Want to Build A TRUCK BED Camper?? - Here's HOW!

so today is finally the day i'm gonna take the back of my pickup and i'm gonna start to convert that into a camper and i'm ultimately gonna share all the steps i take along the way to convert my pickup i'm gonna try to do this in a very comprehensive manner i'm gonna show you exactly what i do have all the materials behind me four sheets of plywood very minimal tools i think this is going to be a build that pretty much anyone can do before we get into this let's jump over some blueprints i made and i can describe what we're about to do here so there's going to be two major units to this build we are going to have the bed structure on the left and a shelving unit on the right if we look at the top of this we are going to have two main storages in the bed structure itself we're going to have one big chest drawer and another one to segment some smaller things if we turn it around and look at the shelving unit now this is going to have four storage compartments a large storage in the back another one on the side and if we flip it over to the front this is going to have two storage compartments a smaller shelf and then a pull out drawer in addition to the chest storage of the bed structure we are also gonna have a pull out drawer that can be opened so this drawer can essentially be pulled out and in addition to that we are going to have another slider that can be pulled out to use as a working surface a cutting board you name it those are the plans let's jump into it for this build i am going to be working with a 2008 gmc it has a six foot six inch bed if anyone's interested so for starters we are going to drop in a floor and this floor you might be wondering why do i need a floor well the floor is going to help me create a nice solid surface that i can build off of it's also going to provide a couple other benefits that i'll mention once we wrap this up but one of the biggest ones is it's going to flatten out that floor so i don't have to work around these grooves which just in anyone who's done a build without a floor those have to drive you crazy but so we're gonna do this in two pieces and so pretty much the only things you have to worry about is the wheel well everything else should be more or less pretty straight there is some narrowing as we go to the back of the tailgate so i jotted that all down i set my circular saw so it's cutting just below the plywood board and what this allows me to do is cut on the floor so you can see i put this foam mat down and that way i can just do my cuts right here not worry about having to elevate it and hit the floor so i am new to woodworking hence not having many tools and this is actually my first project so i learned so much along the way and you'll see a lot of techniques i'm using that are probably not best practice but um i'm putting this out there just to show everyone don't let inexperience stop you just you gotta get out and you gotta try to do it there's you're not gonna learn just thinking about it all the time sometimes you just gotta set it in motion and go for it and if you fail a few times so what it's part of the learning process so don't let that stop you guys just get out there and do it [Music] okay so i made it just a bit too wide i'll measure that out shave off a little bit from both sides and then replace this [Music] perfect so i got the first floor in i'm going to put the second one in this is the easy part it's going to get technical once i start building off of this so the floor is going to provide three major purposes for one it provides an easy working surface so we don't have to deal with these grooves two it kind of provides a safety measure so there is going to be some moisture in this truck i have sealed as much as i could but you know in case some water gets in there seep out of the floor onto these grooves on the bottom and flow out of the truck and lastly it's going to hold everything together it's going to make this unit one that done we're going to move on to the bed frame so we're going to cut out two long boards that are the length of the bed and this is going to make up the frame of the bed itself [Applause] if you guys are finding any use in this video at all please make sure to go down below and hit that like button it's free and i have sunk just a ridiculous amount of time into this video so it would definitely be appreciated so with those cut out we laid them across got our measurements and cut those to length okay i just hit the point where i have completely wrapped up the floor i've also completed the boxes which you just saw me build this is essentially eventually going to have a flat top over it and that's going to be both the bed and i'm also going to make it into sort of a drawer system the next step is to use this guy right here so this is really going to be my life saver of this whole operation this is going to allow my work to be sturdy quick and relatively painless as far as making it goes i'll link this down below so this is basically going to allow me to anchor everything together this is how a lot of ikea furniture works this is going to create a pocket in the side of the board and and so basically i can use a screw that's going to go through that pocket and anchor itself into whatever board is below it and so it provides a really sturdy support and in my mind it is just the way to go if you don't have much experience like i do and you want to have a very sturdy corner the craig's pocket hole system is going to be the way to go this isn't sponsored by them or anything it's just after doing my research and knowing my skill level this is going to be a crucial part of the build and it wasn't that