Van Life 101: How to Build a Bed in a Minivan!

hi everyone today i'm going to build a bed for a new friend i made at the rubber rendezvous here in uh 2017. quartzite arizona so she has a nice newer uh 2015 town and country it had she bought it used so she didn't lose all that depreciation right off the bat uh the first owner had put quite a few miles on it 45 000 so she got a really really good deal on it but it's uh so simple that uh she needs a little more comfort so i'm going to build her a bed and my goal here is to demonstrate to you how to build a bed for really cheap really almost next to nothing this will involve a sheet of plywood one sheet of 4x8 three-quarter inch plywood that i've had uh home at ace hardware in blythe california i'm in my ehrenberg camp now and i've had them rip it in half so it's two two by f foot sheets of four two by sheets of plywood and the the bed will be on this side here and she wants more comfort so she wants this seat left up so she has some place to sit and having some place to set is really really valuable and so what we'll do is this leaves a huge i'll bring you in a little closer i'm just giving you overview now this leaves a huge opening here in the wheel well so i'll also build her out of the same sheet of plywood uh a stand here so she can open the door and cook in the back and get access to all this storage with these fold-and-go seats on these chryslers it leaves this huge open area in the bottom really opening up the um opening up the storage and you can see that it leaves a nice flat floor uh the back is a little higher so we'll have to cut the back legs a little shorter but it's simple carpentry you cut them a little shorter and and she'll have a nice flat bed and a nice area here at the back to uh to to open and cook at and for storage so it's going to work out really well it's going to be super cheap and and i'll tell you about that as we go along now this is the back seat she has it folded down they're all down it's a very large open area and this is one of the things she wants she wants to have a seat that she can set in and be comfortable all day and you can see this is a very comfortable seat in this van the seats the back seats are split 60 40. and so this is a large seat the and the 40 seat which would be in this hole uh is too small she wasn't going to be comfortable in it so because of that she's going to put the 60 wide seat here and the bed will then she has also moved for her pasture seat far forward not all the way forward but mostly far forward so that she can get in uh to there so the bed will then start here pretty much up close to uh to the the pasture seat and then come down and i'm gonna have to notch out for the side of the uh the bed the bed is two foot wide so i'm going to notch out for the the side of this seat it will go around it and if i need to i will do a curve so she doesn't have sharp corners that she's banging on we'll see when we get that far so i'm looking inside the minivan she wants a comfortable place to sit so that's going to set here the seat she's folded up one of the seats all the others are down and that's left this large opening area for uh this is all going to be storage it's huge so she's going to be really glad she has that so and these are the bins this is something i suggest everyone do design their vans and their beds around the bins that they're going under them these bins are like 11 inches tall and so the foot the feet the legs will be about one will be exactly one foot so i'm at the ace hardware here and uh some of you may have never bought lumber before nearly every small town has an ace or a true value or a do it best hardware store uh what you do in most of these are outdoor lumber yards you go in you tell them i want a sheet of three-quarter inch plywood ac you pay them they give you a receipt you go to the lumber yard and pick it up they'll cut it for you right there so that's where we're going next it's no big deal uh if you've never done it before don't be intimidated it's just nothing to it so i've just done that i've came out i bought three quarter inch ac now i'll go pick it up at the lumber yard and have them cut it for me so let's go do that so this is the ace and then right here you'll see this gate this gate has where you drive through you hand them your receipt it shows them you've bought a three-quarter inch piece of plywood he will then direct you over into the yard where in the yard you can get the uh the plywood you go over there show the guy your receipt he gets the plywood cuts it to your order and then you drive away it really is every bit that simple so i'll go ahead and do that now got it some three-quarter plywood uh you know where to go uh probably right over there yeah that awning right through the red trim faded yep go in the middle right there and then be second out to your left uh to the right of it and i go now thank you [Music] [Music] so right now there's a guy in front of me and he's doing exactly what i'm doing he bought a sheet of uh ship out a sheet of uh osb he got it cut exactly in half and now he's buying app so i'm gonna go do exactly that so this is the machine they use it's just a great big saw they put the the uh they slide in the piece of plywood and