Building a Simple/Minimalist Camper Setup in the Back of my Truck

[Music] howdy folks welcome back to yet another video now you might be asking yourself jonathan what the heck what happened to the old canopy that you just got not long ago you already replaced it and yes i did replace it because the new one that i found i found it for steel great great price the other one was aluminum it didn't have any kind of carpet headliner it didn't have insulation it was extremely loud to sleep in when it was raining this one has a carpet headliner so it's already insulated it had dually roof racks already attached so it was just a no-brainer and i swapped it out for the same exact i sold the old one for the same price that i bought the new one for and so like i said it was just a no-brainer but either of those canopy options the plan is this is going to be a temporary build because well i very very soon here am going to be ordering something extremely exciting i'm buying a brand new camper for the truck now i don't want to give away too much it is going to be slightly somewhat of a surprise but i will say it's very unique it's something that a lot of people might not have seen before and i think that it's going to serve my purposes perfectly so very soon here i'm going to be ordering that which is really exciting but that is going to take four to six weeks potentially even more and i do want to have some kind of truck build in the meantime so that being said today i'm actually going to be doing a simple budget friendly truck bed build like i said i it's going to be temporary so i'm going to keep things very simple i just want to have something to use in the meantime while i'm waiting for my other camper with that being said let's head to the hardware store and get started on this very simple truck bed build [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so in total i ended up spending about 120 at the hardware store now i probably will have to go back and get some more materials but this is everything that i needed to get started lumber is really expensive now so nothing can truly be that budget anymore unfortunately i'm not the best of a woodworker ever so please keep that in mind as i put this build together so what i have here are two 2x8 planks i had them cut these at the hardware store down to the length of my truck bed which is 72 and a half inches these are going to be the main supports for the actual truck bed platform itself and then i also got a 4x8 piece of three quarter inch plywood this i also had them cut to 26 inches which is the length of the mattress that i'm going to be using and it is also 72 and a half inches long which is the length of my truck bed for the hardware i just got a couple packs of these one and a quarter inch wood screws and some very basic hinges that i'll be using to create some extra storage under the platform okay so as you could see the two by eight is actually much taller than the wheel well because it just so happens the little ridge right here is right next to the wheel well so that's where the support is gonna have to sit on top of that ridge so i don't want this to stick up that high above the wheel well so i'm gonna rip about three inches off of the two by eights and wish me luck wow [Applause] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] so i have the bed moved over to this side it was over here but as you can see those cords coming out of the truck bed that is for a second battery when i had my truck camper but those are kind of getting in the way so for now uh for this build i'm just going to keep the bed and the drawer system on this side if you see these hinges over here i was kind of playing around with the idea of having a a cabinet type space that opens up on the far end over there but since this is just going to be a temporary build i'm not even going to deal with the hassle i'm just going to make one full length drawer that runs the entire length of the entire sleeping platform so i'm just marking a lot a very light line where the center of the support beam is going to be that way when i fasten the platform down i'm making sure that i'm drilling directly into the middle of the beam [Music] [Music] so [Music] so i got the platform all put together fastened down now tomorrow i'm gonna get the drawer put together um i'm pretty much running pretty low on daylight here and i still got to go to the store to get more supplies so the project will continue tomorrow [Music] so the saw at home depot was actually out of commission today which kind of sucks because that means i have to make a lot more cuts than i would have had to otherwise if i had like a full-on woodworking shop that wouldn't be a huge deal at all but given the fact that i'm i'm working with really limited resources here very limited tools i don't even have saw horses i'm using my tailgate to make my cuts it's kind of nice to have home depot make as many cuts as you can have them make on the spot especially when you're paying a premium for the for the plywood you know but whatever it is what it is it's not a big deal it's just going to be a couple extra cuts that we've got to make this is the sleeping platform this is kind of like the skeleton right now we're going to be making the drawer today but this is a three-quarter inch radionta pine i think plywood that's on top here and then on the sides we've got two two by eights they were originally but since they have to sit on top of these ridges i ripped two inches off of them so now they're two by sixes and i just have the three quarter inch plywood bolted onto the top or screwed onto the top with one and a half inch wood screws the platform extends all the way to the end in one long piece as do both of the supports the plywood actually if you can see here the plywood actually fits in to these creases in the truck very very well and tight and secure so those plus the weight of the platform is kind of what's holding it together and it's very very sturdy i know some people might be thinking like don't you want to bolt it down to the truck or secure it in some other kind of way and i've seen a lot of builds where they actually didn't even have to secure it just the weight alone of the platform and the plywood kept everything together especially when i put the drawer in so i'm gonna start like that and see if everything stays in place while off-roading it might be a little bit bouncy but like i said we'll start here keep it simple and then go from there so unfortunately i had to get a whole another sheet of three-quarter inch plywood to build the the drawer i almost had enough leftover from the first sheet but it wasn't going to be enough and