'86 Scania Is Living Its Best Life as a DIY Housetruck

Alternative housing solutions have proven their appeal and staying power thanks to a combination of factors that promise fixes for several problems at once. They're affordable and come with reduced monthly costs; they're more environmentally friendly, and they favor a more intentional lifestyle; they guarantee access to an entire community of like-minded fellows, and, more importantly, they're mostly mobile.

But alternative housing solutions like tiny houses, van and bus conversions, RVs, and floating homes are also appealing for the kind of confidence boost only a DIY (do it yourself) project can bring. The most appealing and, because of it, famous projects are those that are of the DIY type, preferably completed by people with no professional experience and working on a budget.

An underdog story never loses its appeal, and a DIY mobile home with all the right ingredients is the perfect underdog story. This is one of those stories, though it's yet to get its picture-perfect happy ending.

Roman and Ioana are a couple traveling in Leni, a Volkswagen LT 35 van conversion with a matching garage we covered a while back. They're digital nomads by the book, so they create content on the road to make a living, offering tours and interviews with other vanlifers. On one of their more recent trips, they met Johan, who lives in a DIY housetruck with his girlfriend.

While tiny houses, vans, and buses are very popular with downsizers today, housetrucks are more of a rarity. They offer a larger footprint than a van, but that footprint is conditional, which means it requires more effort and creativity to turn it into a functional space. They also attract more attention, which might be good if you're looking to monetize online content, but it's bad news if you're traveling in areas where tiny living is not legal.

As such, completing a housetruck project as a (mostly) DIY job must be proportionally rewarding. Johan's English in the video tour below might not be the best, but his pride transcends language barriers, confirming that, indeed, a job well done is one you've done yourself.

This housetruck is a 1968 Scania truck that's still original. Johan restored and repainted the cabin and restored the chassis before he started building the house on top. The project took him more than a year, and it's still not complete, even though he and his girlfriend have moved in. For example, the bathroom isn't done yet, so that room is now being used as storage.

Unlike most vanlifers, Johan turned to a designer/architect for help with the layout, thus making sure he made the most of the space with fewer mistakes. The result is a perfectly cozy home with all the creature comforts, with room for two adults and two cats, and equally suitable for entertaining and traveling.

Access is done directly into the living room through a pair of French doors at the rear. There's a small couch there facing a wood-burning stove, but existing spatial constraints are done away by the promise of opening the doors to the scenery of your choice. Or, as Johan says, nothing beats enjoying a cup of tea or coffee with this kind of view.

The kitchen is located centrally and features mostly full-size appliances: a four-burner gas stove, a fridge with freezer, a large sink, and plenty of space. During the winter, Johan uses gas for cooking, but in the summer, he relies on an electric hotplate. The housetruck has four solar cells on the roof, so cooking on electricity is free when they can charge the battery.

Next up is the bathroom, which is incomplete, and a small dining nook on the opposite side. Johan says it can fit four people at once for a larger dinner party, but it's obviously designed for just two. On the bright side, it can also work as a home office.

The bedroom is in the cabover and precisely as cramped as you'd imagine. But it still fits a queen-size mattress and features a skylight and plenty of storage space around it, and has large wardrobes underneath. This is one of the advantages of choosing a housetruck over any other type of conversion, short of a large bus: you get more space for storage.

Johan says his mobile home also comes with a 320-liter (84.5-gallon) diesel tank and a 320-liter (84.5-gallon) water tank, while the wood-burning stove and 10-cm (3.9-inch) thick walls with wood fiber and wool insulation are more than enough to make it perfect for all-season use. It also has a special cat door with a chip reader so that only his two cats can get inside.

He's planning on adding a fold-down rear deck to expand available space, installing a washing machine in the kitchen and locks on the doors, and finishing the bathroom, which will have a composting toilet. When all this is done, this Scania housetruck will leave the campsite and hit the road – and keep on traveling.