Van Tour - Sleeps 7 - Ambulance New Layout Never Seen Before

Hello, I'm Bawb, welcome back to the channel. This week we're going to show you how we converted our Seven-berth self-converted camper van—we have seven beds in here. Well, I say seven beds—sleep. seven people, so I'm going to show you how we did it in our archive footage from the build because That was some time ago, and I'll show you exactly how we made a double bunk at the top—we make a single. bed that goes here, we have a European king at the back, and then up top there, we have two bunks that They're big enough for a six-foot-two individual—come on in, let's go. So yes, you did hear me right. In this van, we have seven sleeping spots: two double beds and three single beds. We've made them all up. Our own back—we haven't copied anyone's designs on these beds. This one and this one—it's a new one. design that I haven't seen anywhere else, so come along with us—we have this bed at the top, our most controversial bed I might have, because we've had some really, really funny comments about this one is actually a double bed, built above the cab where the bulk of the van is frontier that goes over the cab; we have built it out from the metal structural beam—it basically I have the archival footage that I will insert from our actual build; I have braced and bracketed it. entire side of this area, and this has two L's; it's an L-shaped bracket from B and Q—we've had two of them for extra strength, and then we have the strobe beam, which is here and you can't see it from the carpet that is now secured straight across to another bracket that is on the chassis I'm 15 stone and I can fit up here, and this is perfectly safe, obviously. My weight has been built out, so as you can see, the slats there come straight out in the Here in the middle is the actual metal chassis of the vehicle, so the bed has been built from the metal. the chassis is there and it extends all the way to the front of the vehicle and slopes downward like this mattress Actually, just short of a double mattress, we only had to cut off a small sliver here. This is only for the two youngest children, and obviously when the question of the uh we get asked all the time, "What are you going to do when they grow up?" We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Come to it if you don't fit, you don't fit anymore, so that's one of those things, but as we move on now We have a bed that goes here. Now we've made a fully interchangeable bed that just fits the space. I'll show you at the end how we put that bed together—that was a very simple build to make. and done in about 20 minutes, so I'll show you that it's a real, real easy conundrum bed as we come through the vehicle, we have this bed here is a European king; this has been done on the same pretext as the front bed with the IKEA Strover beams; now this is a Strover beam as you Here we have two single beds; this one on the right is, I think, five feet nine inches, and then the Left one, this is five foot nine as well, but this kitchen cupboard isn't a cupboard—it's a cubby. hole that we've built, so basically, if I pass you through here, this fits to six feet, two feet. capacity, so in there, there's just no space—it's just an empty space; we built this cupboard out intentionally so that this bed could have six-foot-two clearance from the back to the front the length you could fully extend the two beds here were built on the same pretext The strobe beams so that as you go through here, there are three strobe beams, and then we have the IKEA. slats that are bolted to the stover beams, and they anchor across; now this is a Peugeot Boxer It's a very wide vehicle; it's wider than your Ford Transits, wider than your Volkswagen. and basically I can lie sideways, so excuse anyone who has a shoe problem—I'm going to keep going put on my shoes and lie down on the bed because we've had a few comments before about that, but basically I can lie completely sideways and I'm not touching any of the sides, and I'm five foot nine, so to give a bit of perspective, you can sleep comfortably sideways without having to put any wings on now the bottom bunk bed was done on the same pretext of the scova beams across exactly the Same as the top one on the sides of the vehicle, like I said—I'll put the archive footage in. we used instead of these brackets you get from ikea that everyone seems to be using where you bolt it onto the metal chassis—depending on the vehicle's height, this can prove quite tricky. This level has been bolted directly onto the metal chassis—the bottom level, I had to be more creative with it, and we have full rails that run the entire length of this side and a full a rail that runs the full length of the other side and had several anchor points so you could go into the chassis instead of having to be limited to specific points where the brackets are located Very limited to that area; the longer bracket from IKEA, which was full length, gives you more. areas to anchor your bolts through, rather than just using the small tiny brackets that you see That's obviously what everyone keeps saying on the van sites—this is the best one to use. It didn't work out as