Grassroots Camper Sports, the tiny house edition

We have a Yeti and a compressor fridge. Fridge for the win! The Yeti is very good, but the fridge is better. They better be, they're not inexpensive. You couldn't pay me to re-install a 3-way fridge in anything that I planned to keep. Out here on the Left Coastal Desert a 100W panel mounted flat on the roof will keep up with the fridge on most days.

Had the day off, and got some work done.

But before I post it, thanks to all of the Veterans, as your hard work and dedication give people like me 1) the day off, and 2) enough leisure time to spend my day off doing stuff.

Thanks.

Rear wall is repaired.  Couple of roof boards need replaced, but other than that, the repair work is finished, and the build work can start.

First on the build agenda is the bathroom- two walls, one in the back, one in the front.  Hopefully, the enclosure I bought comes soon, as then I can actually do everything for the bathroom. And then pretty  much everything else is build off of the bath.

After that, the wiring, then the handful of plumbing, finally, the real build.

Been forever since I posted, 

So you can choose- TAMO, or tldr...

First time she's been outside since November.

So where did I stop- I see it was the rear wall being installed in November.

After that was done, I roughly laid out where the bath would be in the corner, and started on the bed.  So we wanted to sleep north-south, and have a queen bed- which is a HUGE thing for a camper like this.  Here's the basic frame other than the flip out end.

And then with covers and the flip up end

The whole idea uses a tri-fold mattress, where we can flip down the end when we sleep, keep it up the rest of the time.  That leaves room for a tiny dinette.  But good enough.  I'm sure you noticed the walls got painted, hard to miss that.

Here's the rough dinette with the bathroom wall at the left.  And the spot for the electrical box.  The box is pretty cool- both 120V and 12V and it has an inverter to run the 12V stuff and charge a battery.  When I got it, I made sure I got one that could charge either lead or LiFePO4 batteries.  That choice was decided a few months later when there was a massive sale on batteries.

And the proposed location for the wet bath- this is a toilet/shower pan for a wet bath.

Then the kitchen- this is where I got to learn how to make a cabinet- and I'm not a good carpenter.  Good enough, I suppose.  Learned that pocket screws are really handy.  

From left to right- a fake stove cabinet that I made, the front of the original kitchen, where the sink will go, and the 12V Fridge.  This took quite a while, but we didn't take many pictures inbetween.  There is also a new well to the left- which somewhat separates the cooking area from the door.  Worked out really nice.

At this point, I will point out that we went 100% electric.  I spent a lot of time looking for a good gas cook top, but never really found one I liked.  And then we looked into re-using the gas range that we got- but it was pretty rusty.  I had already taken out the gas heater- and we had been doing heating with a small 1500W heater- which worked great considering we worked with the door open.

Gas made things moved around mess- have to move open walls to vent stuff, fabricate new gas lines, etc.  Ugh.  So on the fake stove cabinet we will have a small 120V burner- which we tried inside and it was great.  Bonus on the electric- no need for HC or CO detectors- no gas leaks, no flames.  Still have a smoke detector.  No vents for the water heater adds more bonuses.

It should be said that there are a TON of state parks here in Michigan, and most of them have 120V hookups.  So for now, we will likely stick with electrical hook up sites, and learn how much power we will use.  That will go into a solar/battery system if we ever get that far.

I should also mention work flow- late last year, I injured my arm which turned into a constant shoulder pain.  So we took some time off at the beginning of the year.  Then it got REALLY cold- too miserable to work.  

So the bed structure went in just before the holiday in 2020, whereas the kitchen picture was in March.  

Just after finishing the lower part- I did another cabinet- an open structure to hold a microwave:

My wife gave me a small break- the cabinet to the right of the microwave was a cabinet she bought.  LOL.

Here's how it finishes.

It's now early April- there was a fantasy that we would be done by now, and we could take some cool weather camping trips.  LOL.  That didn't happen.  So we pulled ALL of the windows out to rebuild.  There are 7 windows of various sizes.  Oh boy.  

Lots of rusty screws that didn't want to come out, lots of 50 year old butyl tape, and a lot of confusion over the seals.

And a pile of parts after being taken apart

These turned out to be some real oddball windows- many of these jalouise windows are made by Hehr, but these are not.  Add that to the problem that Vintage Trailer Supply was short on supplies, and it took some experimenting for the seals.  Thankfully, the incredibly hard plastic seals were still identifiable, and that Vintage Tailer Gaskets DID have the supplies, and after a couple of months of working on them, we got them all done.

I would post a bunch of rebuild pictures, but between all of the scrubbing and polishing of the aluminum, our fingers were so sore that we didn't take any pictures.

Since I was already a glutton for punishment, I then decided to strip the roof and repaint.  The PO put on a rubbierized roof paint, but when I was doing some early roof repair, I noticed that it was pretty easy to peel off.  What a mess.  Scrape, scrape, scrape, and scrape some more.  But it was well worth it.

This also happened while I was adding a roof vent (which wasn't there before) that you see in the background, and a bathroom sky light hole, which you see in the foreground.  The paint is Rustoleum Tractor paint, and it went on really well.  Some of you may remember a few questions about that paint a couple of months ago.  

Progress seemed strong- but there was still a lot to do.  Plumbing was freaking me out- leaks suck.  Electrical needed to be finished, the bath needed to be installed, and all of the tanks needed installed.

The bath pan that was posted a little while ago had a 5 gal black tank installed.  Hope that's big enough.....  We will see.  We have a 14 gallon gray tank that fit perfectly between the frame rails and didn't stick down much.  Clarence is a big deal since this is a low profile trailer that had almost no ground clearance.  

