Northern_Conversions

12/08/2026

Meet The Otterburn 🚐 our signature family build.

Four berth, full shower, and a layout designed for real family life on the road — swivel captain’s seats, a solid oak worktop that doubles as the dining spot, induction hob, and a proper fixed bed in the back. 🌊

Every detail CNC-cut and hand-sprayed in-house.

Which feature would you want most? 👇

campervan vanconversion northeast signaturebuild vanbuild

07/08/2026

Customer: “How are your cuts always so perfect?” 🤔

Us: 📏✋😅

Trade secret, sorry. Precision engineering at its finest.

The van turns out mint every time though — funny how that works. 🚐✨

Tag the mate who measures exactly like this 👇

camperlife vanlifeuk northeast woodwork joinery madeinbritain

05/08/2026

Step inside Norbus — our Bamburgh layout in a medium-wheelbase Sprinter.

Live-edge worktops with the grain and knots left just as they were, warm woods and deep greens throughout, and every bit built by hand to make the most of the space. Made for slow mornings and long roads alike.

Take the tour, What do you recon?

* Awaits the "wheres the loo & shower comments" *

03/08/2026

Building Norbus — from a bare metal shell to a fully off-grid mobile home and office.
Behind the warm woods and deep greens sits some serious kit: a Garmin control system running everything, and high-spec Victron and Roamer electrics doing the heavy lifting. Enough power to live and work properly off-grid, wherever you happen to park up.
It's the parts you never see that make the difference — the wiring, the boards, and all the planning that goes in long before the worktops ever go down. That's what turns a van into a home.
We'll be sharing more as Norbus comes together.

30/07/2026

Say hello to Norbus. 🌿
A medium-wheelbase Sprinter, converted to our Bamburgh layout and finished with live-edge worktops — grain, knots and all the character of the timber left just as nature made it. Warm woods, deep greens and natural materials throughout, built for slow mornings and long roads. 🏔️
Every join, every surface, handmade in Northumberland. 🔨
Dreaming of your own? Send us a message 📩 — or tag someone who'd feel at home in this one.

29/07/2026

Oak tambour door, first attempt — how hard can it be?
Turns out, quite. Every slat has to line up, glue up straight, and roll like it's on rails. Hugh found just about every way to get it wrong before he got it right.
It's the stuff that never makes the finished reveal — but it's exactly how you learn to build something properly. We got there in the end… eventually.
Tag someone who'd say "I'll just knock one up this afternoon."

27/07/2026

The electrics — the part most people never see, and the part that makes everything else work.
Every system starts on the spec sheet: what you'll run, how long you'll run it, and how far off-grid you want to go. From there we model each component in CAD, design the board around it, then send it to our CNC machine for precision cutting. Only once that's done do the components go on and the wiring begins.
It's slow, deliberate work — but a clean, well-considered electrical system is what turns a van into a home you can trust, wherever the road takes you.
It's the bits you don't see that make the difference. We'll be sharing more as the build comes together.

23/07/2026

20/07/2026

Welcome to the new workshop.

We moved in last year and, honestly, never got round to showing you properly — so here's the full before-and-after.

The building's got a bit of history to it. As far as we can tell it was a fire station during the Second World War, which means it's built like a tank — practically bombproof. After that it was a heavy goods workshop, then a car mechanic, and most recently a car spray shop. That last one worked out nicely for us: we inherited a working spray booth, which we now use to finish our cabinets.

It was in a real state when we took it on. So we rolled our sleeves up — gutted the lot, decorated throughout, painted the floors, and had a 5.5-tonne two-post lift installed, along with a full office renovation.

These days it's home to the paint booth, a separate CNC bay (we'll show you that another time), a main workspace with huge roller doors, the office, an upstairs waiting area for customers, toilets, and a proper canteen.

A far cry from the old farm building we used to work out of. Swipe through to see how far it's come — and tell us what you think.