I left my central London apartment to live and work in my car — here's how I actually made it possible by Matt Cobb on May 31, 2018, 5:16 PM Advertisement
 - Writer Matt Cobb left his central London apartment to travel, live, and work from a DIY converted Land Rover campervan.
- The design of the van provides plenty of room him to work comfortably, travel anywhere, and sleep. He says he even has better a Internet connection than he did in London.
- Living on the road is the escape he needed — and it's a feasible option for those who want to work remotely. It just comes with some small compromises along the way.
A month or so ago, I left my central London apartment for a simpler life on the road: living and working full-time from an old DIY converted Land Rover campervan. It was an impulse that had been building in me for a while, and there seemed like no better time than now to give it a shot. My "rig" is a 14-year-old ex-MOD (Military of Defence) TD5 Land Rover Defender 110. We met online last year, and it was love at first sight…
Ignition Over the past year, I spent my weekends getting acquainted with my future home, traveling to many different corners of the UK. The first addition I made was a makeshift plywood bed that saw some friends and I nearly get frostbite in the Brecon Beacons. As Land Rovers are renowned for being little more than an aluminum box on wheels, it became clear that some heavy modifications were needed if any serious living was to take place in the future. After that trip, I couldn't help but wonder what life would be like if I kitted this thing out, full campervan-style: Going to town with insulation, bed, desk, fridge, lights — you name it. It seemed like the perfect vehicle to help me live outdoors more, a car that can get to places where the road ends and carry on. I've built a few projects before and figured I could knock together a livable interior, so I gave it a shot! Before the alterations: It leaked. It was dirty. And for some reason, there was a radiator in it. 
After the alterations: Much better! Sound deadened, fully insulated, and a plywood interior to facilitate some actual living (I go into detail about the build later for anyone interested in the process). 
With some livin': 
Sorry for the mess, I brought way too much stuff with me. I went away on my own here and packed a frisbee… that's the level of unnecessary we’re talking here. My new office It comes with a view! Collapsible desk: 120mm x 60mm (which is about as big as my desk at home). 
This is very much the beta version of my design. I put it all together in a rush over a few weekends at a friend's workshop. It works well enough for me right now, providing plenty of room to work comfortably, travel anywhere, and sleep all night long. Working remotely I work full-time on Reedsy, a start-up which I co-founded. We help anyone with a story to tell write, edit, design and learn how to self-publish their book. We currently have 18 employees who live all over the world. With today's internet and tools like Slack and Hangouts, communication is easy: You just have to set up your business to work in a distributed team. We adopted the remote culture to save precious resources when we were a strapped-for-cash startup, as office space in London is extortionate. For the cost of providing a basic office for 4 employees, we could add another engineer to the team. We chose to reward our employees with better salaries than force them to waste money commuting to an overpriced office. There are obvious challenges with working this way, like not having cool ping-pong tables to play on at lunch, but from our experience, the benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. When you are not constrained by location, there is a huge pool of talent to choose from. This means that we are able to bring in the very best people for the job. Our team is made up of awesome people from almost a dozen countries, we speak 10 different languages and can share stories from such a wealth of perspectives. A remote relationship is one that is built purely on trust. We trust our employees to get the job done, and the time we save from mithering over their every movement just means that we can get more done ourselves. Working remotely… from a campervan Now, that's a totally different challenge altogether. I need constant access to the internet and enough power to supply all my devices. Mobile 4G reception across much of Europe is incredible, especially around the Alps. The 4G antennas tend to be up in the mountains and they flood the surrounding valleys with plenty of super-fast 4G. So far, I have not struggled to find reception and have managed with simply hot-spotting from my iPhone. Turns out, I'm getting consistently better internet speeds that are many, many times better than what I had in central London… Madness. Total madness. 
It's pretty ridiculous that I am getting better speeds parked up mountains, than the pathetic 17mb/s I used to in Shoreditch, London. Work that one out. 
Design I knew my way around a few 3D design programs and sunk a good few hours into measuring, modeling and speculating on my dream Defender. This was a dangerous mistake: The second I realized that it was feasible, I had my heart set on making it happen.
The design consists of four main sections: - Foldable desk and seat (office)
- Side worktop/storage area
- Configurable bed/sofa (bedroom)
- A pull-out drawer that extends out of the back door, housing a gas stove and a sink (kitchen)
There isn't a great deal of space to play with, so my design adapts the space for different uses. The desk and sofa fold down to create a full sleeping platform that reuses foam cushions to form the bed. I used 9mm, 12mm, and 15mm birch plywood finished in two coats of Osmo PolyX Oil that protects the wood from sunlight and water damage (I have already spilled pints of water over my desk and it is still totally fine). I never put the finishing touches on model because I was so keen to start building the real thing. Ready to start the first phase, I began stripping out the old interior and preparing the panel work. Insulation & sound deadening It gets pretty cold in the Alps at night. Sleeping comfortably at -6ºC (21ºF) is no easy task. My main enemy was condensation. It's easier to sleep when it's cold, but not when it's damp. When warm breath hits cold aluminum panels, it condensates and floods the interior with moisture. By fully insulating the exposed panels, I can stop this moisture reaching the metal and condensing. I lined the entire car with 2 layers of 10mm closed cell foam insulation and sound-deadening material. 
