Tory Delury’s van-life journey hasn’t always been easy. Courtesy of Tory Delury Tory Delury spent $48,700 buying and renovating a 2015 RV to live and travel in. She painted the van pink, inspired by Taylor Swift, to contradict sexist expectations.
Delury has at times had concerns over safety, but she still has no plans to give up the lifestyle. Tory Delury is a 25-year-old who travels the country in a van she rebuilt with the help of YouTube videos. Courtesy of Tory DeluryTory Delury, a 25-year-old van-lifer, caught the wanderlust bug two years ago on a cross-country road trip.
She’d been accepted into the Disney College program, a paid internship in which participants work at Disney, and the trip required many nights of sleeping in her car. “Sleeping in my car was not the best,” she told Insider now, but the trip was “freeing. ” She realized she didn’t want to give up the rootless, spontaneous freedom.
She just wanted it to feel safer. So, she decided to rebuild a van. A month before COVID-19 lockdowns began, Delury purchased a 2015 van with 24,000 miles for $31,000 — adding $17,700 of additional costs over time for the rebuild.
These days, she’s posting about #vanlife on TikTok and Instagram. In September, Delury’s van was featured in a video made by Caleb Simpson, a YouTuber who posts about different types of unique living spaces. The video blew up, receiving over 1.
3 million views, and Delury told Insider she began posting more regularly in response to the influx of interest. Delury paid for the vehicle with money she made from making custom band merchandise for fans. The Jonas Brothers tried to look grown up but it did not work out.
Steve Granitz/WireImageDelury’s down payment for the van was all “thanks to the Jonas Brothers,” she told Insider. A year earlier, she’d worn an intricate, handpainted jacket she’d made to a Jonas Brothers concert. Another fan asked for one, and Delury made her a custom jacket of her own.
When she posted the jacket online, it went viral with a retweet from the Jonas Brothers, she said. For a year — before COVID-19 killed her business, she told Insider — Delury spent days creating $250 custom jackets for fans of their favorite musicians. That cash made her van rebuild affordable.
But YouTube tutorials made it possible. The van was bare when Delury purchased it — she mapped out her ideal layout and did everything from building the floor to placing the skylight from the comfort of her parent’s house. “I just spent hours on YouTube watching rebuild videos,” she told Insider.
“I had no idea how to do anything with tools, the first page in my van-build notebook is a reference diagram of different screws. ” But, over time, she learned. She said 98% of the rebuild was her labor.
For the 2% she doesn’t claim, she told Insider her brother helped her hoist up material that was too heavy for one person, and she hired an electrician to double-check the work she did on her fuse box. She made the interior pink and ‘girly’ in homage to Taylor Swift, and in response to sexist comments she received. Courtesy of Tory DeluryDelury’s all-pink interior was inspired by Taylor Swift’s “Lover” album — and to contradict sexist assumptions she said she encountered while building out the van, including commenters assuming a man must be doing the work or men DMing unsolicited and inaccurate critiques of her work.
Delury said she started wearing over-ear headphones when she went to hardwear stores because too many men — including those who didn’t work there — kept asking if she needed help. A post shared by Tory Delury Travel | Vanlife (@torydelury) Delury captioned a March 2021 rebuild post with a Taylor Swift quote from the “Miss Americana” documentary: “I wanna love glitter, and also stand up for the double standards that exist in our society. I wanna wear pink, and tell you how I feel about politics.
” The earlier cross-country road trip in her car helped her design a dream layout. Courtesy of Tory DeluryOn Delury’s cross-country road trip, she’d learned what her priorities were: absolutely yes to a skylight as a safety feature, and no to a bathroom — public bathrooms and gyms with full locker rooms for showering and using the restroom were plentiful and relatively cheap. Delury’s build includes a retractable five-foot-long table where she eats and does work for her small business.
Over the plywood, she stuck contact paper from Amazon that looks like granite — a popular interior design hack. Behind the table are storage cabinets that house necessities like dishes and water, as well as a sink. She also stores her makeup and skincare in area, which includes decorative flowers to avoid the appearance of clutter.
The van’s temperature can be too cold in winter and too hot in summer — but it’s an acceptable flaw. Courtesy of Tory DeluryAt 5’9, Delury fits the pink, shag-covered bed perfectly. The ceilings, which anyone under 6’2 can fit comfortably under, are also painted pink.
While the mattress is comfortable, the quality of the sleep depends on where Delury is parked. If she’s staying in Van Alley, a stretch of road lined by van lifers in Brooklyn and near plenty of lively bars, she told Insider some noise will inevitably jolt her awake around 4:30 AM. If she’s in Acadia National Park in Maine, it’s far quieter.
In terms of temperature — it’s never quite right. Last year, Delury parked in Vermont for the winter. She’d entered the Miss Vermont pageant, and she needed six months of residency in the state to be eligible.
The van includes a $3,000 heater, but Delury described the winter as like living as an “icicle. ” This year, she told Insider she’ll probably be going somewhere warmer. A post shared by Tory Delury Travel | Vanlife (@torydelury) In the summertime, the van gets hot — but Delury accepts these issues as minor drawbacks.
“You get to a point where you say, OK, I like this lifestyle, I’m going to deal with the heat,” she told Insider. Since there’s no bathroom, Delury uses her gym membership to access showers. Courtesy of Tory DeluryFirst thing every morning, Delury spends 30 minutes cleaning.
