First-time sleeping in the camper

I decided to give it a try and spend one night in the car. I put up the bed on the passenger side, because this allowed me to keep the microwave in place.

Quite a cozy narrow room. Probably similar to being in a space craft! The TV works fine, I always had a cold drink available, and the electric heater worked well in this English cool summer night, powered by the external 240V power.

The second bed

For the second bed (on the right side of the vehicle) I first needed to construct the base. This base sits on the larger folded half of the rear bench, which is two seats wide. Due to inaccuracies and a slightly sloping and soft surface of this folded bench it was difficult to get this base straight in line with the already existing bench on the left side (which only covers one folded seat).

This base I did leave more open, so that I would be able to access it to store content, even when the bed is covering it on top. But this also meant that the sides would be inherently less stable, as they would not support each other through right-angle mounting of the side walls. Therefore I put a horizontal bar at the top of the base, which would connect the front and rear walls and also would provide the support for the bed to be on top.

This support is also used to stabilise the bed board on top by fitting between two other support beams which form a grove into which this support bar can fit.

Now there are two beds usable in the MicroCamper. When folded, the bed boards fit behind the driver seat, as shown in the picture below:

The first bed

The next milestone was to complete one of the bed supports. This is made of two MDF boards which are connected via a piano hinge so that it can be folded. The total length of this first bed is 1.85 m, the width is 0.60 m. I had to cut out some parts on the side where the board touches the vehicle wall. Also, towards the end, the vehicle is tapered somewhat, so the board also becomes more narrow. This would be just a kind of "emergency" bed, due to the quite small size. But it fits in the back with even the passenger seat in its regular position.

In the back there is one foldable support leg, which supports the weight of the person on the bed. When folded, the bed support is just 95 cm long and can be stacked away either vertically behind the driver seat or horizontally onto the folded rear right seat bench.

Cargo Net in the roof

For additional lightweight but bulky items like bedding I added a stretchable cargo net. This can be removed if not needed. It will carry all the bed blankets, pillows, matresses.

The (future) bed

For the bed I bought 4 1200x600 mm MDF boards, cut them down to 900x600 mm, and connected two of each with a "piano hinge". This will be the foldable underlay of two beds which will be placed on top of the work top. Since this vehicle has the raised roof, it is not necessary to put the bed down very low, but instead the whole worktop structure can be used as a stable basis. These two beds (one on the left, one on the right) will also be able to be connected via a bridge board, so that the whole vehicle width can be utilised. This is a distinctive advantage over most campervan installations that I have seen - most use the 3/4 with for the Rock&Roll bed only, so that the width of such a bed usually is only about 90-110 cm. Mine will be able to cover the whole width of 140 cm - a nice double.