Sunday Summary #122

Van Building Rabbit Holes 🕳️

Hi there,

Welcome to Scho & Jo’s 122st Sunday Wednesday Summary. This edition of the Sunday Summary was written in northeast Florida.

Last Week.

This past week has definitely felt like one step forward, two steps back. Part of our van build design is to lay sideways in our van, meaning we’ll be sleeping perpendicular to the direction of our van. The reason we chose to do this is to gain 18 more inches by turning our bed 90 degrees. 18 inches may not sound like a lot, but when you only have 84 square feet to work with, 18 inches can make a huge difference!

The first step to installing our Flarespace flares is getting them painted. We got our flares back, and they look awesome! We’re so excited about how they look and at the new flare design. We’re excited to be one of the first people with the new Flarespace flare designs that are much more aerodynamic and sleek.

This past week, we’ve had a few setbacks as we started calculating weight…. which led us into a rabbit hole. Our friends Adam and Kathryn warned us about watching our weight as it adds up quickly, but we thought, “Ahh, we’ll be fine,” and I’m sure we would be fine, but since we’re spending so much time and money on this new home, and this is the first time we’ve taken on a project like this, we want to be thorough and confident that we will be fine with the weight. So this means more spreadsheets, more calculations, and more refining our plan.

Essentially, any vehicle has a maximum weight, and we only have a few thousand pounds to work with. It very quickly adds up when building a tiny home!

This Week.

If you’re thinking this process is going really slow, join the club because we are too 🙋‍♀️🙋‍♂️ After asking several people about their van builds, one of the constant pieces of advice we’ve heard is the more you plan, the easier the execution will be. We hope that's true, and we’ll find out soon enough! 🤞

This week, we’re finalizing our van build plans as we finish our weight calculations and order van components 🥳

Videos.

We shared our final boating video, which was sad! It still makes me tear up watching it today. Completing our time on Pivot was emotional and full of embracing the pivot until the end. We’re sad not to be on the water, enjoying sunsets on anchor, and living life at 6 knots, but we’re also very excited about what this new chapter has to offer. This won’t be our last boat, as we both have the boat bug, but this is our final voyage with Pivot. We’re happy to say she’s in the hands of her new owners and is back on the water!

Blogs and Guides.

We’ve continued to work on writing helpful resources on our blog. This week, we wrote about Chesapeake City. Whenever I write about a destination, I learn more than we knew when we traveled there, making me feel we need to return to explore more. We hope these guides will help you make the most of your time at each destination, as we wish we had these when traveling around America’s Great Loop.

From the Eyes of Ollie.

It’s been so hot outside for our morning and evening walks that it makes me extra sleepy. I just want to snuggle and lay on the cool tile floor. With the hot weather, my mom gives me more frozen broccoli which I love!

Gratitudes

Finalizing our boating content on YouTube has been sad, and as much as we miss being on a boat and enjoying the slow pace of life that comes with it, we’re so glad it happened. We’re grateful for taking the leap to buy a boat, learn how to operate and maintain a boat, and all of the wonderful experiences we had traveling around America’s Great Loop. We look back on this chapter with big smiles and a lot of love 💕🛥️

See you next Sunday!

Peace and love,

Jen + Elliot