Self Built Stories

Hi there! We're Tim and Abi and we converted our Ford Transit into a campervan, filming our progress as we went along. We had never converted a van before so it was an interesting and fun experience. We're now enjoying travelling around in it and looking forward to exploring the UK and Europe... come along for the ride!

We list lots of the products we've used in the build in the video descriptions, and some of the links may be affiliate links. If you choose to click on them we may earn a small percentage of the sale at no extra cost to you. As an Amazon Associate and eBay Partner, we may be compensated if you make a purchase


Self Built Stories

We're really happy to say we finished our recirculating shower book! 🥳🚿

It started off as just an eBook but as we added more details and diagrams we decided we’d also like to have it available as a hard copy as well, so we spent a lot of time formatting it nicely for print.

After a lot of work (including going under the van and dismantling all the plumbing again to remind ourselves how it was all put together!) we finally finished it. In total it’s 92 pages and goes into detail on everything we did to build our shower frame, waterproof it, our complete recirculating setup with all the parts we used, how we clean and maintain it, what we’ve changed since the videos and all the tips and tricks we’ve learnt along the way.

We’re just finalising setting up the order page online so everyone that’s registered their interest via our Google Form can expect an email fairly soon, keep an eye on your inbox!

And if you haven't but are interested in getting a copy you can add your details here: forms.gle/Qaib448pu72kRx476

Tim & Abi

5 days ago | [YT] | 202

Self Built Stories

Hey everyone, we're excited to say we've just recently released the last video in our six part NC500 series!

We had an amazing trip over 5 weeks in the Winter when there was barely anyone else around so it felt like we had the landscape all to ourselves.

In the last episode we made our way from Badachro back towards Inverness but not before driving the incredible Bealach na Bà, and we were really fortunate to have great weather to capture some awesome drone footage!

The videos took a long time to put together so we hope you've enjoyed them. 🙂

📽️ You can watch all the episodes in the playlist here:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list...

2 months ago | [YT] | 103

Self Built Stories

Merry Christmas everyone! 🙂🎄🎅🏻

We hope you're all having a brilliant time wherever you are! For us that's in a campsite in Oxfordshire this year, enjoying some festive movies and dinner in the pub!

We wanted to take the time to say thanks to everyone who’s enjoyed and commented on our videos over the last year too (we read them all). There's lots more to come next year which we're looking forward to sharing, and hopefully we'll get a bit quicker at releasing them too!

Right, back to the fun and trying to squeeze in a few more tasty treats.... see you all in 2026, Happy New Year! 🥳

Tim & Abi

5 months ago | [YT] | 376

Self Built Stories

Wow, we just passed half a million views on our 12V electrics video! 🥳 That's a mind boggling number of views so thanks to everyone who's watched it over the years!

Here's the link to the video: https://youtu.be/Ysm1d0otDnA 🙂

10 months ago | [YT] | 166

Self Built Stories

So here's a behind the scenes picture of us editing our latest video! It's been really hot the last few days in the UK and it got up to 32°C while we were in the van, so it was great to find a spot where we could keep the doors open..! 🔥

This was our last video from when we travelled around Cornwall and we hope you enjoyed the whole series going around the coast. It took a little while to edit this one but it was a fun one to do especially with the bonkers pub crawl at the end! 🤣 You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/1fmm0dnh2J8

If you haven't already noticed we're still a fair bit behind with our YouTube videos but we've got a lot of great content to come and we are trying to catch up and edit whenever we can. We've got a mixture of build/upgrade and travel videos on the way, so stay tuned!

We're currently spending most of our time in the South West and South Wales at the moment, as well as criss-crossing our way across the country for lots of different van festivals this Summer.

What are some of your favourite moments from all our videos so far? We'd love to know! 🙂

11 months ago | [YT] | 144

Self Built Stories

Wow, we just passed 3 million views on our videos! Wouldn't have thought we'd ever reach those kind of numbers in the beginning, so thanks for watching everyone and we're looking forward to sharing more soon! 🙂

Tim & Abi

1 year ago | [YT] | 136

Self Built Stories

We just passed 30,000 subscribers on YouTube! 🥳

It’s feels great to reach another milestone so thanks to all of you who have been following along, whether you’ve been with us for a while or have just found our channel more recently.

We haven’t released a video for some time as we’ve been quite busy with other things outside of YouTube, but we hope to have more on the way soon!

1 year ago | [YT] | 87

Self Built Stories

Merry Christmas from us both to all of you out there! 🎅🏻🎄☃️

Thank you to everyone who's followed along with us and watched our videos this year, and for all of your great comments, we love reading them!

We're spending Christmas with family and looking forward to sharing some more adventures with you next year.

We hope you enjoy the holidays and wish you a very happy 2025! 🥳

Tim & Abi

1 year ago | [YT] | 282

Self Built Stories

We thought it was about time we changed our logo! 🥳

The one we’ve been using up until now was just a screenshot taken from the end of our first video, as we needed something quick and easy to upload to YouTube back when we first created our channel (swipe to see the original). It was handy at the time but we’ve been meaning to change it for a while to something a bit more eye-catching!

We can’t take credit for the design though, that goes to Tim’s very talented sister. She drew a picture of us with the van as a gift once and we thought straight away that it would look great as a logo. So we asked her to make it into one with a nice mountain scene in the background to illustrate our adventures on the road. 🚐

We think it’s really cool and she captured the elements of us and the van perfectly. 🙂

What do you think? We hope you like it!

1 year ago (edited) | [YT] | 181

Self Built Stories

Happy Saturday everyone! So we’re excited to finally be releasing the first of our travel videos this weekend. As many of you know we’ve been travelling around in the van for a while now, but so far have only been sharing our adventures on Instagram.

We have been filming a lot of our trips along the way though, we just needed to find the time to actually start to edit some videos! So if you want to see how we got on when we first hit the road and headed down to Cornwall then you can catch the video here tomorrow morning at 10am (UK time).

There will be many more videos to come of our travels in Cornwall, Scotland and Norway as well as some more build and upgrade videos along the way too!

We hope you enjoy it 😊

1 year ago | [YT] | 242