I transformed my battered old van into a tiny home made out of RUBBISH for just £600 – here’s how you can do the same

A MAN has revealed that he transformed his beat-up old motor into a tiny home for just £600, using almost entirely scrap materials.

Alex Eaves and his friend Derek “Deek” Diedrickson have shown that becoming a home owner doesn’t have to cost a bomb, after creating a full-time home for Alex to live in on an extreme budget.

The tiny house is made from 99% re-used materials, with the duo only buying minor things such as speciality screws and caulking brand new.

“To many people, everything we used would be garbage, but it takes people like us to see beyond that,” Deek told Tiny House Giant Journey.

The duo were able to get the flooring for the tiny home from a doughnut shop that was throwing it away, and even used materials they found at the side of the road.

The entire build took just nine months to complete, and Alex has successfully been living in the home for eight years.

The van itself cost £5,900 but the friends were able to do the entire conversion and fully furnish the place – including accessories like pillows – for just £600.

“A lot of people say ‘no way?’ but when we start telling the tale of where X, Y and Z came from, they start seeing the great picture”, said Deek.

From the side, the tiny home looks like a bog standard van, and Deek revealed that the pair project film‘s onto the van wall, using it as a makeshift projector.

However, when you move to the back of the van, it starts to resemble a house more, as an old classroom door has been installed, that was being chucked out by a school.

In the centre of Alex’s home is a huge storage cabinet that he keeps all of his clothes and dirty laundry in, and which was salvaged by a builder friend who was tearing down a home.

In the kitchen, Alex has turned his grandmother’s old lobster pot into a sink and the cupboards are made from his great aunt’s old furniture.

The duo have even got creative with the door handles in the home, re-purposing old drum sticks and bits of skateboards to “inject personality” into the home.

Creative whizz Alex also created a spice rack from a ladder he found in a closed-down cinema and made some shelves out of Deek’s old fence.

At first glance, it looks like the van doesn’t have a bathroom, but Alex has created a tiny wet room, hidden behind a secret door that’s painted the same colour as the wall.

It features a movable compost toilet, and a solar powered shower, heated up by the sun.

The tiny home even has room for an office space, which Alex loves to work from.

Alex and Deek travel around the US in the van, giving people tours of the insight, to inspire them to re-use materials too.

“When you need to buy something, consider a used option, because almost anything is available used in some fashion,” said Alex.

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