VanLife in a 2005 Honda CR-V Overland SUV Camper Conversion, Part 1: The Build

hello Charles here with cr-v in the adventures today I'm going to be reinstalling my bed platform and cabinets that are built in the interior of my 2005 Honda CRV now a few weeks ago I had to remove the bed platform and the cabinets that I had in the interior so I could access the panels for the top of the struts the reason why I had to do that is with all the lumber weight from it and the gear that I had it had some really bad rear and sag so to correct that issue I ended up beefing up the rear end suspension with new struts and also ome old many new inch and a half lifted coil springs and I just got those installed earlier this week so now I'm ready to reinstall my platform and cabinets along with getting it ready to head out west my goal is to eventually and hopefully soon live in this thing full time now if you look out here on the table all the pieces are pre-cut and prefabricated the reason for that is this build has taken me unfortunately roughly around a year maybe a little bit more started last May or June about this time last year the first platform I built I think is about 10 inches too high there was barely enough room for me to sleep and of course I'm a side sleeper so when I slept on my side my shoulders were hitting the top of the interior and it really was very claustrophobic and after a camping trip that I took the Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Western North Carolina for about a week staying in it for that long it definitely wasn't viable for long-term living so I ended up going back to the drawing board and coming up with a new design the lower platform along with cabinets built on the passenger side it's been a trial-and-error project I mean I wasn't working from any kind of blueprints or anything like that how I built this basically a lot of cardboard templates I would cut out cardboard pieces and make sure that it fit and all that other stuff of course do my measurements and then just started cutting wood until I got to something that was pretty solid and definitely worked with that said it was it was a long process to come to this point but I am pretty happy with the final design my next video will be a full tour once I get it everything installed get everything built back up and I'll be going through and giving a tour of the interior the CRV the exterior the awning that I installed myself but yeah let's get started I guess before I proceed any further I want to go ahead and show exactly how I mounted the platform and secured it to the interior of the vehicle so on the back here you looked in there that was actually on this side and the other side there was a d-rings there and I ended up taking those out and ended up putting that bolt with the L bracket here to mount this leg and to secure it into place into the body of the vehicle did the same on this side here now on the front if you look when I first started building for the front end what holds everything in place is two by four here if you look over there you see right there there's a bolt that goes through that 2x4 and then there's two right there and then one right there and these actually go in and then over there these actually mount into the body where the backseats actually secured in there were threaded bolt holes for the seat hardware you want to remove the back seats I ended up using that hardware to secure this 2x4 across here to act as an anchor on the front and then of course in the back I showed you how to did two legs and so that's how I ended up securing the platform to the vehicle [Music] all right on the platform I put the front piece of plywood that I have across here for one it's to keep to anything that I have stored under the platform from sliding out and two it acts to secure this whole front end assembly together I've got legs on this side leg on the other side and then these cross pieces and in this front I've got it bolted here here and then there's two bolts over there and it secures the whole front end assembly all together making it basically operating as one piece now coming up I also have a hatch that I put here the hatch back here so there's a front and a rear hatch and of course the side right here that the cabinet sits on all right the hatches are installed and now to do the top of the platform for this side this is the side that the cabinet's sit on now I want to do a quick overview on how I attach the cabinets to this side they're not screwed in there bolt in and the way I do it as you see this is the top when I flip it over you'll see these tea nuts there's eight of them and those t-nuts are how I secure the cabinet to the platform all right I've got the platform now completely finished the only thing left to do is install the cabinet's along the passenger side now the top of the platform and the cabinet's included I coated with polyurethane for one to give it a little waterproof barrier to stains mud dirt it's easy to wipe off with the polyurethane coating on top the cabinet's will go down the passenger side right through here all the way to the back of the passenger seat I've got these two hatches and then at the front I built this leg to support this hinge this is the bed extension that when folded down gives me a full 75 inches of length for a full twin size trifold mattress I'm about ready to install the cabinet's down the passenger side on top of the platform but before I install them I just wanted to give a real quick overview when I constructed them I use both wood glue and L brackets corner brackets to build the shells and the cabinet I tried to make it as secure as possible on this side right here once inside the vehicle I've taken a 4x8 sheet of birch plywood 3/4 inch and I cut this front of the cabinets that faces the inside of the vehicle now on the passenger's side when you open the back passenger door I constructed these cabinets with doors that you can access from back passenger side door the the one here actually acts as my pantry but I'll go ahead and cover that more in detail once I get it installed and do a full tour of the the build out [Music] so now that the bed platform and the candidates are installed I do want to show how the cabinet's installed to the platform so if you see I've got these L brackets here and as I show it earlier I use T nuts on the plywood that makes the top of the platform and so the way I do this is with these L brackets I lined up the the holes with the T nuts that I can put bolts in it so this bolts in there's two there there's two there there's also two more up front here and of course that's in the cabinet's here and this was a 4x8 sheet of plywood that I cut out these cubbies and of course then I built like my shelving cabinet that I actually showed earlier on and of course the way this secures to the cabinets I also use tea nuts here as well and there's bolts on the other side and L brackets that vault the front of the can onto onto the shelving now the back of the cabinet actually comes to right here so that I've got I had this extra space and this was by design I made this here and basically this is a another like storage bin but I wanted to leave this spot right here particularly open so I can access the place where the jack and the tire wrench and everything is and it makes it easy access for that I didn't want to walk that out thanks for watching hope you guys enjoy this video

Channel: Rugged Runner Overland

Views: 266,684

Keywords: Overlanding, VanLife, SUV Camper Conversion, 2005 Honda CR-V, How To, Vehicle Dwelling

Id: SqvHKaTeWIs

Length: 14min 54sec (894 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2019