expensive so i'll link that down below if you guys do want to check this out and if you're doing this for yourself good option okay so as far as where the placement of these screws go i would do that them on opposite ends every six inches to 10 inches depending on how much use and sturdiness that particular board needed so i'm going to figure out where i'm going to mount that and clean out the back of the bed and that's pretty much going to wrap up day one i'm happy with the start that we have and i will see you guys tomorrow i will see you in about one second when we start day two day two was all about construction of what we already have and that way i have a frame laid out in the bed to build off of now we have some pocket hole grooves in the floor itself that we use to attach the two pieces to each other and off of that we put the framing of the bed unit i just pretty much needed to decide how long i wanted to make this bed based on how much sleeping space i think i wanted i decide on about 34 inches for myself instead of drawing measurements on the floor itself i just decided hey i'll just use a scrap piece of wood cut a measurement log and then when i put everything in the truck i can pretty much just align it up using this board so relatively simple method got those installed the next thing that we need to do is we are going to build some dividing spaces in here because this is going to be a storage compartment so i cut out one made sure it fit used that to dry out a bunch of others and then sanded those so they were nice and flat uh using a belt sander and after that those were ready to be installed after putting some pocket holes in all of them we can just go ahead and put those in so [Applause] and of course in this section of the build we are going to be focused on building this awesome drawer system and this drawer system is going to have one large pullout that's going to have a huge chest storage within it but below that we're also going to have this pull out and that's going to act as an extra working surface a cutting board you name it i've found so many uses for this also in this video we're going to cover a couple more things we are going to build some more support for the bed structure and lastly we are going to make a topper for our bed and add a couple large chest storages within it so let's jump right into the video and see how we did this so the drawer system was probably one of the harder things that i had to do so when you guys take this on yourself of course you're all going to have different measurements for the drawer that you want to accomplish and one of the easier ways that i found to do this was just to visit a website and once you're on that page it's so simple so you're just going to put in what height width and depth of your drawer system that you want to make uh put in the width of your materials i used three-fourths of an inch plywood and since we're using that craig pocket hole drill system we're going to want these joints to be butt joints plug that in and the website spits out all of the cuts that you need to make so it's just a really easy system you don't have to think about a whole lot and you have exactly what you need to do with that accomplished i set out to rough cut everything to size and get ready to build this drawer [Music] [Applause] so [Applause] now don't forget because we are making an extra slide out from this drawer system you are going to want to cut a little extra space off of the face measurement that they that website spit out for you and that way we're going to have some room to install some guides as well as that pull-out board itself now with that done we are going to drill some pocket holes in this get it all together and move on to the next step [Applause] [Applause] so there we go my very first drawer and my very first little pull out cutting board slash cooking surface that i'm going to use a lot for catching cooks i'm pretty happy with how this turned out and it's going to be a great surface to use while i'm cooking as far as this goes i may put a flat surface on the top just by recessing these sides a bit and having something that can kind of slide over it that way i can set things here while i'm cooking maybe put some ingredients up there and whatnot but yeah this worked out better than i expected so the hardest part of all this for me was installing it my initial plan was to put in four drawer slides but i struggled to line these up properly and decided that that was not the way to go so i ended up putting two in and these are rated for a hundred pounds and so i installed that and it worked perfectly fine and i've had it like this for over a year now so here's the results i am so happy with how this turned out and of course you guys can build this in any dimension that you want you can add two sliders you could add a slider off of the side get creative with it so this whole structure is going to be held in by friction so we have an exact cut of the floor that's going to help hold it in place of course the weight of everything that's holding it down and now we're gonna move on and do some supports off to the side that are gonna help prevent it from wiggling and it's also gonna just help hold it in place a little more what i did is i just cut out some cardboard made that an exact cut and then i could take that back cut out an exact piece of plywood to fit it perfectly now of course if you have a jigsaw that's definitely what you're going to want to use for this cut but i i didn't so i used a combination of a saw along with a dremel and a sander to make sure it was a perfect fit so yeah let's see if this fits and if it doesn't i'm going to keep sanding the dimensions till they