Sprinter van: Bed

Before we went ahead and installed the overhead cabinets, we had to install our bed. Having decided to not install the cabinets, before changing our minds and going ahead with it, we obviously needed a bed. Our trip wouldn't be very comfortable without one.

Backing up a bit… Prior to installing the bed, we thought to ourselves, 'Huh, our van is starting to feel like a camper.' We were liking the results.

But yeah, we needed a place to sleep. Thankfully, this would be pretty straightforward. At some point, K came across someone who had ingeniously used (wait for it… !) IKEA Skorva bed supports for the bed in their van conversion. Ingenious because the things had several amazing benefits: 

• They were cheap, only $15 each
• They were strong as all get out
• They were lightweight
• They were extendable to a range of widths (so we didn’t have to worry about them fitting or not fitting our particular Sprinter)
• They were easily removable (there will be times we’ll want to remove the bed so we can use our van like a cargo van)

We planned a trip to the west side of the mountains just to pick up the three we would need. That's how excited we were. Well, along with some other last-minute things, including a full-size set of mattress slats. Our list was much smaller, thankfully, than when we started. Another cool thing we read is that IKEA doesn’t sell the mounting brackets, but if we nicely asked someone at customer service they’d give them to us. So we strolled up to the counter after buying the supports to find out that was true, except… They were out of stock and would have to ship them from the warehouse. We had just over a week-and-a-half until we were scheduled to leave. We would have to cross our fingers and hope they’d arrive on time or get creative. Just to be safe, on a trip to Home Depot, I picked up an angle iron and some 3/8” bolts I could cut and use as needed.

During a virtual happy hour for work, K had gone to get the mail and interrupted me with a surprise: Six shiny mounting brackets! We could get to work as planned installing our bed.

We had already cut out the panels for the brackets because we happened to have a pair on our bed. With them in hand, we were able to mark and drill the holes for the M6 rivnuts we’d use to bolt them to the van’s walls. 

Once installed and not going anywhere, we stretch the three Skorva supports to fit the width of the van before securing the mattress slats to them with sheet metal screws.

Once installed, the final bit of electrical I had to do was mount the four IKEA Dioder strip LED lights to the underside of the slats. They’d be our garage lights. Conveniently (or not, depending on how you look at it), they’re the only set of LED lights IKEA still makes that run on 12V. When I first tested the electrical, they’re what I used to make sure everything was working.

With the bed and garage lighting complete, it was time to attack the final project for our build: Overhead cabinets.