“If you put one piece of clothing out, the whole van feels cluttered. It gets chaotic very quickly, and if I don’t clean then I feel claustrophobic,” she said. Then, she refills the water jug underneath the sink at a nearby Planet Fitness — the gym’s accessibility and affordability is what helped her decide to forgo building a bathroom in the van.
“That’s definitely weird,” she told Insider, miming carrying her water jug through a crowd of the gym’s bleary-eyed morning visitors. The gym membership also gives her access to the locker room’s shower and bathrooms. For all the times she can’t access one, she has a pee jug inside her van.
Picking the clothes and books to bring was difficult, partly because the weight impacts gas milage. Courtesy of Tory DeluryDelury’s closet (pictured on the far right) is small, and she told Insider it was hard to pare her clothing down, but it was more difficult to do with her many hobbies. Weight is important — particularly for gas mileage.
Her paints didn’t get a spot, but she knew she needed to include a bookcase for a few dozen books, regardless of weight. Delury mostly makes waffles and cereal — so she didn’t need a big fridge. Courtesy of Tory DeluryInside a bench, Delury stores her fridge and electrical system.
Since Delury isn’t a “fancy eater” and mostly makes cereal and waffles, she said she doesn’t need a large fridge. Delury said her simple food taste and relative lack of outdoorsyness — “I’ll do a hike, but there has to be a good view for it to be worth it” — set her apart in the online #vanlife community, where she told Insider she often sees aesthetic photos of “fancy food. ” Her favorite element is the van’s skylight, a key safety feature.
Courtesy of Tory DeluryDelury’s favorite feature is the skylight. It’s a great way to access great views of the surrounding area, but it also functions as a safety tool as she can use it as a “submarine telescope,” peeking out to see who’s near her van. As a single woman, Delury takes personal safety seriously: she rarely stays in a spot longer than three days so no one realizes she’s traveling alone, and, unless she’s grown familiar with another van lifer on social media first, she won’t introduce herself to them in person first.
She told Insider she was assaulted only a few feet away from her apartment door two years ago. “If it can happen when I live in an apartment, it can happen when I go to the grocery store,” Delury told Insider. “Instead of fearing going places, I decided to educate myself so that I can defend myself in those situations.
I wanted to take my life back under my control. “Delury pulls a curtain for privacy at night, though a keyhole helps her peek out on the street without being seen. Courtesy of Tory DeluryIn two years, Delury told Insider police have knocked on her window only four times — and mostly in the early days when she was still figuring out where to park.
She said she understands why they do it — to check she’s alright if the car is running or because someone called it in — but the experience is jarring. “I’m in the back when they knock,” she explained, “So I don’t know who it is or what they want. “At night, Delury pulls a curtain for privacy behind her driver’s seat.
The fabric has a small star-shaped cutout in it, so Delury can peek out if she hears someone by her car — without them being able to see her. Responses to Simpson’s YouTube video featuring Delury’s van weren’t all positive, and Delury said she even started receiving death threats. At the time, Delury was living in Brooklyn’s Van Alley, but concerned for her safety, she left the city.
In a slight silver lining, the video reached her Van Alley neighbors, who kindly reached out to Delury over social media. “It’s scarier than when I wasn’t on social media,” she said. “I felt very safe in here before then.
“Van life allows Delury to do what she loves: travel and work at jobs that she enjoys. A post shared by Tory Delury Travel | Vanlife (@torydelury) For Delury, #vanlife allows her to explore the country on a whim — without being tied down with obligations such as a lease. So far, Delury said she’s lived in California, Vermont, Maine, New York, and Massachusetts.
In each place, she’s picked up a part-time job for four to six months — operating rollercoasters at Disney Land, making ice cream at the original Ben & Jerry’s factory, manufacturing guitars, and, now, as an actress — to help her pay for “responsibility costs” like gas, groceries, car insurance, and a gym membership. Any profits from her small business, which sells self-defense resources, constitutes her budget’s “play money,” used to finance any far-flung trips that aren’t strictly necessary. “There are so many cool jobs across the world, and I want to be able to try out different things,” she told Insider.
Delury’s recent job as an actress doesn’t pay much, but she told Insider that’s fine for now — she’s not paying rent, and her life, purposely built around flexibility and freedom, meshes well with auditions and shows. Even though her jacket business was successful enough to fund her van purchase, Delury isn’t sure she’d do it again just for the money. “I like taking part-time jobs all across America and getting to know a community for a while.
I make money but I don’t feel like I’m working. “The solitude of a rootless life doesn’t bother her. “Anyone who is gonna be a Van Lifer has to have a degree of loving the independence and the being alone,” she told Insider.
Friends will occasionally visit her, and she’s made connections with other van lifers through social media. Delury loves van life, and though an online presence makes her feel less safe, she’s not willing to give it up out of fear. Courtesy of Tory DeluryThough the spotlight from Simpson’s video came with a lot of negative attention, Delury doesn’t want to stop using social media — something that helps her connect with other people — or dressing “girly” out of fear.
“I want to wear skirts and be who I am, and I don’t want to feel like I’m trying not to be that person because of the comments,” she said. “I have thought about stopping posting a lot of times — but, instead, I think I’m just kind of trying to tweak things in my life to make it safer. “”I can’t imagine living in a house at this point,” Delury told Insider.
“I’ll probably do van life until I’m very, very exhausted,” she said, “which will maybe be in like 30 years. “For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider’s Digital Culture team here. Read the original article on Insider.
From: insider
URL: https://www.insider.com/tory-delury-taylor-swift-rebuild-rv-van-life-tiktok-instagram-2022-10
