Vardo Beginnings
April 4, 2012
A huge project that I have been working on in the last few months is the building of a house. A very tiny house.
I say I’ve been working on it, but really, I have been mostly funding it and Jason has been building it. I have been helping where I can (mostly involving painting tasks) but he has been doing an amazing job designing, engineering, and building the whole thing so far.
Our little house is roughly based on the designs of old Gypsy Vardos. It is 8 feet wide and a total of 16 feet long, including a 2’ deck on the back.
I will be updating more about our little caravan as we build more, but I wanted to get it up here because we’ve already done quite a bit with it! It started out as a bare bones trailer that my wonderful friend Rose gifted to us, which I painted with a rust inhibitor. Jason framed out the whole floor and the walls, and put in the insulation and sub-floor, and attached all that to the trailer. He then attached all the walls and created the lintels for the roof, and today he is actually installing the roof! We decided to try out having a clear plastic roof, in order to be able to star-gaze and get really efficient with sunlight. Our plan is to insulate the roof in the winter by creating a quilt with reflectix type insulation.
Here are some in-process photos, and I’m excited to update about some more of the features of the house as we work on them.