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We've just bought a slightly used Fendt 410 which is a three berth, with the usual seating at the front, the cushions making up into a double bed, and seating for two at the rear, making up into a single bed. There are just the two of us and we wanted a small 'van with a bed we could leave made up and still have a separate dining area. In previous two berth vans, we had the usual 'fight with the cushions' routine morning and night to make the bed up and then stow it away. In our last 3.75m 'van we were going nuts with it at the end of a 2 week trip! My wife likes a 'proper' bed and trying to make a bed when you had to lie on at the same time was impossible!!

On our first night in the 'van, although the foam cushions were thick enough and a tight fit, we weren't comfy. Being near an Ikea, we investigated the bedding dept. We bought a foam mattress to lay on top of the seating foam pieces, which improved matters, but it still wasn't right as the seat cushions were higher on the seat bases at each end and the table top in the middle didn't come right to the ege of the bed when made up, so it sagged in the middle somewhat, and so did I! Back to Ikea, and the mattress we bought was fine on top of a slatted birch bed base in the showroom.. I thought a slatted base could be easily adapted to fit in the 'van and would be healthier than having two layers of foam about a foot deep, the slats giving good ventilation for the mattress but still gave a sprung support. We all give off about 2 pints of moisture when asleep, it goes down into the bed as well as onto the windows! 

Ikea sell the slats separately and also as a kit with a light frame, which are sized to fit in their various bed bases. I bought a kit 140cm wide and I'll have to slightly adjust the frame to fit but it shouldn't be difficult, and we bought one which has a separate sub-frame at the top end which raises and lowers, making watching tv in bed easier! If anyone wants to know what we bought, just ask, and I'll be able to send photos once the job is done in a couple of days.

I can acess one under-seat locker from outside and I may put hinges on the frame end to access the other, if needed

This sounds fascinating - can't wait for more!   We need to replace our caravan soon, and can't find the layout we want without features that we don't want.  We've had a look at lots of continental models, which would suit us better - and a lot of these have a transverse front bed with a u shaped seating area 'amidships'.

I just wonder what the advantage is, though, with a transverse front bed, to a fixed corner bed like ours?  I know people say 'the corner's missing' but in practice you don't notice at all, or even 'one person has to climb over the other to get out of bed' but surely this applies just as much to a transverse double at the front?  We have our fixed bed, left up and made up all the time, and proper seats at the front which will seat six if we decide to have a party!!

We too hated the cushion wrestling scenario - which is even worse when you have children with you, and you're throwing cushions and bedding around in the three square feet of space you have left.  With the complicated cushion arrangements which now make up the sofas it can be a work of art simply to calculate which cushion goes where.

OK, here's what I used.. This is the bed base:-http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/categories/departments/bedroom/10635 and this is the mattress:- http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/70144420

I've taken photos, but I don't know if it's possible to put them here, so I'll put them in my profile photo gallery if possible. As mentioned above, there are things to bear in mind; unless you can find some way of hinging the bed base, it will block access to the storage lockers under the bed. One of ours has an outside locker door and we decided we didn't need the other as there are so many cupboards in our 'van. The 'climbing over' business is the same if you have any layout of double bed, don't you think? Which is why we really wanted a van with two fixed singles! My conversion wouldn't really work (IMHO) with a fore & aft double with a corner missing as the bedframe would stick out into the walkway, unless there's enough room....

My object was to avoid sleeping on the seat bases and backrests and to leave the bed made up all the time. There are only the two of us! With the added bonus of the raised pillow-end facility, (and you can get an electric version at reasonable cost in Ikea!!), we will no doubt use the bed to recline on to watch TV  - pass the grapes....

DIY bit: I determined how wide the bed frame needed to be and decided the existing bed base was strong enough where the frame would rest on it. I have NOT used the table in the middle, the frame as it is proved strong enough, the frame is made of laminated timber. In my case it needed to be 133cm wide. As the frame out of its box was 140cm wide, I cut 7cm off the four cross members and all the slats. The cross members had two holes in each end for a wooden jointing plug and a big screw. Anyone familiar with Ikea self-assembly stuff will know what I mean. As I had cut one end off each cross-member the holes needed to be re-made. Crafty bit: I cut a 1cm piece off a chopped-off bit with the holes in and taped it to each sawn-off end in turn, and used it as a template to drill new holes of the correct depth. I measured the depth of each hole, added 1cm for the template, wrapped tape around the drill bit to mark the correct depth, and drilled the new holes..

I had to assemble to base in-situ and used packers and some screws to secure it to battens under the existing locker tops so the finished frame wouldn't move about as the 'van layout has a wider space at the head-end of the bed than at the other end.

Although the mattress is 140cm wide, being foam it's compressible and is fine sitting on a slightly narrower base.

As mentioned above, the bed frames and mattresses come in a wide selection of sizes and degrees of comfort depending on your budget and with a little bit of DIY I think you could use this idea in most 'vans. If room permits to raise the finished bed, hinges could be put on the frame to access lockers.

I commend the idea to the house!