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.