Fitting Everything in the Garage

Cramped garage before the grand reorganization.

One of the major stipulations from my wife Heidi was that the trailer AND both of our cars would fit in the garage...this was an imperative of the project...not negotiable. The trailer itself fit just fine in the garage, but with a 7' 2" wide platform on top, the garage became a bit more cramped and would only become more so as the walls went up. We are fortunate to have a unique garage with adjoining basement underneath our house. It is a three car garage in essence, although we have never owned three cars, and one side is a "tandem" space. It was one of the reasons I bought the house initially as I wanted a dedicated indoor workshop space and exercise area. With this garage I was able to have it all including a climbing wall in the corner used for working out. Since I needed more space to work on the trailer, I made an executive decision one morning to completely reorganize the garage after realizing that the current configuration was NOT going to work for this project. Especially since I would likely work on the trailer project only between 4 & 8 hours per week depending on what my schedule allowed.

The new configuration moved the climbing wall and workout area to the single bay side of the garage and required that the car be moved out for a full workout or climb, not really that big of a deal. I left a small corner on the two-bay side of the garage for riding my road bike on rollers and accessing weights and medicine balls, the elliptical trainer in the picture above came inside. This allowed me to have easy access to everything accept the garage wall side of the trailer, which once framed would not be an issue as the door faced the opposite direction. If more space was needed, the care on the two-bay side could be backed out, the trailer rolled back about 10 - 12 feet and I would have about 150 square feet of workshop space with the trailer still inside. Quite the luxury for a project that started in October and would take most of the winter to frame before it could be outside in the elements.

Framing the Sub-floor

I can't begin to explain how fortunate I am to have support from my wife and family on this project. My parents have begun to pick up our two girls (4 and 6 years-old) from school each Friday and keep them overnight through mid day Saturday. This allows my wife and I to have "date night" each Friday and gives me 4 - 6 hours each Saturday morning to tackle my new project and any other "honey-do" items that need my attention...luckily we have lived in our house for about 6 years and my "honey-do" list is now quite small!

This weekend I was lucky enough to get a bout of cold but very sunny weather to roll my new trailer outside, grind off the remaining attachments from its days carrying a sailboat, clean off the moss, and lay the freshly prepped base platform in place to cut wheel wells and build the sub-floor.

I quickly realized that there is a bit of a warp in the trailer, but was able to shim one corner an get the platform level after cutting it to size. The platform is framed with 2"x3" studs around the perimeter and 2"x2" white wood at 24" inches on center in the middle which will accept 2" EPS foam insulation in the next few weeks and also support the wiring for both the side/tail lights and interior 120 volt outlets that will run off an inverter and battery charged by solar.

In some ways now that it is real, the trailer looks HUGE, but when I think about my family spending many nights in a row living in this small of a space, it looks TINY. Guess I will have the best of both worlds!

Construction Begins!

Rubberized roll-on truck bed liner paint for an undercoating.

Although I still don't have all of the details worked out, I am ready to begin! I think what makes this project so much fun is that there will be plenty of opportunities ahead to make mistakes, test ideas, and deviate from the plans that have been set in place so far.

The first step is to build a platform that will become the sub-floor upon which the rest of the structure will be built. Since the bottom of the structure itself will be exposed to the elements and bombarded by rainwater and all matter of debris from the road, I have opted to use a roll-on truck bed liner as the under coating for both the base and the wheel wells. It was messy work as the paint is laden with rubber bits that coated my gloves, sleeves, and pants while working, but I anticipate it will give the trailer a long life. I used three and a half sheets of 3/4" tongue and groove plywood to create a base that measures 7' 2" x 13' 6". When it is all said and done, I will have about 85 - 90 square feet of living space inside the trailer and an overall length of about 17' 6" from the trailer hitch to the rear arc of the trailer.

Did I Find a Trailer?

It's ugly, low to the ground, cheap, registered, and exactly what I had in mind

Could it be that I have found the ideal trailer, minus the moss? This showed up on Craigslist for $350 and had already passed the WA State DOT test, received a VIN number and was ready to hit the road. The best part was that it only weighed 350 pounds and had a 3500 pound axle. Most of the commercially available new trailers with a 3500 pound axle weighed in at nearly twice that amount and in some cases up to 1000 pounds...not ideal for a concept that would ideally weight less than 2000 pounds total. I drove about 30 minutes to inspect and decided to pull the trigger...he even dropped off a few days later as I still don't even have a tow hitch on our vehicle! I guess I have actually made the commitment to build something, either that or I need to be committed for taking on an insane project on the brink of winter. I am thinking I need a good project to keep me inspired and out of trouble this winter!