About BUILDING THE VARDO The First Days

Please stay with me as I learn to navigate and use the tools of Blog Land. I know there's a way to create a slide show of our progress...but, I'm not there yet. For today, the 6 pictures in the previous post are the first days of building.

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT (top row)

1. The trailer arrives. It's an IRON EAGLE single axle 12 foot trailer with a break-away braking system, made in Oregon. Pete chose it because after a year of looking because it has a load capacity that will give us approximately 3,500 lbs of actual vardo weight; and a single axle will allow us more maneuverability when we need to git!

2. Foundational Studs: All solid white oak, fastened mainly with screws. White oak is very hard, so nails break or don't penetrate. At this point of our building we used a low-voc clear sealant to protect the oak. Pete eventually began getting head aches from using the finish, so in the weeks to come we both decided 'green was not enough'. We would later find HomesteadHouse milk paint and use it to seal the framing.

Second Row

3. Another view of the foundational studs. This time you can see if you look closely, that Pete has put in foam insulation in between the studs. THIS INSULATION WILL BE REMOVED BEFORE WE FINISH THE FINAL FLOORING. This do and undo process is a reality of building for my MCS needs. We do the best we can, and then when we find that we have made a mistake (FORTUNATELY) we stop, re-think and find another solution that is better. In this case I found that when I 'sniff tested' that foam insulation, after being muscled tested weeks prior, the foam just about knocked me off my feet.

4. THE SHEET METAL UNDER-BELLY should have been pictured earlier, before the studs were in place. Oh well, we've learning ... The sheet metal under-belly is screwed to the frame of the trailer and silicone caulked to keep road gooze from coming into the vardo. The insulation that we will put in (to replace the foam) will rest on top of it.

Third Row

5. A VISIT to Jay Shafer's Tumbleweed Tiny House in the middle of our first days of building the Vardo. Jay was on a road trip along the W. Coast gathering momentum for the Tiny House Revolution. We saw him at Habitat for Humanity in Seattle.

6. PAPER WINDOW Templates. Everything we did in the construction of VardoForTwo began in our imagination, and then went to paper templates. This picture is what happens when you use brown craftspaper and DennyFoil to make a concept more real.

Little by little we will add more BUILDING THE VARDO photos and descriptions, and then ... a slide show will happen.