the mach and the rip the saw itself moves back and forth up or down really simple really easy uh they'll cut it usually one or two one cut for free of course a lot of times they'll cut two or three or four and they may charge you more for the extras but that'd be unusual so uh don't be in any way intimidated by going and buying probably wouldn't have any cut simplest thing in the world they'll load it for you and uh simplest thing you can do so go do that so the the first thing i'm going to do is i'm going to cut this plywood to length this is acx uh three quarter inch plywood the three quarter won't bend and bow as much i'll put some legs under it ac uh tells you the surface of the plywood the a side means it is sanded and really pretty and it won't get uh splinters on you uh the sea side which this is the c side here is not as pretty although this is one of the prettier seasides i've ever seen this is more of a b b plus this would almost be usable uh as it is um and so the bed's a little long so i've measured and now i'm going to do a rip to cut the bed to fit in the in the length and uh she moved she's going to put it behind her passenger seat which is a little unusual but you can do it any way you want and i'll take you inside and show you why uh i have i carry a square a framers square with me and so i just measured inside to see how far it could go and then use my framer square held it tight drew a line across i'm using ryobi power tools this is the cordless uh you can only buy these at home depot i'm a huge fan of ryobi tools i've cordless power tools 18 volt this is their new lithium battery packs i love these they're interchangeable with their old ones every there's every reason the world to buy lithium ryobi lithium tools and i'm just a huge fan that's all i'm buying yes uh dewalt is a far superior tool it's double the price and it won't last me any longer because i rarely use it the amount i use it this will last me as long as any dewalt will and it'll cost half the price so i don't see any reason to buy a dewalt so uh just to show you how easy it three quarters a little bit harder to get through but this should get through it no problem i'm on my regular folding table i always carry and i've made sure that it's far away i'm not going to cut into the table so let me just cut this cut through it like butter i mean that's three quarter and that's just not an issue at all it did a nice e cut now the one thing i did you should be aware of this is the seaside and you want the seaside facing up because when the blade comes through it leaves something of a rough edge and you want this rough edge not to show so the a side is down the c side is up and i've got a rough edge but no one will ever see it so i've been steadily cutting up the uh plywood i think i've got it ready to go and so i need now i need to cut legs uh you want the left the bed to be as low as possible underneath so that you can set up you can stand upright without bonking your head and she has always i suggest you build beds or anything around plastic you want to put underneath them the plastic totes and so her totes are 11 inches tall so her bed needs to be a foot tall so they can slide in and out so her these legs are set to be a foot i'm going to cut four of them because those four can all be one foot and then after that the legs the the back is taller and so they'll have to be cut at a different dimensions but i'll get these four put on and then see uh what the length is needs to be in the back ones i think i think they might all be different so uh now normally they will not cut it two by forty for you i imagine they would if you pushed i've never done it it's just so easy to cut it two by four that i just cut my own again just a royobe skill saw something really helps to cut that straight is just a a plastic this is two three four dollars at walmart uh and i always carry one of these so this kit was 100 bucks for the batteries the uh the skill saw and the drill at home depot so i have a minimal investment and then of course i got a you know tape measure and things like that so the the ply this piece of tube but this two by four was 350 the plywood is 40. so it's gonna have i'm gonna have about 44 dollars invested in this bed on leaving me six dollars for screws which i think will be plenty okay so how do you cut it two by four really simple you've got a notch here and so you line up the notch and then you slide that over so that it's lined up with the line pull it away line this line the blade up slide this over to the blade grab it tight pull it away you the blade has to be spinning before it hits the uh before it hits the wood or it'll bind and then uh and it's got a little notch it's got this notch which is zero and you're just trying to get your line lined up so you see it right in the dead center of that notch really simple okay so there's my uh four legs and uh we'll see how it lines up and works so the next thing is i'm going to attach the four legs here and then i'll attach uh one two maybe four and also in back i cut these to a foot uh one foot lengths that just barely allows her that gives her about an inch for her totes to go through underneath that's about what she wants just for those totes to go underneath uh