well for us, and so basically we have a European king there; these two are two. single beds, so you know, you don't have to have all this—this is just what we designed for our a family of seven, and because the van we needed had to have more sleeping capacity but ultimately it accommodates a family of four if you require it very comfortably, and obviously all the space you wouldn't need, as we go further on into the front of the cab, this is Where the bed is, as I said before, our single bed—this is a full single bed, and it works. Extremely well, we have a full single mattress hidden behind our chairs here, and then from IKEA. We have this little device; this is a piece of free wood we got from IKEA, and on the back of it I've drilled five brackets; these are the table legs from the cheap office tables that They're from IKEA; they're £2.50 each and come like this but much longer. They are the adults and they are two pounds fifty, and you get the leg and you get the bracket and basically They are much longer; all I did was cut them down. So what we do here is we have five of these. They literally go up onto the bed like this, and then the bed is at the same height as the chairs we have. have a row of four of them with the bottom also being adjustable, so that if any of the corners are different sizes, you can adjust them, and it basically creates a full single layout and it It takes, I'd say, less than five minutes to put in. It's not a particularly long job. Oh, there you go. There's an original one. We do keep an original five in the a van because sometimes we like to cook outside on this table; it's a very sturdy table to have on as you can see, there's a lot of rubbish back here now, including a vacuum cleaner, so we and then you go in on these, and basically once all these five legs are in, it makes the base for A single bed. Now, this was a very simple um technique, and I've not seen it anywhere before. It only cost me 10 pounds for the five legs, and then this was free—this was outside IKEA, it was A free piece of wood, and it fit perfectly for what we needed—it just slid into place. so this goes in the area where the bed is going to be, so all I need to do now is pull it out The single mattress that is stuck behind here ultimately makes a full single bed. that you just throw on and it's exactly the same in the morning—you literally get up in the morning And the bed is, it's the same simplicity to put away, this creates a full single bed with access. Yes, it's tight to get in and out, but it provides a full single, so ultimately now you have a full single bed, you have two that can sleep up here, you have two that can sleep down there. the European king and two others who are up there with access into the vehicle, access to the toilet access to the kitchen without restricting movement—wherever you are, you can still move functionally around the vehicle, so if anyone needs to go to the toilet, they can get to the toilet if needed get obviously to the kitchen or the fridge or anything like that—it's still accessible even though all the beds are already set up, because we didn't want a vehicle that, when you get somewhere, is It's going to take you the next 20 minutes to set everything up—everyone has to get out, and it just sort of... It just kind of takes the fun out of it when you have to keep setting it up consistently all the time. Now this was very budget-friendly—we've seen some beds that are on these tracks that go up. and down we've kept this van on a very tight budget, like I said, if you've watched our other These videos, this van didn't cost us the earth for what it is—we built everything ourselves, but basically As I said, it's been heavily used—we've been everywhere, all around Europe. We've traveled a lot, and it just works—it works really well. So as you can see here, this is our full layout from the rear end, and we have our garage space underneath, like I said, these are These are your brackets here, so they've actually been anchored on these; they're securely in place. It's literally rock solid, it doesn't move. We've been everywhere in this van, there's No movement, and it's the same with these—they're not moving either; they're anchored, as you can see now. We've got the two beds up there, the European king, and then, as you can see, through the through the the actual vehicle has the single bed further back, and it's difficult to put into words how This vehicle is big; on camera it doesn't look as big as it actually is, but it's just functionally that way. Works, so if you want to be able to answer any questions, please put them in the comments. Ask. Any of the beds, I'll give you as much advice and as much knowledge as I have about it. As I said, two of these beds are unprecedented—I've never seen any of them made anywhere. All done—basically just trial and error, seeing what works. These have worked superbly. Please drop in. The comments—if you have any questions, there's loads of information on our Instagram and our budget. Travel family, a lot of information on how these beds were made, please like and share And comment on these videos—it all helps, and thank you so much for watching. See you next week.