Making a DIY self Build Camper - The Ideas

As talked about in the previous posts, the idea for this camper trailer was born from the beauty in the airstream trailer.

For those people who do not know what an airstream is, (e.g. the european people, generally most american people know about airstreams. This is what they look like:

The most iconic element of their airstream is the aluminum shell, that hell or high water will not rust. This has allowed airstreams to last the test of time. Most modern campers and trailers are skinned in an aluminum shell for this exact reason. The frame inside these however is often to up the company making it, sometimes they are wood and others they are steel or even aluminum.

The Type 2 VW has also got curves, a popular choice around the 1970s and further back to the 1950s as seen below in ambulance form:

The idea of making a DIY camper, is all about doing things your own way. So for that reason this project will be a hybrid of both of these two icons of camping. Given that a trailer has been bought, it settles the issues on how wide or long the camper is going to be, which can often be a big time waster as there is always arguments for a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller.

Some key facts in this trailer however are:

• There will be no permanent cooking facilities.
• There will be no water facilities, everything will be done in buckets and with bottles (or tanks) of water.

The reasons behind this are quite simple. While I had the last camper, I never actually filled up the water container as bottled water was always cheap and easily to transport. The idea of sending all of the waste water into a barrel did not really appeal to me as I knew I was going to empty it in time, so all washing was usually done in a bucket outside!

The new camper will be mainly cupboard space, as it was always needed and desk space because when cooking or making some tea, having the desk space was always a premium.

All of these little factors are something that have been learned with the experience of hardened campervanning.

One final deal breaker, was to make all cupboards easily accessible and this goes for under bed storage as well. Nothing was more difficult than trying to reach a bag under your bed at 3am in the morning. Easy access makes for better camping!