Building a lounge is not something you have to do. There are a lot of pre-fabricated options available and a lot of places will be able to custom make one for you. We have seen a fair few people who use these and have no issues.
As with everything we have done so far, we decided to build our lounge for a few reasons; cost, space, storage and design. In our school bus floor plan, we explain that our lounge was very important to us and we knew we could get exactly what we wanted if we built it ourselves.
The design for our school bus lounge –
The first step for the lounge framing is to work out what you want from it.
The most obvious function is a seating area. We want it big enough to comfortably sit both of us, and an extra 1-2 people if we have visitors. It also has to be big enough that we would be comfortable, and could stretch out when watching a movie. We then decided to add an ottoman which will provide extra foot space, and also double as storage and a seat.
Storage is the next most important thing. With everything you build in your school bus conversion, storage has to be a consideration, and under the lounge is a perfect area . We had planned where our appliances were going so knew that the height and width of our lounge had to meet the size of our Suburban hot water system which we had decided to place underneath. There is then more room left over for other items that need storing, as well as the extra in the ottoman.
Most builds we found either choose seat and storage, or seat and sleeping area. We wanted it all, so we designed our lounge so that it could perform all 3 functions! Our original plan was to have it extend so that we could turn it into a doubled bed. We didn’t have enough space to make a double bed, but we did manage to make it extend to the size of a single bed which is sufficient. It also means that while we are watching a movie or just relaxing, we can extend this and have a bigger space to relax for ourselves also.
How were we going to achieve this? The base (where we sit) would have interlocking panels that would separate and slide out to become the bed. It would then have hinges to lift the entire base up to access the hot water and storage underneath. We then decided to have the front lift so we have a partial foot recliner as well. It was such a complicated design but we managed to make our lounge frame work.
Confusing? Let us get into more detail.
Building our school bus lounge – The base frame
First we used 35mm x 70mm timber, and built the initial base frame, which provides the structural support and attaches to the floor and wall. We used 50mm wood screws as well as wood glue to make the joins secure. We started with the floor pieces, then attached the uprights followed by the top pieces.
The Interlocking System
The base frame was the easy part. Planning out the interlocking slide out system was the difficult part. Shane and I wanted it to be separated in half, so that they could pull apart and extend separately to make a corner lounge, and together to make a bed. This would also allow them to lift separately to access different areas of storage. These interlocking pieces were made using 19mm X 64mm dress pine.
Every second slat is referred to as ‘fixed slats’. These are attached to a row of dress pine, and fixed at the back with hinges. The front end of the slats are attached to another piece of dress pine on the inside of the lounge frame. As we want the slats to lift up to access storage, they had to attach to something that was not attached to the base frame. This is why we have added these additional pieces of dress pine.
The pieces that slide out are also attached to a piece of pine, on the outside of the frame. This piece keeps all the slats together as one, when being slid out. If you look at the picture below, two of the slats are made longer. When the lounge is pushed together, these longer pieces sit on the edge of the lounge and prevent the slide out pieces from falling down.
These longer pieces continued to get stuck on the edge of the frame when we pushed the lounge back together, which can be seen in the video. We ended up placing a washer underneath the longer pieces which lifted them slightly. We also sanded back the edge that they sit on, providing a rounded lip, rather than a corner. This has prevented them from getting caught and allows them to slide and sit in together without issues.
After this, we added a smaller piece of wood cut to size which is fixed in between the two sliding halves. This provides a guide so that they slide out straight and prevents them getting stuck.
The ‘Recliner’
The front of our lounge has been made using 12mm ply. It provides the ground support when the lounge is extended for the bed. As our lounge ended up being slightly shorter than we wanted, we joined this 12mm ply on with hinges. When lifted up, a small 20cm piece of dress pine (also attached with hinges), falls down from underneath, propping the front 12mm piece of ply up on a slight angle. This gives us our ‘recliner’.
Our back rests are made with 35mm X 70mm wood, cut into the base frame. We then attached 12mm ply to the front of them, which provides the back rest.
We will use Dunlop foam for all of the lounge cushioning. This cushioning we will get custom cut to size and then we will make covers for the cushions ourselves.
After building our kitchen frame, the lounge was a huge step in our Toyota Coaster bus framing and we are so amazed we were able to pull it off.
The more we build ourselves and the more experienced we get, the better things worked. As hard as it has been to do on our own it has been worth it.
If you haven’t already, watch our video below of our build and let us know what you think.