these have the stow-n-go seats so i'm having to be careful to place the legs so it's not on the plastic covers that they seem really weak she said she's heard them crack before so i'm i'm working hard to avoid hitting the stow and go seats uh i'm going to put a leg here like here like here and like here now again the idea is if the bed were higher than ways that would be better but she's going to have like a six inch pad mattress the bedding and then when she sits on it she doesn't want to bonk her head you know that gets old really fast gunking your head now i had to notch out for the chair that was a complication i had to make several uh course erections this is a more complicated bed without the chair it would have just been a two foot piece all the way across simple easy easy peasy but the bed made it more the chair leaving the chair in place made it complicated i had the notch out my ryobi tools as always uh get a drill strip now the two uh driving a couple of uh screws into two by fours some people will say oh bob you're wasting so much money and time with two by fours why didn't you use uh why didn't you use two by twos i don't see any reason two by twos cost more uh they aren't as strong it's very difficult to find a solid straight not twisted two by two i just in every way prefer uh two by fours they cost less you pay more for a piece of crap wood is the bottom line so i just will almost never use uh uh two by twos and the big deal is the weight you know you're to save so much weight how much weight are you going to save on i'm going to use the total of two two by fours in the whole project would i say five pounds is it worth buying crap wood for more money that will twist and and warp more uh to save five pounds to me it's not worth any effort i use two by fours now on a whole elaborate build the weight could add up uh but on this simple project uh absolutely not no no way [Applause] i'm using uh three inch two three inch screws another thing you could hardly you couldn't get to it two screws into a uh two by two head it would split the crack it's just such crap wood that it will split right away uh that's one of the reasons i don't use two by twos also i use two by fours i can get two hit three inch heads you say oh bob that's just overkill two inch two and a half inch okay you build your way and i'll build my way i like overkill i like knowing that i'm biting into in grain and then it's staying there forever and i know that with two three inch screws the secret to uh building with uh driving long screws it's pretty easy on the in-grain the secret is go drive straight that's the biggest secret put all your body weight into it that's the big big thing put your body weight into it okay so that's the front four legs i'll put some uh two and two i'm going to put a total of eight legs on this which is a little more than i thought i would use but i want it to be i want to be sure that it's uh really well supported and there's no chance of it coming undone one thing you need to be aware of whenever you're doing uh construction with legs is that it's real easy for the legs to go this way or this way these are so short that probably would not be an issue uh so but it's called accordion so it goes like this or it can go like this so what i do is these cost two bucks and i'll just put one of these in here and then it cannot accordion uh this is now locked in place it's an l it cannot move and so i'll put these on here i've already driven you saw me drive them up from underneath and i'll put these on and then when i when i cut the back legs because they're always gonna have to be cut individually because it's very short back there uh it's very uneven floor uh in in this particular van so it's just one of the things you have to to account for so uh i always use l brackets and then i'm absolutely certain the legs cannot shift around uh underneath circumstances the l brackets won't allow them and these are oh these aren't actually l brackets these are a shelf bracket just uh you get you go into any hardware store walmart has them go and say i want to buy a shelf bracket and this is what they'll send you and get uh so it holds up three screws on each one i'll use the long screw along the leg and it cannot accordion now this leg won't be able to move it's solidly in place so i'll let you see me a couple of drives drive a couple and uh the problem with this is that you can't get anything else but uh three-quarter three-quarter one-inch screws which is fine in the leg because it's an inch and a half i'm going to drive that left-handed which i'm not good at let's find into the leg because the leg is an inch and a half so that one inch screw is no problem but it won't be so fine when we go into the three-quarter inch bed so i just drove the one inch this is the smallest screw i could find these are one inch sheet sheet rock screws so i uh what i do is if you drive a one inch sheetrock screw through a three quarter inch piece of plywood you got a pokey sticking out on the other end so i use washers or you can use a washer but it usually takes a couple three so that's just a nut this is a this is a box of hex nuts uh and i will use a nut and so that the screw cannot go through it uh and it's weird and it's a