find deep fulfillment in everything you do
The walls are built, the roof was already there. The part that was missing up until now was the floor. I wanted to have a nice wooden parquet floor, but didn’t want to pay too much. So I turned to the internet once more and found small amounts of different types of parqet floors. Leftovers from flooring projects. I got a few squaremeters maple, walnut, and oak – all new – for €90 all in all (probably half or less of the original price). Still not cheap, but a price I can live with.
after putting up a wall not so long ago, I decided that one of my inner walls should be cork. Even though technically the cork grew before and then I bought it, but I see it as a first step to growing a wall.
The cork – compared to the clay – was a rather easy job. First I tried out some cork tiles that were already used once and still had glue and plaster residue on them and on top were lacerated on some of the edges. To say the least, I wasn’t really happy with that.
But soon after putting up just a few of them as a test, I found someone selling new cork tiles for a good price from a sharing platform. The amount he sold was just right for the part of the wall I wanted to cover. Definitely a great gift.
As I already wrote about in my previous post, the next step of re-doing my container is to put up a clay wall. Since pictures sometimes tell more than a thousand words, this one is going to be (mostly) a foto-story:
I had already bought the dry mixture for the clay. My decision in the bying process was random, because I can’t really tell the difference at the moment anyway. So first, I had to fix the soft fibre boards to the wall. The woman that had sold me the clay recommended I “stick” the boards on with clay. So I started mixing the sand-mixture with water – having no idea about the needed consistency, and started putting it on the soft fibre board (lying on the floor).
Finally, some updates on my tiny house (container) project. It was a little quiet on that front, because first nothing much actually happened, and then a lot happened, but I just didn’t take the time to write down everything, because I wanted to DO. Since I’m now almost finished with the first step, this is going to change:
I decided a while back that I didn’t like to keep the walls of my container the way they were, because they look (and are) cheap and also don’t create a good interiour climate. Since the whole thing is a big experiment on tiny living, tiny experiments are always welcome. That is why I decided to try out putting up a clay wall inside my container. Just one wall for now, but if I like it – and also want to invest the money – a second wall might follow.
It took me a while, but I finally finished the first draft of the interior design of my container tiny-house. Before I bought the container, I already had some ideas of how to organize everything on the inside, but the placement of the windows and the door limited my options greatly, so I had to re-plan the whole thing. I still haven’t figured out how to manage the windows on the short side, because the loft bed gets in the way of opening them completely. The height of the loft bed is kind of fixed, because with the container also came (among other furniture) two identical robust cupboards that I intend to use as base for the loft bed.
Just a short update: I finally have power in my container! During transport some connections were busted, and it took me forever to have it fixed. But now, there is no stopping me! It’s no “green” power yet, but that’s no priority for me at the moment. Soon some more updates will follow on my internal design, so stay tuned 🙂
Additionally to my “big” and relatively new office container, I also additionally got an old construction trailer without axis or wheels. It’s only 4m x 2,2m (compared to the office container that’s the standard size of 6m x 2,5 m) and is only the aluminum shell with a makeshift floor and I’m not even sure if there aren’t any leaks in the roof. Also it is/was “a little” rusty in places. Here are some first impressions:
In her new place next to my living container:
The next adventure was to get the thing to the piece of land that I’m allowed to put it. Since these things are acutally not that light, the crane from the transport company almost couldn’t lift it! During placement on the property, it even temporarily gave in and the whole thing plummeted (slowly but steadily) to the ground! That was eerie, but luckily nothing was damaged.
And now a few impressions… How it looked inside at first (with the stuff from the previous owner):
During transport:
The idea in the beginning was – and still is – to build a wooden tiny house on wheels out of only or mostly natural materials myself. This takes a lot of time and money – especially because I don’t have any idea of what I’m doing… After a lot of dreaming and thinking and planning, but not really getting anywhere, opportunity stared me in the face and I stared back a second and then jumped on it. Opportunity came in the form of an office container. It’s like these standard shipping containers (6 x 2,5 m) that is minimalistically insulated and mostly used as office on construction sites. That’s how it looked when I first laid eyes on my new home:
A little more than two years ago – maybe even longer than that – I started to realize more and more that there was something “missing” in my life. Since then I embarked on a journey to find at least some of the missing pieces. And now I’ll tell you about one of them.
Among some other things, I started to downsize my life about a year ago. I got rid of a lot of junk that accumulated over the years, and still need to get rid of some more. Also a little more than two years ago I first got the idea of a tiny house on wheels. I had a picture of a wooden, modernized, self-sufficient gipsy waggon in my head – and still have. It looks a little like this one: