Today I was able to make great progress. The wiring is in for the exterior lights, and the insulation was glued in, but only after having to go to Lowes and Home Depot. What would a weekend project be without a couple of trips for something.

Shortly after getting the insulation in, the exterior was ready to put on. The outside walls are red oak plywood (1/4 inch) while the interior is birch (also 1/4 inch). I just had to see how she was going to look, so I temp strapped the roof on and bolted the light fixture in. Very cute. The spot in the back will also be covered by red oak ply, but a filler piece of cedar will cover the seam and add a decorative detail tying the roof to the rest of the body. The outside of the trailer will be finished with spar urethane, which will make for a very interesting contrast between the 2 woods.

The galley at the back is starting to come together, there will be a pair of doors at the bottom, these doors will hinge on the sides and will come together in the middle and the hatch over the back will follow the quarter round profile of the trailer and swing up. The space at the bottom on the left is for the cooler, the middle will have a couple of drawers and the space on the right will contain one of our large camping lockers and will also have a pull out shelf for the Coleman camp stove. In the upper portion there will be cabinets, a microwave and some drawers. The wiring that you see is for the porch lights and it will ultimately be hidden in a chase. There is a small push-button switch on the wall next to each door for each outside light.

In the lower galley, behind the middle section where the drawers will go, is the "electrical panel. The GFCI outlet is directly wired to the shore power outlet on the side of the trailer, the oulet strip/surge supressor will add a circuit breaker to the setup and allow for expansion if necessary. We are only wiring for 110 and not adding a 12v circuit, because we are not really interested in outback camping, we are partial to civilization and will likely only camp at "improved" campgrounds with creature comforts like power, water, cable and wifi. :-)

The shore power outlet is on the drivers side, a plug is installed into this cover and an extension cord will provide shore power from the campsite to the electrical panel. In addition to the exterior lights, I am planning on interior reading lights, power for laptop and or a tv, the microwave and assorted outlets for chargers and whatnot. And no, a light isn't being installed on the fender, it is just hangin out there until after the oak gets a couple coats of spar urethane. The shore power hatch will get brass screws once it is ready for final installation.

From Humble Beginnings

For our upcoming trip to Washington this summer we did a huge amount of research about options for camping and how best to wrangle all the kids. There is a bunch of stuff on the web and lots of plans, drawings, opinions, etc. So here is a chronicle yet another epic.

The basic premise of this tiny trailer is based on a stock Heavy Duty Harbor Freight trailer. Once I got the trailer assembled (thanks to AJ for his help, I don't think he knows that there isn't enough room for him to sleep in it yet :-) )

For the floor I used 3/8 CDX and planed down 2x4's to 1" thick, the trailer itself is a standard 4x8, I added about 8 inches of additional length by cantilevering the floor out over the trailer tongue. The Masonite in the background is a preliminary template.


The walls are starting to go up. The walls are yellow pine, the entire frame is glued and pocket screwed together it is quite strong and I figure this will be the heaviest part of the build. A couple of interesting details:

• The angled piece towards the back of the frame is to accommodate the trailer length of more than 8 feet and plywood coming in just 8 foot lengths.
• The shape of the door isn't accurate, the gusset hasn't been placed yet.

Even over and above the cantilever, the profile is adding another 5 inches of additional length.

Both walls up... Now it's starting to look like something.

This is the most fun part, the roof and ceiling are typically plywood, but I was going to have no part in that, so after much consideration, I decided to use white cedar and construct the roof much like a barrel is made, using staves. Each strip is slightly beveled and then glued to the adjoining piece. I decided it would be best to build the roof in sections. So far 6 of the sections are made all the way into where the roof flattens out. In this shot, the interior plywood is already installed.