So for about $700-$1000 (including the camper shell) you can have a great camping rig that you can be proud of. This sleeping platform also allows you to take advantage of the entire width between bed rails. We also notched out an access in Drawer #1 for our Cook Partner Stove knobs and handle using a jigsaw. Set it up the same way as it was in your truck and now you have a bed with storage! For our purposes, this just was not the way we wanted to go down. We used a speed square to ensure all the supports stayed as close as possible to 90 degree angles from the base and the 48” EXACT square to make sure the supports were straight from front to back. Cut a sheet of 1/2″ plywood to fit. This will be by far your largest expense, but it’s worth it—these are the walls to your house. If you want fun, freedom, and adventure, you want a truck camper. This is the second cheapest option for building a truck bed sleeping platform, depending on how you build it. Drawer #1 Base cut @ 14 ½” wide x 70” long. This is obviously the cheapest and simplest option, and one I’m very fond of - as I grew up doing this with my family. Determining your budget is a pivotal part of deciding which sleeping platform will be right for your truck shell camping adventures. Sleek yet durable, our caps are engineered to maximize space and protect your cargo. Sections #1, 2 and 3 were cut from one ¾” thick 4x8 sheet of plywood. To accomplish this, we made sure the center drawer support was positioned exactly 16” from the driver-side drawer support. Don’t forget to grab the free printable PDF of all the diagrams by clicking below, if they’ll help you in your build! Then the Side Walls and Back Walls were attached to one another with Horizontal Kreg Jig joints. When you purchase Truck bed camping platform, most likely the first factor set the brain to truck bed ideas purchase the sets is its own fashions then a price . The Sleeping Platform Cover consists of 4 sections. Gather Materials and Tools. Which allows enough room to sleep a family of 3 fairly comfortably. This laid the foundation for our truck bed sleeping platform design, and helped in planning the rest of the build. Plus with a child and all things that go along with them, this amount of disorganization would inevitably lead to marriage counselling. No hammering necessary. A Note About Security: For both personal safety and peace of mind, make sure your truck bed camping build-out is secure.Both your tailgate and the canopy should have locks, but make sure they’re up to snuff. It’s essential to keeping you comfortable and organized, it acts as your kitchen when you’re hungry, your living room when the weather is crummy, and your bedroom when you come back to camp after a long day of hiking and adventure. A good camper shell can eliminate the worst aspects of having an open-air bed, while retaining the utility of a large storage area inherent to trucks, all without compromising a truck’s ability to carry a slide-in camper. We used a 1 ½ inch hole saw to cut holes to use as handles in the Drawer Faces - this was kind of a FAIL and something we would not do again because they’re somewhat difficult to grip. Pro tip: the width near the cab and the width near the tailgate might be slightly different. For a detailed step-by-step build guide for this truck camping setup and sleeping platform design, check out our Homemade DIY Truck Camper Build. And in the end, we found the result was definitely worth the extra time, work, and investment! And without any sleeping platform at all, you’ll be ready to go truck shell camping. We’ll reach out to you in the future if we post more content we think you’ll like. The Truck The white truck included within this undertaking can seat two minifigures as a result of huge quantity of space in the cab. For one thing, setup time is greater than other options because you have to remove or at least rearrange your gear every time you stop to sleep or set up camp. MID/HIGH-RISE. Section #4 was cut from a remnant from the drawer build. Yay math! The short Driver-side and Passenger-side Supports (in front of and behind the wheel wells) were attached both vertically to the Platform Base and horizontally to the long Drawer Supports with Kreg Jig joints as shown in the picture below. $1,500: Truck Bed Cap. When in platform mode, your storage bins can easily slide underneath. See our full disclosure.). Selecting the right truck bed sleeping platform for your truck camping setup is a tough process - there are literally thousands of inspiring and unique builds out there! The measurements throughout this guide likely won’t apply exactly to your own build, but hopefully the process of how we measured will, and you can simply add length/width to the dimensions to suit your own truck’s bed space. In this post we’ll walk you through the build process for our truck bed sleeping platform as part of our DIY truck bed camper build, including everything from design choices to finished assembly. A three-way refrigerator is also standard equipment in the Milner. Horizontal Kreg Jig Joints were used to secure them together end-to-end in the format you see above. We did not bedline any unexposed surfaces. Somewhere to store dirty gear, shoes, etc. This U.S. military veteran … The Drawer Base is what we refer to the bottom of the drawer as. The driver side we left open because of a plan we will get to shortly. Ensures clearance from the truck shell camping adventures worth the extra time, work and. 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