waste of money uh but it gets the job done and that's all i care about is that it gets the job done and and the bed is really secure and cannot go anywhere the legs are not going to come off they're not going to bend under the weight and and most important the screw isn't going to break the surface and and be something that scratches you all the pieces now you can just use washers uh one quarter inch or 1 8 inch washers uh but you have to use a couple three washers [Music] so that's really secure that's not coming off their under conditions and uh i'm i'm satisfied with that and i'll just drive the rest of them in and so and then i'll cut the back legs and this bed will be done so the bed is made uh and i'll oh i'm inside now i'm just sitting inside the the uh driver's rear door that's the great thing about these vans is they have the two uh the two doors and so you can come in on either side uh and again because she wanted the the wider seat to be available for her to use as her comfort seating that's why she's done it the way she's done it well let me now swing you around and i'll show you what made this a whole lot more complicated and if you have a late model uh dodge chrysler town and country minivan whatever this thing is uh you'll we'll run into this too and i don't know how far back it goes but i'll show you what i did to compensate for it so the big thing was this rear is so much taller so you get under there so you can see that that is a that leg back there is six and a half inches this leg is eight inches and this leg is 12 inches so the legs had to get shorter and shorter the further back i go because the tall is well then it would be uh almost six inches taller at the very back than it is the front and the bed of course you want the bed to be level so the bed is pretty darn level and that it fits up here these two totes that she wanted to fit uh and then in the back now we could have made the whole thing the front would have been six inches higher to get these totes all the way to the very back and then she had been blocking her head uh let me see if i can sit on this bed now i don't have we don't have the mattress on it so that's not really a fair test so i am sitting on the bed with uh with about a fist of room see i'm nowhere near hitting uh my head up there but we don't have the pad on much of a pad would mean that uh i would hit that my head a little bit but i'm probably i'm a little taller than the average woman i five eight most women i think the average woman is five four five five something like that so an uh a woman an average height five five or less woman could set here and i also have a tall long torso short legs long torso uh so it all depends a lot depends then on your particular build uh but i could sit here most women will be able to set here just fine without bonking their head even with uh a four inch mattress pad five six inch mattress pad so that is that's always one of your considerations you want to be able to sit on the bed if uh without bonking your head now i'll put up the uh i'll have her put up the the side chair which is what really complicated things oh let me show you a little bit more and i'll show you how it complicated with that so let me do that right now so i'm looking out the back through the back with the back hatch open i don't know how you'll be able to see this with the hatch open with the contrast in light there so this is what we were after what she wanted see now she has this huge wheel well uh seat well where the seat used to be now that's all available storage space her feet will come back here to some degree but but she can use this she can open the back hatch and i'm going to build her uh what i'm going to do is next is build her a thing to fit in here so she can have another shelf so here's the key thing that she was after she can now sit in this chair and have her bed so i had to notch out for the chair you can see that the the bed goes back and then i've notched around so that she can sit in the chair so i'm sitting in the chair uh and i got plenty headroom above my head this is very comfortable the bed will be right here beside me oh yeah see i could i could get in the habit of putting taking my shoes off having clean socks putting my uh my feet up on the bed lots of open space if uh if it were me i would now build a ship a uh a well i'd put plastic bins i'd put plastic bins behind that seat and then probably uh bungee bungee cord them to the seat of course quote has to check out everything but that's a big open area you can see here in front of me where i'm sitting this will be very comfortable so this is going to work really well for her it took some extra complication it was putting i had to cut around the seat and the and the real difference in the floor i mean a six inch difference in the height of the floor from the rear of the back and slanting so the front uh legs are 12 inch the back legs are six the middle or eight now you just you know i'm not much of a carpenter but i can make i can make those kind of adjustments hi folks so we're going to finish up the build here at the back of this chrysler 2015 chrysler minivan uh we have uh we've built a bed on this side uh and she uh is slept in last night and was very pleased with it