While waiting for the living box to arrive, we start with building our rooftop tents. Because of the custom design of our truck, ready-made rooftop tents are not fitting. Let someone build them for us is extremely expensive since we want three of them… So youtube is your friend and apparently people do it themselves. If they can do it, we can do it, right?
So Douwe starts to make drawings and think of what material to make. The box will be made of aluminum profiles and plates for light weight. First step is to buy the material and weld the aluminum frame together. We also connect parts using rivets… never did so many rivets before. It is not really easy but we manage to make the box and the roof part. After this basic part, we attach the solar panels and install the gassprings. Now we have something that looks like a rooftop tent! We build them in our living room and garden, so we can work on them every free hour.

Next is giving them a paintjob. They will be painted in the same wood structure color as the living box so all will be like one whole. We actually painted the rooftop tents before we did the living box so we could have some practice. It is quite some challenge to figure out the right color mixture (and actually write it down to be able to reproduce it, made that mistake once!) and find the right grounding paint that is strong, durable for outdoors and doesn’t give a chemical reaction with the wood paint. You have to paint the whole thing in white ground paint, than add a layer of glaze with wood color. This layer you have to work with while it is still wet by using a rubber comb to create the wooden structure. When this first layer is dry you have to add 2-3 more layers without the comb to deepen the colours. We also build a rooftop deck for the bigger rooftop tent.

Next step is the harder one… sewing the tent. To prepare we watched dozens of youtube movies and we have been looking at a lot of finished rooftop tents to get an idea about how they are made. We want to insert a big plastic window for light and two half round ones with both a mosquito net and curtain to be able to open up the tent for fresh air and let the wind blow through. Easy right? So Karlijn does know how to sew which is a good start. Still with a normal sewing machine and this much fabric, it is a struggle. So the first tent she cried and swore and had to re-do things a couple of times, BUT! in the end, there was a tent with three windows! And it even seemed to be fairly symmetrical and fit. The first one is always the hardest, so the next two luckily are a bit easier and quicker to make. Connecting them turns out not to be that easy either, with the gas springs and getting the fabric real tight in to avoid problems with wind, but not to tight so we cannot properly open them… It takes a couple of tries and more rivets but we are very happy with the result in the end. The last part is to already make the roof finishing for the inside. We isolate the inside and we use photographic wallpaper on wooden plates which we attach at the inside. As soon as the tents are attached to the roof of the living box, it will be very hard to get this plates in, so that’s why we make them now already. Now we have a garden full of rooftop tents! The only thing is to wait for the living box to be ready and then move them up the roof where they belong.