This couple’s custom conversions turn cargo vans into campers, using tricks from boat design.
Jack Richens and Lucy Hedges have been called brilliant and amazing by Instagram followers for their unique mobile home hacks. The couple has also been labeled imbeciles and idiots by critics of their vehicles’ unorthodox designs.
But This Moving House, the couple’s UK-based business, is already booked full on 2017 orders for luxurious campervan retrofits.
Inspired By Boats
If the designs look familiar, but a bit out of place, it’s because the interior layouts are inspired by barges and canal boats. The result is an inside living space that defies the outside look of the van.
Interior portholes and curved walls add an obvious nautical aesthetic, but Richens adds some functional elements as well.
The driver and passenger seats swivel like captains’ chairs. The sleeping quarters also borrow from watercrafts. The beds feature a cubby under the stairs that your legs slide into. This allows a full-size bed to fit comfortably into a three-tiered bunk system (kids on top).
It also lends some hasty storage space for pillows and blankets during travel.
Hedges is in charge of design, while Richens manages construction. In spite of their build, the duo have taken some heat from visitors to their site.
This Moving House Campers: Reaction
“Why no toilet or shower? Clearly, you are an imbecile,” reads one section from their FAQ page.
“The lack of a toilet seems to have elicited the most fury from the internet, which I love,” Richens said. “The decision not to add a toilet was arrived at from experience and design considerations. “Anyway, you’re living the VanLife, go piss in a hedge.”
According to the website, the vans will be sold on eBay beginning this summer. Currently, only right-handed-drive vans are available, but Richens and Hedges are working to outfit some left-drive models for locations like North America where folks drive on the right.
You can contact This Moving House to have your rig built up, but know that for the time being, the couple only works on Mercedes-Benz Sprinters and Volkswagen Crafters.
“At the moment we do one thing and we do it well,” Richens said. “We can only be sure that the conversion will adequately fit inside Sprinters and Crafters. Even minor tweaks to the design create really big issues.”
As for price, the last van sold for just over $35,000. But as Richens noted, “given the recent interest in the conversion we suspect the next one will go for quite a bit more. Maybe.”
