Introduction: Build Your Own Drivable Tiny House/camper

About: I am a graduated furniture maker from the Netherlands.

The last month my girlfriend and me went on a road trip through the Balkan. We wanted to save money as much as possible so we decided to make a camper out of her car. This was convenient in three ways, 1: because we used our own car we didn’t need to buy a camper. 2: because it is a car, you can park the car on a parking lot and nobody bothers so for wild camping this is great! 3: some campings wont charge you for a camper but just a car which is cheaper.


In this instructible I will show you how we did it. There are some nice little details that make this such a good house to travel In.

Keep in mind that it is still a car and that you can be limited because of the measurements.

Step 1: Make Some Room

To make some space you need to take out the back seat. This is way easier then you think but I don't know how this works with different cars but I think it's not that big of a deal.

Step 2: Storage

So once you got the back seat out you will notice that the floor isn't even. You need to fill up those holes. We where lucky that the holes were big enough to store up to 3 containers! This was great because of this we had some space for all the food and drinks we took with us!

Step 3: Some Space to Sleep

The most important thing for a house or camper is a bed (who doesn't love to sleep?)

When you are going to measure the measurements for the mattress, make sure to put the front seats all the way to the front. You won't be sleeping and driving at the same time anyways. This gave us like 25 cm more space for our mattress. We chose to have a foldable mattress so we could make more space for the front seat easily when we needed to drive again.

Step 4: Privacy

We like having privacy, so that nobody can peek in our car and see us sleep. So we made some curtains. We used elastic ropes with hooks to hang our curtains on. My girlfriend insisted to make some hem stitches because it looked better but if you don't have a sewing machine, just cut some holes on top and put the cords through it. Make sure you can cut holes in your fabric without ruining it. Some fabrics are terrible to cut. At the back of the car we used some velcro tape to tape it to our rear plank because this plank is covered with some sort of fabric. Now you just created yourself some privacy.

Step 5: Tips

So now you have your drivable home you are almost ready to go. But first let me give you some small tips what made the use of this creation easier.

#1Take one big suitcase. Because you want to sleep in the back you dont want to sleep between your clothing. So if you have one suitcase you can put all your clothing in the suitcase and as soon you are going to sleep, you put the suitcase in the front.

#2 don't forget to install some anti insect net. We didn't do this and o my, we were so done with the mosquitoes. Look at this instructable Mosquito net with magnets. This was exactly what we needed.

#3 Enjoy!!!


Eventually we drove 12000 km and slept 26 days in the car, we have been to: poland, slovakia, hungary, croatia, bosnia and montenegro. We loved every minute of it. So upgrade your car and go!


If you have any questions pleas feel free to ask even when its about the travel and not the car.