storage on the driver side, and hidden under the counter space on the passenger side is our toilet and shower. We also have upper cabinets that hold the majority of our pantry items, cookware, and other necessities.
The bench seating in the back covers our water tank (driver side) and our electrical system (passenger side), while the back portion provides lots of storage. The dinette table acts as insert so we can fold it into our bed at night, and measures just 2″ smaller than a king size bed. For the kids, a second bed comes down from the ceiling. This is one of my favorite features of the build. We chose the HappiJac bed lift, which uses chain drive technology to raise and lower a bed at the push of a button. We went back and forth on the options for a second bed, but are very happy we went with the HappiJac system. Although you do lose some headroom when sitting at the dining table, you do not have to worry about breaking down bed rails and storing them away when not in use. Typically, we throw all our bedding for both beds up there during the day and raise it to the ceiling, so we don’t have to fold and store our blankets and pillows every day. The upper bed is the same width as a full size bed and works great for our children.
We are so happy with the amount of storage we ended up with. After installing 6 – 100 ah lithium batteries from BattleBorn, we weren’t sure how much extra space there would be, but Open Road did a beautiful job building out the benches and created closed off storage for us.
Speaking of storage, the cabinet box on our Backwoods Adventure Mods rear bumper has been amazing! We keep most of our outdoor equipment in this box so we don’t have to worry about bringing mud and dirt into our indoor storage. Things like camping chairs, tables, and more live in the cabinet box and make for easy access and quick set up at camp.
This van was built for the road and we can’t wait to start our adventures!