do fits like a glove that is probably the most accurate cut i've made this whole time all right so i got the struts all made out and the support beams and now i'm just going to throw them in well that's done so now with those i can basically just finish the top platform and this whole thing will be at least the bed portion will be wrapped up in a couple drawers and not drawers but like chests where i'm sitting and then call it good for now and i got the measurements from the back of my truck see i wrote it down so it's going to be 73 and 3 4 by 43 and 3 4. so this is basically the last major cut i need to make for that side of the truck so i'm just going to drop that pallet down rough cut it to size and then i'm going to go in and i don't know if i'm going to trace it out or maybe line it up and get a good idea of what sections i need to cut out the final top of the bed structure is cut out to rough shape so i'm just going to show you guys what i'm going to do next i do have to fix some leaks so temporarily i just have a tarp over it because the next few days is going to be mixing of snow like it is now in the rain it's really not that big a deal a couple gaskets in here uh they're they're a little bit old i got another one on that back window but anyway i just wanted to go over the system i'm using to mark out the gaps and what i need to cut out and what i can leave just because i had no idea what i was doing at first but i kind of like the system i just started using um so basically what i do is i just marked out on my my ruler exactly where the back of this meets this lip and then basically i go along and just probe the back until i find where this line has started to come onto the board at which case i will just mark that out as a spot i need to cut so now if you had a jigsaw you could just basically cut along this line make it really quick and simple unfortunately that process is going to take me a bit longer but it doesn't really matter it's going to happen in the end there's always a way so i'm going to get started on that and i'll show you guys how it worked out when i'm done there we have it so it fit pretty great we have a little bit of overlap that i will trim off but other than that i mean everything fits in really really great pretty tight fit all throughout okay tops fixed trimmed up the edges eventually i'll screw it down but sits pretty flush so now that we have the top finished there is one last thing i want to do today if you look at it this way so this would be the front this is our drawer system this i have sketched out what is going to be a basically an opening chest and then here as well these are going to open up essentially if that makes sense but ah and there we go so they work perfectly we're able to access these absolutely giant storages in the bottom the last suggestion i would make is add some drawer supports to this so that way when you open it up it's going to stay open and you don't have to hold it open with one hand especially once you have the mattress on top of that it becomes more of a pain trust me today we are going to make a whole new structure to this build and it's going to kind of be like a cabinet so let me just get rid of everything else here so we can focus on the cabinet so this cabinet's going to be a bit slimmer than the bed because i do want that open floor this is going to allow me to access these two ports of the cabinet so we're going to have a storage in the back of it and we're also going to have a long storage alongside now flipping over to the front there's going to be two different storages here there's going to be a cabinet that i can open and below that is going to be a small drawer this is a very useful thing to have in the truck and let's jump into how i constructed it for starters we need to make the backboard and to do that we have to cut around the wheel well to maximize our space usage so what i did is i took a piece of cardboard cut around the wheel well so i had an exact dimension of what it was trace that onto the board and then simply cut it out so it was a perfect fit took that board and then i made a top to it as well now just like the bed structure i used a similar method to cut out all the different dimensions so this would slide onto the truck perfectly and then i screwed those in place to make them one so i'll take that out of the truck and use it as the framing to build everything else off of so what we're going to do now is we're going to cut out all the boards that we need and we are going to segment each storage compartment so this is going to be easier to visualize did my measurements cut those out and this is kind of what we started with where we have these two divisions of the side storages and now i just need one more right in the middle here so cut that out installed it and this is kind of what we're looking at it looks like a tv stand in a sense and this is missing the front section so i'm going to cut that out next but i just want to give you an idea of what these storage compartments look like on the inside and you can see how we built around that wheel well so we're not losing very much space here next let's get going on this front storage so i just went over to that website that i mentioned in the second video got the dimensions i needed for the bottom drawer found some scrap wood that i could use and then cut that into shape and we were ready to build that box i also cut out the front of the cabinet so i'm just gonna put that in right here and we're gonna have it on hinges so i can just swing it open let's move on let's cut out that front panel and for this one it's a little unique so i have to cut out windows within this front face itself and the