To build a house you need to start with a good foundation,
so if your house is going to be on wheels then i reckon an old Mercedes is the best foundation you can get.
After many years of searching for the perfect truck we found this in Germany, an old horse transporter that ticked all the boxes, right size, the million mile engine OM366, 6 cylinder, 170hp, double cab with room for the all the kid's to sit, and the side drop.
It's all about the side drop because it act's as a balcony, or though at moment it mostly gets used as a slide, sometimes i even let the kids have a go too. When you put the drop down it opens up the whole living space and you feel more of a connection with the outside world, this is very important in a small space.
First we started by ripping everything out, and i mean everything, horse trucks carry horses and they piss a lot, and you can never get rid of the smell.
Ripping out the rotten floor
Once the floor was gone i could see the frame and chassis needed some TLC, so i used a angel grinder with a wire brush attachment to get rid of all the surface rust, then i put on two coats of some seriously strong chassis paint, this took a while.
Once we were sure that the piss was gone for good, we started building. I would like to add at this point that i have never really built anything in my life, Louise has, she is amazing at creating anything and she comes from a family of builders.
But i was learning on the job, and of course Poogle & Pootube helped a lot :)
New weather resistant plywood floor.
Frame.
10cm or 4inch Insulation and under flooring, we went overkill with the insulation and under flooring, but we do spend 6 months a year in the north of Sweden, so stopping the cold coming through the floor is a must.
With the floor we used really cheap pine flooring, but we used the angel grinder with a wire brush to bring out the grain and make it look old, and then we stained with walnut and it really looks good.
Time to start with the stud work or framing, this took a bit of time due to the fact that the aluminum body had studs, and i was not happy with just screwing the wood studs on top of the aluminum ones, and i needed the wood studs to be where the aluminum's were for framing in the window's
So i had to make a channel in each and every stud to slot nicely into the aluminum ones,
like this.
pic 1 how not to do it. pic 2 how i did it
Time for some insulation, 7cm/3" with a 1cm air gap between outer wall and insulation.
For the wall's we used the same pine flooring and wire brushed it, then stained in oak.
The kitchen. This was the most important part of the whole build for me, the first thing we bought was the kitchen top and gas hob. I didn't want an ikea kitchen, i wanted something earthy and real, something that would last a life time, so we went to a timber slab company in England, Timberdeal.co.uk near burgess hill, and we fell in love with this oak slab.
It was very expensive, the most expensive thing in the whole truck, but so worth it, and the owner's of timberdeal were genuinely lovely people.
The electrics, i wont bore you to death with all the details of how i did the electrics, but 2 years ago i didn't even know what a watt was, when i dropped out of school at 14 i was pretty much illiterate, so everything i know is pretty much self taught, and i knew i had to learn what volts, amps, ohms, watts was, and once the penny dropped it was easy.
I used 2 x 120w solar panels going into a 20amp charge controller and then into 2 x 6v deep cycle batteries connected in series to make 12volts, from the charge controller i went to a fuse box, and then out to all the lights, fridge and usb charge sockets.
I then installed a 240v connection going through a trip switch to two sockets, one powers the battery charger the other for 240v appliances. and then we have the 800w inverter. if you want to know more about how i did the electrics let me know and might do a post just on how i did the electrics and how it all works in fine detail.
#1 trip switch's #2 240v sockets #3 battery charger #4 2x 6v batteries #5 800w inverter
#6 charge controller #7 12v fuse box #8 80amp fuse from battery to inverter #9 20amp fuse from battery to controller
#10 cut off switch.
It's all starting to come together, louise made this beautiful shelfing unit for all our food stuffs, and we installed this beautiful Norwegian wood burner, it's a Jotul f602, Scandinavian wood burners are the best in the world in my opinion, and it works great, worth every penny.
In the corner we have a compost toilet, we did not want a shower, 90% of mold in campers comes from showers and water pipes freezing then they leak, before we built this we lived in caravans/campers/trailers and we never used the showers in them for this reason.
That's pretty much it, here is the truck today, Louise made these beautiful slide out draws and slide out dinning table for the kids under the bed, our Louise is brilliant at making things, such attention to detail, i was just blown away with how fucking amazing she is at building stuff, love you Louise.
We love living in our tiny home and it is by far the most amazing thing i have ever done, i know now that i can do anything if i put some effort into it,
We did it, we built a home for our family and we don't owe the bank anything, owning a home and being debt free is an amazing feeling, we truly feel FREE.
If you liked this post please upvote/follow/resteem, and check out my other posts, and if you have ANY questions please don't hesitate to ask.
Peace and love to the World x