i'd rather have a little bit too much because i'm also going to be making compartments for the drawers as well so i went ahead and i picked up one more sheet today the drawer that i'm gonna build is gonna run almost the entire length of the uh the platform but it's gonna be a couple inches shorter and i'm not gonna use any slides or anything like that because i've seen plenty of builds where they just use the truck bed to slide out the drawer and it seems to work totally fine so that's the method that i'm going with [Applause] okay some of you guys might be wondering what this is and this nifty tool is a it's a professional cutting guide made by a company called empire and it's just this metal this metal edge that comes apart into two pieces so if you're cutting shorter pieces you can use half of it which i believe is over 48 inches or it's about 48 inches one half and then you could put them together to rip whole eight foot pieces of wood if you need to and you just clamp this down onto the wood and you rest the edge of your circular saw against the edge of this and you get a nice straight line there's other ways you could do this you could use you know plywood or any other straight edge but this is like really legit and i get the straightest cuts using something like this hands down it's only also like 25 bucks at home depot which is pretty cool so once you have everything lined up you just clamp it down with your clamps of choice it also actually comes with little c clamps but i left those upstairs and i had these ones in my truck already you just want to make sure to clamp it down really good so that way your edge doesn't slide while you're cutting now as you see the edge of the circular saw just runs right along that edge for the entire cut and that way you get a cut straight as an arrow this big piece of plywood here that i need to cut next is too large to hang off of the tailgate the weight distribution is uneven so what i did is i got two little extra pieces of wood that i had here laid the wood right on top and we're going to be making our cuts off the end over here [Music] all right so now we've got all four sides for the drawer and also the bottom all complete so now i'm going to go ahead and put those all together this isn't this probably isn't going to be like the proper way to do it but this is the only way that that i know how so okay so i have all of the walls fastened together now i'm gonna flip it over and secure the walls down to the actual um the base of the drawer cheap not bad it's pretty snug uh it gets a bit of resistance but honestly i'd rather have it be a little snug than too loose because that way it keeps it nice and secure when i'm driving oh yeah now i've just got to put on a face to the drawer and then a handle as well here's the test oh yeah perfect perfect perfect nice so the only caveat is as you can see the drawer itself is not that tall i'm not going to really be able to fit many tall items into it but that's because i wanted to keep the platform as low as possible so i have as much head space as possible since this is just a normal cab height camper shell but we'll make it work so before i finish up the face for the drawer and get that all glued on i'm going to go ahead and cut some dividers just because i have the saw i'm already cutting everything so i might as well get everything cut that i'm going to need cut this just happens to be the perfect height of the drawers and if i cut them well enough i think i'll be able to just wedge it into the drawer rather than having to add wood glue or screws or something because they're just going to be dividers so it's not that crucial that they're like super super sturdy perfect it is kind of loose looser than i would like so i might add wood glue or something not sure just yet but for now i'll just get all of them cut check this out guys i didn't say anything when this happened but i accidentally cut into my tailgate a little bit when i was using it as a sawhorse that's pretty funny honestly if this was a newer truck i might be a little bummed but since it's such an old truck there's worse things that could have happened hmm so in case you're curious and wondering how you find these really cool handles these are actually uh chest handles so they go on the sides of like the chests storage chests yeah you get them at the hardware store but it's categorized as a chest handle now i just went back and i added some more two inch screws to secure the platform to the support beams here yesterday i used i believe these are one and a quarter or one and a half inch screws and i didn't put that many and today when i took the platform out it felt felt a little bit wobbly and so i figured i'd rather have it very very secure just to be safe so i got i think four additional screws on either side welcome back to day number day number three of the truck build now things are definitely going a little bit slower than anticipated but that's because my original plan went out the window when i realized that this build was going to be more temporary the whole time i've just been kind of winging it and trying to figure things out as we go but so far it's turned out pretty solid but uh the original plan that i intended to build there was a cabinet that i was going to make but to do so i would have to get one more sheet of plywood and i'm not going to do that because this build probably isn't going to last that long once i get the new camper shell i'm going to have you know a much more roomy area to work with so i do want to utilize that by doing a more extensive custom build for that camper but in the meantime i do have a lot of plywood left over from what i've built so far and i've been trying to figure out a way to implement that because we have it so we might as well and i think i found a solution and it's not going to be anything fancy it's going to be really really simple but i do think that it will provide a little bit of utility value and like i said we have the plywood so we might as well just throw it together and see what happens okay so what what i'm going to be building today i'm just going to make a very simple box that goes up here on the back and it's going to act as a table to set stuff on and then also i'm going to have the top lid open up so that way there's some storage that i could put things away out of sight have a little bit of organization i'll have you know the rest of the area will be open for for whatever else to be determined i have my four sides for the box i'm gonna go ahead and assemble these using screws now you could probably use wood glue if you had like the proper clamps and all that but we're just going to screw