way i went about doing this because i don't have a jigsaw is and i drilled a one-inch holes in the corners of them and then i took my circular saw and i just eased it onto that line and then cut what i could out without going too far basically i just tried to connect these dots and so i did that for all of them finished it up with a saw and this is the finished product i'm pretty happy with how that turned out using the tools that i did but we can see these edges are extremely rough um so we need to fix that up and of course the way you go about doing that is just sand like crazy so you definitely want to make sure you sand those over well and in the end they turned out great they're smooth to the touch there so the last things we need to do is install that cabinet drill some holes for access and that is going to complete it the only thing we'd have to do now is screw in our face but we are going to do that very last and move on to the next day where we're going to do some standing so today is finally the day that i am going to stain this project yesterday i did oh heater's turning on hold on so yesterday i did one of the last major cuts i need to do we have the cabinet all finished up and this is what i plan to stain today here's what i selected to use we have a pre-stain a wood finish i decided on natural because i want to keep this structure light now personally i like dark furniture i think it looks better but the truck cap is such a closed space that we want to let light in so having a brighter wood is going to basically make the whole inside of that truck a little bit brighter and so that's what i was going for here and then of course pre-stain and wood finish they're not protecting it so we do need some sort of coating over the top of it i decided to use spray lacquer which is really easy to use but uh it's not cheap i think i used four or five cans of this and they're like 10 bucks piece so we gotta start off with two things first off we gotta clean this place and second we have to sand actually let's reverse that let's sand and then clean up the place [Music] because there's so much snow right now i'm actually going to try to do this inside that way i can have the heater on in the back to keep it at 60. which is going to help these stains dry get that stain on there for starters we're gonna put one coat of pre-stain down and then after that dries we're gonna follow it up with two coats of natural stain i just follow the directions on the back based on dry times and i try to do this in a warm environment so i'm wearing that gas mask so i can keep the garage door shut and we can keep things at 60 but i also have to do everything in the back of the truck that's a little more difficult the drying time definitely was much longer so i would do that at different increments all right i got the first two coats on take that off for a minute i got that one pre-coat and then one coat of natural wood stain i really like the look of it it didn't darken it too much it just kind of brought out some definition in it i'm gonna let this dry and then we're gonna go over the top with some lacquer okay so today is officially or at least hopefully officially going to be the last day of this build now i've allowed the stain i put on to cure for about 24 hours the next step is going to be to put a protectant sealant on there and i decided to use lacquer now what i'm going to do is i have four cans of lacquer i am going to start at the beginning surface and spray about six to eight inches away until i finish every surface that i have and at which point i'm going to go right back to the start add a second coat and do that until i run out of my four cans now maybe that's not going to be enough coats that i'm looking for but i can go back later apply more lacquer not a big deal so with that said let's get started in the end i ended up putting about four to five coats over every surface i started to run out so i opted to put that fifth coat on surfaces i was going to use the most such as the floor that i'll be walking on all the time but here's the final product i'm really happy with how this turned out it kept it nice and light but darkened it just a little bit and brought out that definition of the wood it wasn't really super glossy but it did reflect a little bit of light and i kind of liked it actually so i was happy with that selection of course you could do all kinds of stuff with this you know you don't have to use natural if you want that darker look go for it man what a build it's been um i guess i'm just gonna finish it up i got a couple holes to drill and i'm going to screw in this unit right here [Applause] [Music] [Music] mm-hmm [Music] this is our completed truck cap camper build if you guys want to see a more detailed look at the finished product once i get a mattress in there and it's a little more lived in then you can go check out this video right here where i did an in-depth review and hit that like button if you enjoyed this series so thank you guys so much for watching and i will see you out there in the truck cab camper

Channel: MainelyOutDoors

Views: 181,202

Keywords: truck bed camper build, truck bed camper diy, truck bed camper shell, truck bed camper, truck cap camper, mav, build, full build, truck camper, truck camping, building a truck camper from scratch, DIY, truck cap, truck cap camper build, DIY truck cap camper, start to finish truck cap camper, truck camping in winter, wood working, truck camper build, truck bed camping, solid woods worx, wooden truck bed camper, how to build a truck bed drawer system, build a truck bed camper

Id: vLyhRjYalDo

Length: 28min 37sec (1717 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021