Cutting all the material to size was a bit of a mission. But having already slept in freezing conditions and getting 8 hours sleep without waking up, I think it's safe to say it was totally worth it! Not only does the insulation help in the cold weather, it also stops the interior from getting too hot in the sunshine. Building out the interior Based at friend's workshop, I started building out the interior panel work. Of course, being a Land Rover, nothing in here was square or symmetrical. Each piece had to be measured by eye and cut by hand. For Version 2, I might take these rudimentary panels as a template and get them properly laser cut. It'll look much better than my dodgy jigsaw work! 
Office Aside from having a basic bed, the most important feature of my design was a fully functioning desk that I could work comfortably from each day. I didn't want this environment to affect anything going on at work, so a decent desk was a must. To save space and cut down on the amount of wood I had to tow around, I took inspiration from pop-up coffee tables. The desk folds down on sprung hinges to create the bed platform.
This desk and seat area is removable and the middle row of seats can be easily fixed back in place. In the future, I may build different modules that I can fit here to do different things. Folding bed One of the large plywood bed panels is attached to 4 hinges, allowing it to transform from bed to sofa mode (and back again). The other panel then moves across and sits at an angle to maximize headroom, forming the lounge.
On the right is a lowered storage area for, which I use at night for phones, books, etc. I chose not to enclose the cupboards on the left as it is much easier to access things at night without doors. I will probably add some sort of netting or bungie to keep things secure in the future. That's pretty much it for the first build! Future additions include a roof-mounted storage area, a slide-out kitchen drawer and more storage behind the driver and passenger seats. 
Working off the grid Power This was a big concern of mine prior to leaving. I have a power-hungry MacBook Pro, phones, cameras, and lights to feed. It was imperative that I had enough power to run all of these devices to minimize any disruption at work. A lot of vans these days have fairly complicated leisure battery systems hooked up to permanent solar panels on the roof. I was never really sold on this idea, as it required permanent changes to my car. I wasn't going to be drilling holes in my newly painted roof! Instead, I invested early in a RIVER portable battery and a 100watt solar panel on Indiegogo. RIVER is an all-in-one solution that allows me to work off the grid. You can read more on the specs here, but effectively it can fully recharge my MacBook around 5–7 times, a drone 10 times, and an iPhone 50–60 times. When paired with the 100watt solar panel, I effectively have unlimited power as it recharges fully in around 10–12 hours of sunshine. Over the last three weeks I have not dipped under 40%, and at the end of most sunny days, I'm nearly back at 100% charge. Activity monitor I have become a bit of a pro at reducing my MacBook's battery consumption. Using 'Activity Monitor' you can see exactly which apps are using the most energy. The biggest benefit I have found is switching from Chrome to Safari, and then using Safari to run as many apps as possible (Slack, Basecamp, Hangouts etc.). This alone has literally doubled the time I can run off my Mac's battery, from 3:30hrs to nearly 7 hours. There is a lot of useful info on Activity Monitor to help you manage your power consumption.
This information, paired with the real-time display on the RIVER battery, has allowed me to minimise my consumption and work full-time off the grid. Internet 4G roaming is amazing and new EU rules mean that I can use my data allowance from the UK abroad at no extra cost. I have a 40GB 4G data contract and I'm well under my allowance so far — surprisingly under, in fact. I have even started syncing Dropbox each day and streaming music. I am lucky that most of my work revolves around using dedicated native apps that don't really consume much data (Sketch, Photoshop, Atom etc.). I limit my web browsing to just work-related tasks, so no more procrastinating on YouTube, TechCrunch, or Soundcloud. Along with saving lots of data, I find that it is helping me stay much more focused. TripMode app My favorite app for managing my MacBook's data connection is TripMode. It allows you to select which services have access to the internet and keep track of your data usage. 
Life in the Alps Three weeks in and it's been the escape from London I was craving. Spending time hitting the end of the ski season and hiking. I feel super lucky to be able to work and live in these locations. I am stoked with the outcome of my build — even if most many people would still see it as pretty basic living. Having unlimited power, great internet and a comfy desk is allowing me to work from some pretty awesome places, even if the local dog walkers don't really know what to make of me there. I'm far from the first person to try out this lifestyle: Instagram is flooded with the #vanlife hashtag. I find most of the images are a bit staged, not painting a true-to-life picture of what life is actually like. You never see photos of nights spent parked at Walmart, or the day the van breaks down. I just wanted to show that being on the road is a totally feasible option for those of us who work remotely — you just have to be willing to make some compromises along the way. Cooking on picnic benches and sleeping up cold mountains isn't everyone's cup of tea, but there is nowhere else I'd rather be right now than here. 
If you have made it this far down and you still care, you can follow the rest of my trip on Instagram. Thanks to everyone at Reedsy for making this even possible. If you want to learn how to make a book, we can help out! SEE ALSO: Amazon, Dell, and 23 more companies that will let you work from anywhere
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