RV to Vardo? Pt. 1

So about two years ago my fiancee and I were given a very trashed RV trailer by a friend. We both enjoy medieval re-enactment and wanted something we could use at events since it seems that summer time is now very wet and rainy. In talking and looking at this 16 ft RV we decided to take inspiration from the Gypsy Vardos of the 18th and 19th centuries.

We knew there was work and that we would be removing all the metal siding but we were hoping to reuse some of the windows and keep the roof.

Then we walked inside and realized that this was not going to be as easy as we thought.

Understand we are not afraid of hard work nor are we afraid of big projects. We were looking around asking ourselves if we had bitten off more than we could chew.

So first thing to do was clean everything out. This took a number of garbage bags and a few trips to the dump. On the positive there had been change left in the RV and pennies, nickles, and dimes had gotten caught in nooks and crannies. At least we made a little bit toward the rebuild just by cleaning the unit out.

So after watching numerous tiny home videos on YouTube and looking up information on-line we started the tear down process. We decided that due to having things like armor and I run a merchant booth at events we would be ahead to move the door from the side to the back. This allows us to move longer items in and out easier.

The funny thing we found with moving the door is that the space seemed bigger. Course the fact that there was nothing in the space other than our tools probably didn't hurt either. The door may look like something many folks have seen as it is an actual antique panel door. My parents had a bunch of materials on their farm they wanted to get rid of and we were more than happy to use. After all everything we got free kept the price of the build down.