An 18-year-old who transformed a £5,000 Skoda Roomster into a cosy DIY camper from scratch in just 12 hours, with a budget of £400, is now planning to tour Europe with her friend.
Zoe Buske, a software engineer who lives in Wiesbaden, Germany, became fascinated with car-to-camper conversions after watching videos online at the age of 15, and began planning her own long before she had a driving licence.
After passing her test at the end of 2024, she bought a 2009 Skoda Roomster for £5,000 and, in May 2025, completed a DIY conversion using “furniture grade plywood” to build a bed and storage space over the back seats.
She tested it out the same day with her friend, Ronya, 20, spending the night in a car park – admitting she felt scared at first, but ultimately found it safe and comfortable – and later took the car to Luxembourg to camp and explore.
Zoe now plans to travel to Sweden for three weeks and shares her travels on TikTok, where a video of her showing the conversion process received more than 2.5 million views.
Zoe told PA Real Life: “I love looking at new places and travelling and this is just perfect – it was all convenient and my dream has come true.
“It kind of it makes you more free – you don’t need to plan as much.”
Zoe has been “obsessed with the topic” of people converting their cars into somewhere to sleep ever since she started watching videos about it online at the age of 15.
She explained: “I did so much research, I looked at every possible car that I could afford to do it.
“Even before I had my licence, I knew I wanted to buy a car that was big enough for it, it was the only thing I would ever talk about.
“I just wanted to convert this car and travel Europe.”
After passing her driving test at the end of 2024, she bought a 2009 Skoda Roomster in February 2025 for £5,000.
“My parents, they’re both not the biggest fans of camping, so at the beginning they were worried it wasn’t going to be comfortable, but they were very supportive by the end,” she added.
“They helped me find the car and my friends thought it was really cool.”
She stored the car in her grandmother’s garage until she had saved enough money to start the conversion.
She reached her goal of about £400 for the project at the end of May.
From there, she measured “every single part” of the car and drew up a rough plan for her conversion.
She decided to fit a bed over the folded-down back seats and boot, along with some storage space to hold her gas stove – all built using wood, despite “never doing woodwork” or any DIY before.
She said: “I got some furniture grade plywood and, basically, in a store, they cut the wood for me in the sizes that I had written down.
“Then I basically just screwed everything together.
“There was a bit of trial and error because my screws didn’t work and bits from the drill snapped in half.
“When I got that done, I went to Ikea and I bought a really thin foam mattress and cut it to fit – it isn’t perfectly rectangular in the back.
“Then I cut some material out to black out the back windows for when we’re sleeping.”
Zoe completed the entire conversion on budget in just 12 hours, spread across three days, which was quicker than she had expected.
The day she finished, May 24, she felt a huge “sense of achievement” and was very “proud” of herself.
She was so eager to try it out that she spent that night in it, driving about half an hour from her house and staying in a car park.
“Some teenagers decided to blast music so we had to move and we found another car park,” she said.
“We felt quite safe but it was scary at first.
“I have been camping with my father before, it wasn’t the first time for me to sleep outside, but we didn’t have proper window covers so I was super scared someone would come in or knock on the window and ask us to leave, which didn’t happen.
“And besides that, it was very comfortable. It wasn’t super cold or super warm, even though it was like 10C outside.”
On May 29, Zoe and her friend travelled to Luxembourg, staying at a campsite and using the car to explore the city.
Zoe now has her sights set on exploring Sweden in her converted car for three weeks, parking in car parks along the way, and one day hopes to travel throughout Norway.
She said: “I think I do worry about my safety (as a woman) and I think it’s natural even though me and my friend go together.
“We make sure we lock the doors from the inside and cover the windows so people can’t see in.”
She has also been documenting her conversion and travels on TikTok under the handle @oldghostsinthecastle, with several of her videos receiving more than 150,000 views.
“I had a lot of people doubt me and tell me the bed won’t hold and it ended up holding pretty fine, we had no issues,” Zoe explained.
“I think what stuck out most to me was, one woman, she wrote that she was 60 years old and when she was my age she would never have done it and thought it was super cool that I did it.
“And I think the general response was positive but I had people say it doesn’t look good, but the goal is that it’s functional anyway.”
To others interested in converting a car, she added: “I think the most important advice is to just start and don’t listen to people who think you can’t do it without experience.”
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