it together because that way works just as good in my opinion now since it's three-quarter inch plywood if the plywood is was thinner then i probably i don't know i don't know if you're supposed to screw into the edges of plywood that's less than three quarters of an inch either way we have three quarters of an inch so that should be plenty thick enough to prevent the wood from splitting but i'm also going to drill pilot holes just to make sure that the wood doesn't split it's a little tough lining everything up because of the uh the ridges in the truck bed that's all right doesn't have to be perfect of course the caveat to making a box like this is if you could see here not everything not everything aligns perfectly i would imagine if you do it the proper way with wood glue and sealing everything together properly then that would be a much more even way of doing it but for this purpose it really doesn't need to be perfectly straight since it's just going to be a storage box in the back there it just so happens that i actually have the perfect piece already cut to be the lid now it's a little bit short there's a little bit of a lip here on the edge but i'd rather keep my other last large piece of plywood to do something else and have the little lip here that's okay it's not a big deal i'm actually having it overhang um on either side that way i just have extra table space because there's really no sense in trimming off the sides i would say it's more beneficial to have the extra table space i've just got these classic narrow utility hinges there's tape on them because i opened it up and i didn't want the screws to spill out but super basic super simple um i think they should do the trick well well well i'm just kidding how'd you get here look who it is wow i'm kidding i'm just like feeding into the controversy there's no comment the rumors that already got cleared up last video oh yeah that's right how's it going good what a mess okay so yesterday i ended up getting this box finished and put together my camera was acting up so i couldn't film but it's very simple i just have these hinges excuse the million holes there i kind of messed up a couple times but i just have the hinges on the top and it just opens and closes just like that today we're going to be finishing up a few little details now these probably aren't going to be the last things that i do to the build overall but for the purposes of this video after today the build's gonna be done we're just gonna get on the road and do a little bit of camping out of it and then the other things that come up i'll probably document as they go but let me show you what we're getting into today i picked up this indoor outdoor carpet material just a small roll of it and i'm going to be putting this on top of the platform and then i've got a couple panels that i'm going to be adding to the back as well just to have some extra floor space or somewhere where i could sit down if i don't want to be in bed [Music] i'm gonna cut a piece that's roughly the size of the platform glue it down once that's stuck then i'll go back and trim off the excess that's hanging off the edges that's why we that way we have an exact fit for the platform just using a normal utility knife to cut this i'm gonna spray both surfaces actually both the uh the sleeping platform and the carpet and what you're supposed to do with this one is you're supposed to spray it on and let it sit for about a minute until both surfaces are tacky that way you get the best adhesion [Music] is [Music] so not bad [Music] let me explain what i've got going on here so this is the box the storage box obviously i put some carpet on the front just so it's softer this is just a loose piece of wood that i cut to fit in right here and i put some carpet on top and the reason that i cut this piece was because the truck bed has ridges and you can't sit on the ridges because it's just really uncomfortable so what this platform does is it gives me a spot to sit hang out relax you know i could have my arm here i could have the tailgate open i could have the window open taking the view and it's really really comfortable if it's bad weather or whatever i could just chill here and this is nice and soft too to lean up against i maybe even can put like an armrest or something here in the future i don't know but here's another cool thing i could slide this little platform here forward a bit and then i just turn around and i can use this as a table to cook on eat do work whatever it's just right here that opens up i can access whatever's inside so yeah this this little piece right here it's it seems like a small detail but it actually adds a lot of utility value so i'm pretty happy that i decided to put this in it just slides back chilling well that's pretty much that's pretty much the build up until this point for now for the purposes of this video like i mentioned there are gonna be a couple more touches that i'm going to add to finish up but the bulk of the build is done that took a lot longer than anticipated oh hi hello oh look at her she wants to be on on youtube she comes right up onto the in front of the camera but anyways yeah i have one more thing that i'm gonna do in this video but other than that all of the finishing touches as well as like a tour a final tour will probably be another video when i take it out on the maiden voyage just because i'm sure at this point i've gotten a lot a lot a lot of footage so i just want to wrap things up but like i said i have one more thing to do in this video all right folks that's gonna do it for this video i hope that you got a little something out of watching me do this build all things considered it turned out really well i think that it seems to be very functional and although it's not the highest quality of work i do think that it's going to satisfy my needs but i guess we won't know until i take it out on the maiden voyage which will be in the next video but anyways thank you guys like always for watching you guys go out there and go on some adventures of your own live life beat the status quo y'all know the drill enjoy the rest of your day and i'll see you in the next one peace

Channel: Jonathan Yentch

Views: 205,372

Keywords: truck camping, truck camping build, building a truck camping setup, truck camper build, truck camping setup, minimalist truck camping, diy truck camper, diy truck camping build, diy truck camping, how to build a truck camper, how to build a truck bed camper, truck bed setup, truck bed camper setup, stealthy truck camping setup, stealth truck camping

Id: _uPAulbXJmc

Length: 31min 29sec (1889 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2022