Make the tiniest house a home – part 2

Read the most recent update here

As of June 2018 I’ve been living in a caravan. Yes, completely on purpose, no drama that made me end up in this situation. No, I’m not planning to move into a real house any time soon. To answer the frequently asked questions.

Now that I’ve been living this life for a while it’s time to change this camping item into a home. Coming back to the caravan is already coming home, but there are some things in here not quite to my taste.

When I started living in the caravan I set no goals and had zero expectations. I had never slept in a caravan before, I only had experience in tent camping. So I agreed with myself that I would try this out and see where it would get me. If I wasn’t happy than I would pack my things and find a house or move back to my parents.

After a few months I started to make some changes so my tiny house would really turn into a home. Every step makes it a bit more me than it was before. Since I know that caravans don’t sell well if they’re not original, I started with things that don’t have much impact and are easy to change back. But if I still live in this lovely thing for a bit longer I will probably have redone a lot of the interior. But I’ll see how far I’ll get.

Tent

The first change I made was in the first site. I bought a new tent. The one that came with the caravan was old and started to fall apart a little. But that wasn’t the biggest issue.

 

The thing was so heavy, there was no way that I could tear it down and set it up on my own. So I found this way smaller tent which is a lot lighter. I’ve set it up all on my own and it doesn’t take up so much space when moving from one site to the next.

Seating area

The caravan has a very specific style of decoration, using blue and gold throughout the interior combined with a lot of wood. The cushions on the couch were a thorn in my side. Luckily this had a quick fix.

 

I had some olive green fabric lying around that I thought would be great for the pillows. I knew it wasn’t enough for all, so I decided that I wanted three different matching colors. I started measuring, cutting and sowing, and managed to upgrade three pillows. Then I remembered left overs of white curtains I used to have. With that fabric I could do another three cushions.

 

With a sample of each fabric I went to a fabric shop where I was lucky to find the third fabric for the last two pillows. In two weekends I finished the job.

The moment the cushions were back in place in the caravan the whole corner looked so much more modern.

 

Table

The table in the seating area was specifically made strong enough to use it as a base for a second bed, since I’m alone one bed is plentiful. The design of the table was irritating me heavily, often I bumped with my knees into the base of the table and also my feet could never be placed comfortably underneath. The table top could never be close or far enough, resulting in me leaning into the table when working. The last thing that was just plainly annoying was cleaning under the table, moving the table back and forth multiple times still resulted in a half cleaned area.

I searched the internet and finally I found this video that formed the base for my design. First I looked into how I could, just as him, attach the leg to the wall. The layout of my caravan was not offering any solutions here, until one day I thought about a floor base fitting in between the benches. This would be strong enough to hold the weight of the table top in whatever position the table would be.

 

I thought out the design in SketchUp and set to work. I wanted the table top and the base to be of about 3 cm thick wood, but this is very expensive. Instead I bought thin plywood and slightly thicker planks, glued and nailed them together. I cut the portions pipe for the table leg and pieced all that together. A thin sheet of copper filled up the extra space between the pipe and the connections, this eliminated the tiny bits of movement each connection had. I painted the wood in one base layer and then three layers of gray paint.

When the table was finally put into its rightful place it instantly was right. It does exactly what I wanted. I easily change the position of the table top. I love the flexibility.

 

Do you have any suggestions for updates to the caravan? Or things that I shouldn’t touch or forget? Please let me know. I’ll keep you all posted on the progress.