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

Merry Christmas everyone! ๐Ÿ™‚๐ŸŽ„๐ŸŽ…๐Ÿป

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 whoโ€™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! ๐Ÿฅณ

Tim & Abi

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 370

Self Built Stories

Wow, we just passed half a million views on our 12V electrics video! ๐Ÿฅณ 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 ๐Ÿ™‚

5 months ago | [YT] | 163

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 32ยฐC while we were in the van, so it was great to find a spot where we could keep the doors open..! ๐Ÿ”ฅ

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! ๐Ÿคฃ 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! ๐Ÿ™‚

6 months ago | [YT] | 142

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! ๐Ÿ™‚

Tim & Abi

7 months ago | [YT] | 134

Self Built Stories

We just passed 30,000 subscribers on YouTube! ๐Ÿฅณ

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

We havenโ€™t released a video for some time as weโ€™ve been quite busy with other things outside of YouTube, but we hope to have more on the way soon!

11 months ago | [YT] | 87

Self Built Stories

Merry Christmas from us both to all of you out there! ๐ŸŽ…๐Ÿป๐ŸŽ„โ˜ƒ๏ธ

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! ๐Ÿฅณ

Tim & Abi

1 year ago | [YT] | 282

Self Built Stories

We thought it was about time we changed our logo! ๐Ÿฅณ

The one weโ€™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 weโ€™ve been meaning to change it for a while to something a bit more eye-catching!

We canโ€™t take credit for the design though, that goes to Timโ€™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. ๐Ÿš

We think itโ€™s really cool and she captured the elements of us and the van perfectly. ๐Ÿ™‚

What do you think? We hope you like it!

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

Self Built Stories

Happy Saturday everyone! So weโ€™re excited to finally be releasing the first of our travel videos this weekend. As many of you know weโ€™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 ๐Ÿ˜Š

1 year ago | [YT] | 243

Self Built Stories

It's been a while! We haven't posted any new YouTube videos for a long time, sorry about that. There's a good reason though, we've been getting the van ready for an epic trip to Norway! ๐Ÿ‡ณ๐Ÿ‡ด

We've been looking forward to this for a long time as it's our first time taking the van outside the UK. We boarded a train on the Eurotunnel yesterday and are currently driving through Europe.

Don't worry we still have a lot more videos from the rest of the build in the pipeline and we hope to find some time to work on them soon (When we're not busy exploring!)

We're planning to film some of our trip too so it will make it to a video at some point, but in the meantime we post more frequently on Instagram.

See you soon! ๐Ÿš

1 year ago | [YT] | 298

Self Built Stories

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all! ๐ŸŽ„๐ŸŽ…๐Ÿป๐ŸŽ

We hope you're having a lovely day wherever you are and whatever you're doing. We'll be back in the New Year with our last remaining build videos and then we're looking forward to finally sharing some travel ones with you too ๐Ÿš

And if you need to sit down for a while after the Christmas feast, you can always watch our latest video on our toilet here! https://youtu.be/RXNrpgPJfqU ๐Ÿคฃ

See you in 2024! ๐Ÿฅณ

Tim & Abi

2 years ago | [YT] | 239