Materials/Spend
- 3x2 CLS Timber x4 - £19
- Whitewood 18x44mm x 1.8m PK10 - £38.00
TOTAL: £57.00
I decided to build my bed fairly late on in the build, this was because I was planning on building a fixed bed so it would get in the way when trying to put up things like my shelves.
I’m now at a point where I want to install my plumbing, and I want to use my bed to fix my water pipe to so I can feed it from one side of the van to the other, so it felt like the right time to get my bed built.
Framing the bed
To build the bed frame, I just used four lengths of 3x2 CLS. CLS is great because it’s thick and cheap, however it’s quite hard to find some that’s perfectly straight.
I started by cutting two strips of 3x2 to run along both walls of the van. This would sit nicely on top of the ply I’ve got fastened to the walls of my garage. As I’ve got wooden battens fixed to the metal frame of the van running up my walls, I can use these to fix the 3x2 in place.
Before I did this however, I wanted to cut some small housings for the three main beams to sit into so they would stay firmly in place. Using a jigsaw, I cut the corner off each end of the 3x2, exactly half the depth, then cut out another section half-way along too. I then made sure to drill some pilot holes for the screws, before screwing the beams in place.
Once done, I positioned each beam snug on top of the ply and then screwed it into place into the upright battens, using 70mm woodscrews.
The last thing was to cut the three main beams to size. Because van’s get slightly narrower towards the front, the beam closest to the middle of the van was about 10mm shorter than the other two.
I then sat them in place in the pre-cut housings and screwed them down with 70mm screws again.
Fixing the slats
It’s important that you allow a lot of breathing room through the base of your bed, no matter what you end up using. For example, if you decide to use plywood to base your bed, make sure to cut plenty of holes in it so that moisture can escape, otherwise you’ll risk creating mold where the moisture can’t escape.
For the slats, I picked up a 10 pack of 18x44mm x 1.8m whitewood from Wickes.
I measured the width of one half of the bed and then cut as many slats as I could using five lengths of the whitewood. I then placed them as evenly as I could along the length of the bed.
I didn’t bother spacing them out perfectly, I just spaced them out by eye and then counted the gaps in between each slat and used that total to know how many slats to cut for the other side of the bed.
Once I’d laid all the slats in place on the bed, I drilled pilot holes at the end of each slat and then screwed them in place using 45mm woodscrews.
If you have any questions at all, feel free to ping me an email or drop me a message on Instagram!
