My Best Friend’s Building a Camper… (Part 1)
“I bought a lemon. I made lemonade.” -Andy
My best friend is building out a camper on the side of my house for the next few weeks. We’ve been friends for ages now and he’s the reason we drove all the way to Alaska. He’s gone Herring and Salmon fishing out in Homer for the last 4 or 5 years. But now he’s building himself a portable home. I’m a bit jealous because his place is so much more spacious than our little VW Van we lived in for a year.
He started out with a 20 something year old Lance truck camper and tore the thing apart to repair all the water damage. He found it was more extensive than he’d thought.
It’s looking a lot better now though!
And after finishing up the structure and the siding he spent a while learning about electrical systems and solar from Rob so that he could set up his…
Control panels above the fridge…
2 batteries (we used only one in the van) and his charge controller and inverter…
His fuse panel and you can see some of his gas lines which will lead over to his eventual stove and to his little propane heater that he hooked up because although it’s been a mild winter, he’s on the north side of the house and it’s cold!
That’s the little heater he’s using for now. And you can see that he’s got some good insulation going in.
Some overall pictures of his work to date… He’s got a lot to go!
He also got this adorable little stove for the camper… It’s amazing how little wood you need to heat up this space!
He also sourced a bunch of material from ReSource, my little junkyard home away from home….
Yep this nice deep sink and this awesome stovetop that is just one of those burners that no one ever uses on the side of a BBQ. Someone was just gonna throw these in scrap metal!
Saved!
He also got the cedar siding he’s going to be putting up…
He and his sister (who also lives in town and goes to Naropa) are working on sanding down the boards here…
He also used my flame weeder to add some cool burned coloring to the wood…
Before… and
After
And then he decided to finish them with Linseed oil…
This is going to look so gorgeous I can’t get over it!
Imagine that as siding inside his camper…
I’m sure you want to see it… So do I… Patience…
Really cool project! Looking forward to the final results! Keep us posted for sure!
Will do. It's really starting to come together. That siding is looking good! I'll update when the interior is fully lined (;
Jeeze that’s awesome :) I don’t know if I could build one.. but I’d love to take one across the country one day !!
With enough time put in I'm sure you could do it. Taking one across the country would be even better though huh?! We figure we'll build one too sometime soon and caravan with him to Patagonia... Now that'll be something to document!
To Patagonia?! That’d be the trip of a lifetime!!!
We drove our old VW Van to Alaska last summer so we've gotta up the game ( ;
I always wanted to do this. Looks great, waiting for more :)
Cool! I love seeing build projects for small living spaces. Keep us updated!
Serious strip down! Nice project , sounds awesome renovating a camper and going salmon fishing in Alaska. I will look forward to the next part.
We have started a woodworking community here on steemit and would welcome you. We have a discord channel, link here: Woodworking on Steem Discord Channel And a weekly woodworking post competition ,
you can read the post here
Thanks
@jist
I'm actually on the discord already... just not super active. I have a hard time sitting at the computer for any length of time. But you'll see me on there now and again.
Next part is coming in a bit. Work takes a while when you like working alone like he does. But it's coming along really nicely ( ;
Yes I can see you there now, my bad. Drop in any time. I know what you mean I have never been much of a computer guy till steemit. I work alone mainly but that suits some. Looking good.