Step 9 – Furnish your van

Now it is time to furnish your van. You can go in endless directions with the set up: you can choose to place an indoor shower, a folding bed or a fixed bed, closets, seats, a table, a fixed kitchen or a camping stove and so on… 

We started with taping our set up on the floor to check whether our layout would be realistic and comfortable. As soon as you’re sure about your set up and measurements, you can start framing your furniture.
We’ve chosen for a fixed bed, two seats (which are also cabinets), an extensible table, a kitchenette and an outdoor shower. So we’ll discuss these things in more detail in this step, but whatever you want to place, the principle is more or less the same for everything. We decided to work with poplar wood as this is very lightweight.  

For our furniture that had to bear a lot of weight, such as the bed and the seats, we first made a frame of wooden beams that we covered with plywood sheets. You always have to make sure the frames are sturdy enough and cannot sag or collapse. The rest of the furniture, such as smaller cabinets, were made by connecting plywood sheets with angle brackets without a full frame of beams.
In the plywood sheets you can make doors for cabinets, drawers, leave it open for an open cabinet and so on…  For more detailed information you can check out our post on how to make furniture: Step by step. How we made our furniture is not the only way you can do so. You can for example use a special bed frame to hang your bed to the walls of your van.

UPDATE
We made a few changes to our bedframe, kitchen cabinets, overhead cabinets and seating area. 
Bedframe: We replaced the horizontal beam in the back for a bigger, sturdier one and removed a few support beams, so our garage is one open space. 
Kitchen: We made drawers in our kitchen cabinets.
Seating area: We added a toilet cabinet with countertop and a litter box to our seating area. 
Check out the pictures to see the difference.