A note I made before I decided to build the bed base platform in my car:

When I was 18 I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac and the seed for adventure was sowed. Since then my mind has been fascinated with the idea of freedom through exploration of place and simplicity likely at the price of unconventionality and isolation. I moved into my car for three simple reasons:

1. Simplification - I genuinely believe to truly excel in a specific domain you have to go all in… like all in. The car to me is a forcing function for simplicity. There is limited space for clothes, there will be no fridge and I'll wish to spend as little time in it as possible. This means, ready-to-eat meals, being outside and working hard.
2. The ocean and surfing - the ocean has saved me during periods of difficulty and given me boundless joy during periods of elation. I want to make a conscious effort to enjoy it whilst I'm young and fit.
3. Financial freedom - rent often makes up the largest proportion of an individual's living expenditures. Why not just delete it?

The first thing I had to do was build my 1.65 × 1.35 × 1.1 metre home for my Nissan Patrol GU I. I went into it with a few clear requirements. I needed enough storage for two weeks' worth of clothes, space for two surfboards under six feet, and room for spare surf gear like fins, wax, grub screws, and epoxy. Finally, it had to be made of wood. Aesthetics count.

In the days leading up to it, in a frenzy I put together a detailed schematic for what I wanted the bed base to look like, measurements and all. I thought carefully about material selection, thickness of wood, vanish, lining and draw system placement. I also start any project of this nature with a Figma design board to capture the aesthetic - rustic, wooden, minimalist, surf voyager. Once I felt confident, I went to Bunnings, selected 9 & 12mm thickness, got it cut to the right dimensions and procured the rest of the parts I needed (e.g. lacquer brushes, bolts and screws, and a circular saw).

To get the build started, I invited three of my good friends: two tall Dutchmen Jasper and Friso, and a biomedical engineer called Jared. At the start of the build, we all sat down and walked through my plan together. I explained what we were building, but I also made a point of clearly dividing up the work. Jared and I focused on installing the main structure into the car itself by bolting it into the existing seat mounts. Jasper and Friso worked on assembling the wooden drawer system.

Of course, no build project is without its problems. We ran into two main ones. First, we could not find the correct bolt pitch for the Nissan Patrol seat mounts, which was made harder by the fact that it is a Japanese vehicle. Bunnings did not stock the bolts we needed. Second, the drawer ended up being slightly too narrow for the runners at the back.

We solved both in fairly scrappy ways. For the drawer, we added a few washers, which allowed it to sit flush and slide properly. For the bolt issue, I used a temporary bolt that was not a perfect fit and later ordered the correct ones off eBay to secure the bed base properly.

One reflection I had from that weekend was how important it is to communicate the essence of a vision rather than prescribing every technical detail. When a project is large, you simply cannot communicate all the minutiae. What matters more is giving people a clear sense of the aesthetic, the constraints, and the principles of the space. Once that is understood, people can take ownership of their part and build something that fits the whole.

The whole build was an exercise in scrappiness. One thing I noticed is that you act far more scrappy when your own money is on the line.

I did a few things to keep costs low. I asked friends to help with the build, which saved time. I borrowed expensive power tools rather than buying them (thanks Vow). I also had most of the large timber pieces cut at Bunnings ahead of time. Because I had done the design work properly, they could cut everything quickly and accurately, and they did it for free. That meant we only had to deal with smaller cuts on the day, which saved a lot of time.

If I were to do it again, I would try to source recycled wood and be more deliberate about screw and bolt sizing. Even small inefficiencies add up.

Above all, I wanted the build to be fun. I was very conscious of that. We surfed a few times down the coast, spent long days working with our hands, and ended up with something tangible at the end of it.

A note I made the morning after the first night in the car:

It doesn't feel like it's actually happening until it is actually happening. I've been talking about living in my car for some months now, telling people with an excited grin across my face about the journey I was going to undertake. People listen with excitement, concern and confusion but the fact that they're there in front of you imparts a feeling of solidarity, like they're on the journey with you. When it's 9PM on a Wednesday night in the back streets of Maroubra and your lying on a foam mattress with blacked out windows and your breath is slowly fogging up the internal cabin, then you're really alone and the journey has truly begun.

The funny thing I found about the first night was that it was relatively uneventful. No one came and tapped on the glass, the streets were quieter than I expected and I basically slept through the whole night. There were two negative things worth noting though: (1) I felt an overwhelming feeling of exposure, I was out in a public common space with little security and at the will of fate for whatever strange events may unfold and (2) I felt the weight of social norms and judgement on my shoulders i.e. when I awoke I scanned the outside environment for onlookers with a mix of shame and anxiety. I hope this feeling passes.

On the positive side, the hardest night (the first night) is now over. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and I've now unlocked this new capability.