VW T4 Landyacht Is a Beautiful DIY Home With 3 Bedrooms and Awesome Styling

The vanlife frenzy might still be somewhat of a novelty on social media, but the Brits have been doing it for decades. Caravaning is the ultimate, age-old way to bond with friends and forge everlasting memories with the family, make new acquaintances and experience the great outdoors. This sounds like something you’d read in one of those touristy leaflets, but it’s the truth for countless families across the UK. James’ included.

James Barwick from King’s Lynn in West Norfolk, England, is a plumber by trade who loves building stuff. He loves building home on wheels for himself and his family, to be more precise; and for paying customers as of a couple of years ago, because he was able to spin that first love into a budding business. His first build was a teardrop trailer that he, his wife Helen, and their two kids used for short getaways.

By late 2019, it became clear that they needed an upgrade. That upgrade eventually became the landyacht you’re reading about today, a gorgeous, yacht-inspired home on wheels, set on a Volkswagen T4 car carrier and offering three bedrooms, a full kitchen, a proper bathroom, and the most stylish design you’re likely to see on the road. The fact that this “yacht on wheels” was built from scratch, by an amateur, is the most impressive feature, though.

James bought the cab chassis in 2020 and set out to work on it in secret, in a friend’s driveway, because he wanted it to be a surprise for his kids. Architect and television personality George Clarke was on hand for the entire duration of the project, documenting it for an episode of George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, which aired in late 2021. The segment is available in the video at the bottom of the page, but despite how it makes it look, Clarke didn’t really assist in the build, nor did the producers foot the bill for the conversion.

On the platform, James imagined a design that would offer the comforts of a home for the entire family, including separate bedrooms for the kids. He placed these at the front, in the cabover area, where he build wooden cubicles with beds inside, accessible by means of rope ladders. After all, this is a “yacht” on wheels.

The master bedroom is on the opposite end, with a king-size mattress and plenty of storage at the foot of the bed. Everything else is concentrated in the central part: a complete kitchen on one side, a dinette on the other, and a small wet bath behind the passenger seat.

The kitchen comes equipped with a 2-burner gas stove, an oven, a grill, a sink, a domestic fridge and freezer, and plenty of storage. The dining area features a table for four, to which James later added two benches made out of four W-branded car seats with seat belts, as shown in the second video tour, also available at the bottom of the page. In total, the landyacht offers seating for six people in road mode, and sleeping for four when at camp. Not too shabby for an amateur DIY build, you’ll agree.

The bathroom offers only a toilet and a shower, but it’s still decently-sized, all things considered.

To make the most out of a cramped footprint, James used different wallpapers for different areas, thus creating the impression of actual “rooms.” What ties everything together is the yacht-inspired touches, with portholes for windows, the rope ladder, and exposed wood on the ceiling. Of course, the most obvious feature is the exterior, which was done all by hand, in teak planks that James bent for the curved corners with help from an improvised steam bender he made out of a pipe. He is a plumber, after all.

That was the most difficult part of the build, too, he said at the time. He had to bend every plank individually, and he used more than 30 in total, not including those in the cabover area. This added to the timeline of the project, which ultimately required over 2,000 work hours to complete, with help from a few friends.

But the kids loved the result, and that was probably all the reward James wanted. The build proved so popular with local vanlifers that James was able to launch a business specializing in wooden motorhomes, which he called Retro Wooden Homes. We reached out to him to ask for more details on the landyacht and the business itself, and we’ll update the story when and if we hear back.

The landyacht was listed for sale in April last year, as James announced plans to start a “new exciting” project. However, that summer, he and the family took it to the Vanlife Festival in 2022, where it earned a new round of praise for his brilliant idea and the creative way in which he was able to put it into execution. It was well-deserved, too: this RV might be on the smaller side, but it’s perfectly able to stick to the “yacht on wheels” theme.