and so now we're gonna build a platform here to cook on i've cut the piece of plywood for it it will set right in here and i'll build legs so that she can get things in and out she has a deep well here on the chryslers the um dodge chrysler's uh minivans this folding seat folds down into this deep well well when the seat is up there's a huge open well there you don't want to lose that for storage i had a friend who bought one of these in the cargo van variety and all the wheel wells were um uh empty because there were you know cargo van doesn't have come with any seat passenger seats so they were just all empty and they had a nice folding cover over them so if you can find one of these with the um cargo version then you get all this space and you don't have to contend with the seats at all i was very very impressed this had some of the most storage i've ever seen on on a minivan so if you can find a cargo version of these you'll be really glad you did so we'll just cut lengths the uh i'll show you the details as i'm doing it i don't know exactly how i'm going to do it we'll cut the uh legs to the height that she wants we'll set this in here probably about right about that height that way she can get in and out into the well for storage and have this to cook on and on this side originally i had planned to put a uh the shelf to go all the way across but she decided she would rather find a a plastic tote drawer unit that would fit in this unit and make good use of that space so she's going to put a plastic drawer unit there instead but this is works really really well so far it's been very simple i have used one sheet of plywood which cost forty dollars it was a nice ac i hope you can get a pretty good view that's a nice sanded piece of wood you could stain this uh polyurethane it and it would be really really pretty and last forever the other side isn't quite as pretty but it still isn't bad but this is a really nice piece of three-quarter inch plywood uh will last a very very long time treated uh so for the sun and uh so i spent forty dollars for the plywood and uh and i bought three two by fours so i have cut my four uh legs to twenty six and a half inches and they will sit down inside of this well and the plywood will rest on top of it so what i'm going to do next is screw down into the into the two by fours and get the legs attached then i will do the braces uh which are nothing but uh shelf brackets after that so this is awkward when you're working alone you got to hold the shelf in place while you screw and if you're working alone this becomes quite substantially more complicated so that's what it's going to look like and i happen to have my i'm using three inch sheetrock metal sheetrock screws it's what i like to use pretty simple i mean this is just pretty straightforward process here so this is what it looks like it looks just like that see i've screwed uh i screwed in from the bottom with two three inch uh sheet metal sheetrock screws into each one and it just drops in here and sits just like that very solid there the door will close and the door will close just fine and she's got a work surface here and she'll have a a plastic tote of some kind right here um about as best i can do for her i could put another shelf down here but then that would make it really hard to get stuff in and out so that wouldn't do um i think this will work just fairly fine in fact this can not move i don't even think i'm gonna bother with anything with the shelf brackets i would put these shelf brackets under here so that it could not possibly move at all but right now i just don't think that could possibly shift in any way shape or form so i'm going to call that completely done so that's it uh just a little shelf here lots of sp storage space underneath uh she has a plastic tote that fits in there just perfectly and creates a bottom shelf here and so she can put more stuff so you can completely fill and use this whole space no problem now the bed she said worked extremely well for her uh she has all this extra space to make use of now and so i think uh i think that'll work really well so there's just an easy simple build less than 60 70 bucks uh all you gotta do is build a cut wood with a uh with a uh saw and drive screws do some easy simple measuring and this was a very very simple project and yeah it'll make her livability here much much higher okay i think that's it i'll move on to my next video in the meantime i i hope you've enjoyed these videos and if you have and you like the message that i'm giving that that there's another simple way to live and and no matter what your circumstances you can have your best possible life right now that's my message that right now you can have your best possible life so uh no matter your economic situation uh it's it's available to you so if you like that message i hope you'll subscribe to the channel like us on youtube and share us on your social media with all your friends so until next time we'll visit with you later [Music] you

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 410,502

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, minivan, bed, build

Id: eA-s_0oxyJ4

Length: 33min 26sec (2006 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 13 2017