The black tank has a pressure treated wood structure holding it up over the frame, the gray tank has a fabricated frame around it to support it.  BTW, plastic melts.  Bet you didn't realize that.  I clearly didn't.  As we are doing water testing now, I found out that I was spraying the tank with burning metal, and I have found a few pinholes.  Yuk.  Thankfully, just the gray tank.  And just a few holes.

I thought I had space to screw in some fittings into the tank, but the tank literally was perfect in the frame.  So I had to switch to compressing slip fit seals.  Other than the effort getting the tubes in, they are pretty great.

Before the windows were installed and after the roof was painted- we painted the outside- this is a roll on job using Shercrill (sp?) by Sherwin Williams.  Went on nice- rolling it covered up some of the flaws- this is a 50 year old soft aluminum trailer after all.  

Windows went in fast- the day after the paint was done.

By now, it's late May, and we decided to make some reservations to "motivate" us- as if we needed to.  We were already working every day and weekends.  Even doing tiny projects while working from home.  

Didn't make the first reservation which was last weekend, but did for Monday- although the weather looks to suck all week.  I'm getting ahead of myself.

Back to the inside- once the outside paint was done, the rear of the trailer needed finished- so I made an upper cabinet and an open closet in the back.  By now, my skills are getting better, but I'm also working around mistakes I had made before.  The closet is "resting" on an exterior accessible box that was far, far, far from square.  Oh, well.

And then the bath- 

The walls are a Dumawall vinyl tile, which looks HUGE, but it TINY, TINY, TINY.  I hope this product last as long as it looks good- it was pertty easy to install.  There is a very light weight waterproof backer board, and this is just glued on top of it.  Scary to get started doing it, but once going, it gets done fast- we were done in a weekend.

My wife added a lot of mid century mod decorating- looks cool in person.

That's the table in the sleeping/ travel position.  There's a rail along the wall that supports the side, and then we just stick in a leg, and it's up.  I found the support rail on a tube of U's video, and it was really cool to find.

Axle got rebuilt next- again few pictures- but as I took it apart, I got a panic that there was zero brake hardware anywhere.  This is where I found out that you can get the brake units really easily.  Bolt right up.

New paint, clean and greased bearings (they were in great shape- no clear wear or grinding).  Done.

Since this was a low profile camper, I also got a lift kit- which lifted it up by just over 2 1/2 inches.  Still have plenty of clearance in my garage for it.

Some of the terrible work with no photos- cleaning and painting the frame sucked.  We shared this part- I did the original cleaning with wire brushes- looked like a coal miner when I was done.  Then I put in some sealing paint to start with.  My wife did two coats of paint.  When I was young, this was a crappy job- lying on your back and lifting your arms up.

Now that we are old, this was actual torture.  We both came out of the work feeling like we got hit by a ship.  So both a feeling of just sire all over, and our heads were all messed up between being on our backs and breathing chemicals like that.

That sucked really bad.

Lots and lots of time consuming details.  

Like how I had to get an extension cord because I could not plug in the microwave.  

Or how scary and time consuming it was to use low VOC water based contact cement (the counter top)

Or this custom plexiglass replacement of the rear window so we could properly vent the portable A/C

We hired an electrician for the 120V work, and I'm glad I did- I installed a bunch of things, but he found were I did a poor job.  It all works now.  There are a lot of suggestions to use a surge protector, and I found a cool one that monitors our power usage- Very cool.  That way I can keep track of everything.

A month ago or so, a battery company (Battery Hookup) got a batch of Renogy hardware- so I picked up a 100ahr battery for about half price (still $500).  More than I need for now, as the 12V stuff is pretty minor- but it's also a good start for an off grid set up.  And the fridge runs 12V while driving, too- so to be safe and all.  Battery on a tongue rack and a dc-dc charger is under the bed (so I can charge while driving).  

For A/C, we originally planned on using a window unit built into the upper wall.  But when the time came, the idea of having that heavy of a unit high up on an old trailer... yea- a rethink.  That's when we went with the portable unit.  Not as efficient, sure, but it's in a safe spot.  Since we will store this indoors, a roof unit would not fit.  Nor would I be confident in the old roof to hold it up.

Which brings us back to today.  It was finished enough to roll outside and drain the bleached water (cleaning the system out).  It's mostly done with packing and then the rest of the stuff.

Sharp eyed readers will notice the propane tank on the tongue.  And right next to it is the gas fire pit that we have the gas for.  And we also have a small gas grill.  But it's all outside- so no gas running inside.

In theory, we will go camping on Monday.  I kind of doubt it, though.  Weather looks really, really bad all week.  Oh, well.  Still will take the week off, and if the weather does not turn out that bad, the site is only 2 hours away to the west, and we can show up to the end of the reservation.

We can also go for a few weekends in July and August before taking a week in July.

It's done and not at the same time- it's going to need some sorting, for sure.

Looks great!

I love the teal paint and mid-century touches - it's like going to my grandma's house!

Love the 50s vibe and color of the galley!

That is outstanding! Well done. 

Slept in it last night in the garage- pretty good.  But camping in warm weather is tough- the A/C going all night is one thing, but the humidity it's trying to control is also hard to deal with.  Thankfully, neither of those is about the camper.

I have to download a bed picture- but it's a queen bed, and given how small the camper it, it VERY much dominates when it's out.  We kind of knew that, but it's pretty funny.