Barn Raising

The trailer base was delivered to my workshop on Friday. It is made in the Netherlands but the importer is based in France. This is the part of the caravan that fulfills all the legal requirements for transport on the road: brakes, lights, etc. The permitted total weight is 3.5 tonnes and the weight of the trailer itself is 570kg. That means that my construction can’t weigh more than 2.9 tonnes. But it won’t. I’ve calculated the weight at around 1.8 tonnes. And the importer said that most tiny houses that are 6m long won’t go over the weight limit- even if they have two mezzanines.

So I had the trailer, and I had the walls. Now, to put them together…

I invited my friends for an old-fashioned 'barn raising' party. I provide music, tea, and snacks, they provide the extra arms! We lifted the walls onto the trailer and put up the roof beams. I had pre-installed joist hangers on both walls to support the beams.

Now it's starting to look like the model! That's always a moment of pride, to see something I've imagined become reality.

Here you also see the packs of insulation that I'm storing in the barn. More on that next time...