Thanks mom and dad!

Next came building a support for the bed. I pulled the main board of the bed out of the van and was just plopping it down in the prius. In the back it just rests part way down on the “floor” of the trunk, but in the front it needed something to hold it up.

It’s hard to tell in this picture, but the bar is is attached to the car through the same holes where the seat was attached. One of them is at a strange angle so it was a bit of a pain to make it work, but this way there’s no damage done to the car. In the van the supports were also attached to frame this way as well. The only “damange” I’ve left on the van is the sticky stuff all over the walls from the Velcro that held up the curtains.

Now that the bottom of the support was secured the rest of it could be put in. This is a piece a plywood attached to the bar on the bottom. Attached to this are the two L shaped metal bars that are then screwed in to the bottom of the bed. I realize now I should have taken another picture between this one and the next one to better show how far up the bed comes.

The board sticks out in front about as far as the seat would be but it’s a bit higher up. It goes back far enough to rest on the “floor” of the trunk, but not all the way to the back. There’s about a five/six inch space between the bed and the seat in the back where I’ve stuffed a small blanket and my jackets.

There’s a bunch of space at the feet back passenger seat. I’ve got a couple boxes and small drawer there. My large drawer (the one that I used to stuff all my clothes in, is now in the front on the floor. I haven’t decided how I like it there yet. It’s so large and so full of stuff that it’s kind of difficult to open, but it does fit nicely in the space. I’ll just have to try it out for a while and see how I like it in the long run.

The pad, (and therefore also me when I’m sleeping) is half on the board and half on the floor of the trunk. The board itself is sticking out about a foot and a half past the curtain you can see in this picture separating the front and back of the car. The intention is to screw down a box or something on the front part of the board so I can put stuff on it that I’d want to get to easily. I didn’t really have time to consider what exactly I want there so I’ve left that as just the board for now. I basically can’t put anything there while I’m driving though because after a couple turns it ends up on the floor.

I didn’t think to take a picture of the curtain and how it’s attached. Dad figured out that for me (as well as figuring out how to do the bed support without damaging the car. Basically there’s space in the paneling on either side of the car above where the seatbelt attaches. He cut and bent the ends of a curtain rod so that they slid into those spaces. Then I took the same black cloth from the van and threw it over this rod.

As a side note, if anyone out there is picking out fabric for curtains let me highly, highly recommend you go with black. Even during the daylight if you’re standing in front of the car looking through the windshield it’s hard to tell the curtains are even there. It just looks black and someone walking by isn’t going to even think there’s curtains there, they’re just going to think it’s dark in the back. Actually, that’s not true. They’re not going to think about it at all. I’ve seen light colored curtains and I feel like they really stand out. Sure they block the view to the back, but they also draw attention to the fact that you’re blocking the view to the back.

On the left of the above picture you can see the space I had to work with for the easily accessible storage. There’s also space under the bed that I can get from the inside as well, but it’s slightly more difficult. I knew I wanted my two drawers of clothing to sit on the front of that space so they would open over the area where the passenger would be sitting in the back seat. Then I could put a couple bags (the large grocery tote bags which have become one of my favorite organizing containers) between the drawers and the back of the hatch without worrying about those flying around.

So I knew that’s where I wanted them, but the tricky thing was figuring out how to secure them so they don’t go flying around while I’m driving.

First came the latches to keep the drawers from opening. these are the same kind I have on the large drawer. Just a piece of wood (half of a dowel) cut down and screwed into the plastic below the drawer.

Next I had to figure out a way to keep the drawers themselves from sliding around when dad had the great idea of checking to see if Velcro sticks to the fabric on the floor. It does. So there’s Velcro on the bottom of the lower drawer keeping it attached to the floor and then a set of Velcro between the two drawers keeping the top one attached to the bottom one.

I neglected to take another set of pictures of the “finished” product, but I’ll be tweaking it as I go anyway. Also, I spend a lot of time doing the first half of all the packing, carefully stowing things away in well-thought out spots, but by the end of the evening I end up just tossing things on the floor of the front seat. I’m sure I’ll spend the next couple days sorting through that and actually putting things away where they ‘belong’.

The most pressing project at the moment is figuring out a way to make some curtains. The windows are tinted, but (especially in a space this small) I really want some curtains. But this is my car and my little baby and I don’t want to end up with sticky stuff from the back of Velcro all over the walls and would prefer not to screw anything into them either. Hopefully I will figure it out within a day or two.

And boy, does my back hurt.

I complained to a coworker a couple months ago about how I’d slept funny and my back hurt, and her response was, “Well duh, of course it does. Look where you’re sleeping!”

But I’d already been living in the van for a couple months without trouble, so I doubt the problem was that they bed was uncomfortable. Many inches of foam, a sheepskin cover and then big fluffy blanket.

No. The problem is that sometimes I just don’t sleep well, regardless of what I’m sleeping on.

Which brings us to this week. This week I rebuilt the bed so as to get more storage space underneath it. Well, ok. Dad rebuilt the bed but I helped.

Last time I was in San Diego there was much remodeling of the van including a extra foam pad to make the bed actually lay somewhat level.

This time I wanted to get rid of the folded down seat that made up half the bed and get more storage space.

So the seat came out and replaced by a complicated support set-up for the bed. I’ll spare you the details of how this came to be, but it took pretty much the whole afternoon to figure it out. Suffice to say that the main support is approximately in the middle of the bed and the arch was cut out so that I can access the space in the back from inside the van. Extra important once I get the bike on the back and won’t be able to open up the back doors much.

Next came the surface of the bed itself, made from a nice piece of birch plywood, (the supports were made from some of the remainder of the original piece).

Looks shiny, doesn’t it? Dad realized that once I was done with the van he’d be getting it back. So the edges are routed and there are three coats of varnish on this beautiful bed. My favorite thing about it is the cutout in the middle of the picture. We put this in there so that the annoying island in the center of the van can actually be of some use. With this cutout of the bed not only can I actually open it up and use the meager storage space, but now I can use it as a chair instead of sitting on the bed all the time.

The old bed was low enough that this wasn’t too big a deal, but now with this island to function as a chair the bed could be raised higher up giving me even more storage space underneath.
I’m also a big fan of the rounded edges. I didn’t measure the old one, but I think this bed is a few inches longer. It’s also a bit more narrow at the front but since this is usually where my feet are it shouldn’t be a problem, and because of the way the board fits around the contours of the van this means the bed isn’t in the way when crawling from the front seats to the back. It wasn’t bad before, but this is even better.

The last step for the bed was a nice new mattress. I’d been using a two inch thick piece that was slowly disintegrating on me. It was replaced by a new solid three inch of foam cut to fit the contours of the board below it.

The new bed will take a night or two of getting used to since I’m now up so much higher. Closer to the windows, which I’m not a fan of, but one other upgrade to the van was new extra-dark tinting on two of the windows. And it’s definitely made up for by all the new storage space.

Today I started filling up all that space. Of course, I don’t have enough room for all my books, (even after spending the last two years getting rid of most of them), but I’ve still managed to pack away under the bed more than I’ll actually read between now and when I come back to San Diego at the end of December.

And yes, of course all of them are completely necessary. I swear. Each and every one.

Tomorrow I finish with packing and some other last minute things then I hit the road on Friday. Hopefully nothing tomorrow takes longer than I expect.