Once I pulled out the old rotten internal window frame and peeled back the old skin, my wife could finish painting around the sofa.
Renovation
I’ve just completed building an external mobile bathroom unit. And I worked on a larger caravan (travel trailer) renovation last year. It was the same make and model as this one in this article, well almost – just a stretched out version. Now that is completed. So I needed to either sell or restore my tiny caravan that I lived in before the stretched out one. It’s almost done as the photos will show.
Wow, what a difference a bit of paint can do. The photos here don’t really do justice to the massive improvement to the look and feel of the caravan now that the interior is re-carpeted and repainted and many other bits and pieces repaired and improved. It is a brand new space.
Things done & todo…
DONE:
- Replaced old carpet
- Repainted interior (cream for cupboards, white for walls)
- Replaced rear window sill and back wall lining below it.
- Repaired and restored seats and kitchen table.
- Replaced old kitchenette bench top.
- Installed skylight into roof hatch.
TODO:
- exterior paint job
– plain white without red stripe (it doesn’t make the caravan go any faster) - replace a few broken window pains
- make seat covers
Married Now. Our Current Situation & What’s Next
There is some urgency to our renovations. I need more space for my wife’s stuff!
Twelve months ago I didn’t know I was getting married! I was quite content to live the rest of my life alone if that was the way it had to be. But the Lord Yeshua ืืืื ืืฉืืข had other plans. Obviously we are off to a humble beginning, we have two, a mobile bathroom unit that fits on my 8×5 ft trailer and we have a lone of another caravan. We have our own 1000 Litre (264 Gallons) IBC water tank, Gas hot water for showers, 500W 12v solar panels and a 300A Hr battery (no inverter). We still have mains power. We have a home made composting toilet also.
Ideally we want to live off grid and away from the city. Currently we live in Melbourne. We don’t have money for land. We both hate the rat race and want to have a permaculture type set up for vegitables etc. We have a little Garden already planted. At some point we will have to move from our current location as the owners are going to sell their property.
Because my wife Susanne Hadassah comes from Germany she has to leave every 3 months, so we do so together. Because I am a New Zealander living in Australia without Australian citizenship it makes immigrating here that much more difficult. At the moment we do well to put bread on the table. expenses are low but I am not tiling full time and I got a bit behind financially with having to leave for New Zealand a month ago. Still it was great to catch up with family and show my wife where I grew up. We will be back there in 2 months Lord willing.
Anyway we have almost completed our work on the big and small caravans and the bathroom unit.
This small caravan is being used to store my wife’s clothes. We also use it to eat our meals. It also gives us somewhere where we can do our own thing, especially because I am more a night owl and my wife is more of an early bird. So I don’t wake her up!
And it is the caravan we will use if we go on holiday somewhere.
Replacing Worn Out and Rotten Carpet
The carpet was worn out, filthy and just recently there was a leak from the little fridge that damaged it further. So I removed it. Thankfully there was a lino covering that prevented damage to the plywood flooring.
Original Small Caravan Interior
It may be hard to tell but our small caravan travel trailer that has been my home since 2006 had a terrible looking greyish timber grain pattern on the plywood. I wanted to brighten it up and make it much warmer and inviting.
Here are some pics…
Painting Interior & Replacing Back Window Sill
I got my lovely wife Susanne Hadassah to sand and paint the interior. We used two coats of undercoat and two coats of top coat. We selected a white finish for the walls and a light cream colour for the front of the cupboards and doors.
There were two places where the 3 play veneer damaged. I was going to completely replace it. However I found that I could just removed the top layer of the veneer to expose the natural wood grain. This was on the front and rear cupboard area. The damaged front veneer was underneath the cupboard while the damaged back vaneer was on the vertical section.
Later on I removed the back internal hardwood timber window frame due to some rot damage. I replaced it with a tasmanian oak hardwood frame that I built.
I also replaced the crappy stove cover with a nice thick folding hardwood bench top with brass hinges.
Install Skylight on old roof hatch
The old roof hatch did not have a window. And the flyscreen was ugly and inconvenient to open so I could open or close the hatch.
So I decided to cut a hole in it and put in a small cheap 40cm square venilated skylight with flyscreeen and winder for opening the top.
Still to do…
Just a few things left to do…
- exterior paint job
– plain white without red stripe (it doesn’t make the caravan go any faster) - replace a few broken window pains
- make seat covers
- install cat door on entrance
Then after that I might actually build my tiny home. If we have kids we will need more space.
