The first thing I did was rip out the back seat. A bag of pecans had spilled in the back years ago, and was still stuck under the seat!Next I made a rough template for the floor out of cardboard. I had some help from my darling boyfriend, who cut some plywood in the same shape. After a lot of fitting, grunting, cussin' and fussin' we ended up with this:
The wooden floor is supported by some closed cell foam letter things I found at the thrift store. I glued the squares together with gorilla glue. We also made some little wooden legs in the front. The spare tire remains, and helps support the floor. It's held down by its own weight, nothing bolted to the car at all.Here is the finished floor platform, just in time for our trip to North Carolina. Oh, and this is Gypsy. She's my best friend, my traveling partner, and she will be mentioned often I'm sure.
For a bed, I am using some 5" thick memory foam mattress toppers that I bought online on the cheap. I had one for me and one for the darlin' but it's a bit crowded in the little car for two people. Imagine that! So I've only got one cot sized mattress in there now. After we got back from NC, I decided I needed to add some insulation panels for the windows. I am a creature of the swamp, and I can't sleep in freezing weather, no matter how good my sleeping bag is! I also wanted to make the floor look classy, so I bought a box of vinyl sticky floor tiles. It cost me about $20, and made my floor look fabulous. I used R-max insulation board that I found in a friend's workshop. The free scraps were more than enough for such a small project. 
I now have a very comfortable sleeping space. No bells and whistles. Of course there is still some work left to do. I would like to paint the panels on the inside, but I haven't decided what color to use, or whether to use the leftover vinyl tiles. A useful thing to get would be a low voltage cutoff switch for my car's battery. At this time I use the car for any power I need, which is almost nothing. If I plug in my laptop to the power inverter, the car gets a little tired after a while. As time goes on, I might consider getting a small boat battery for running little things like my laptop or coffee machine, as well as a switch so I can sometimes charge it while driving, using my car's alternator. Someday I might even install a solar panel on the roof.
But there are more pressing things at hand, such as getting on the road to my first destination.
