Trailer, Version 1 (Part 1)

 I’m a project guy. Unless I have a few active projects going to keep my hands busy I feel like a lump, a failure, wasted space (Thanks Dad, who never slowed down until the Parkinson’s forced him to). But there was a period from mid to late 2023 where I just wasn’t physically capable of felling trees, clearing trails, building furniture, all the stuff that makes me feel like I’m actually here for some purpose. So I switched to miniatures. Stuff I could do while standing at my bench (never have been able to work effectively while sitting at a desk or table), though for a while there about 20 minutes was all I could manage before having to sit down and take a break.

 

The spoon is there for scale

I did everything from tiny little folded-metal sculptures,

 

View through the window of the hardware store side

to paper models,

 

micro-block creations (think miniature Legos)

 

3D wood puzzles,

 

and one multimedia haunted house.

 

Oh, and a table-top Christmas display made up of bits of stuff we had laying around, because our usual display was way over my weight restriction limit and stored in a buggy, spidery part of the barn! (The Wife does NOT do spiders!)

OK, I have to fess up here. That Christmas display has been sitting the a corner of our room since early December 2023. We decided we like the festive mood and it creates a much better evening light than the battery-powered lantern we had been using. I have spent many hours staring into that idealized little world (note that, other than a few Santas, there are no other people around! Ahhh, bliss)] with its lights casting shadows across the snow.

But - through December (2023) and into January (2024) I was not only improving in physical capabilities, but also keenly aware that when the Ranger arrived to replace The Van as our second vehicle, that was also going to take away my camping rig. And man just can not exist without a rig!

Back in 2015 I did a speculative post about converting a cargo trailer into a travel trailer. Someone grabbed an image out of that post and stuck it in Pinterest. Then someone else grabbed that and stuck it in their Pinterest folder, and so on.

That one post now has 26,999, now 27,000, hits, almost 10% of my total hit count for all 769 published posts, and to this day keeps getting enough hits to consistently keep it in my top 10 list, 23 hits in the past 7 days.

And you know what? The cargo trailer I based that "what-if" scenario on was still sitting out there in our driveway! Now I was off and running! OK, more like shuffling, and then only once I managed to stand up, with a lot of accompanying groaning.

I dragged out my CAD program, did some tweaking, started a spreadsheet, did some calculating, compiled a materials list, and then, as a concession to my continuing weight restrictions and sorry (but improving!) physical state, placed an online order at Home Depot and paid to have them deliver the goods. (They had to block the county road up on top of the ridge with the truck while bringing the stuff down the driveway to the barn on that forklift that hangs off the back of the truck.)

Things started out pretty slow.

I could handle numbering (so I could get them back where they belonged) and unscrewing the existing wooden walls in the trailer but then had to have help from The Wife moving each section, one at a time, on a custom-made wheeled dolly across 50 feet of gravel drive into the barn where they were stacked up while I did some wiring, framed out windows and vents, then cut and fit the extruded foam insulation inside the trailer.

By the way, much of this had to be done while working around an old busted lawnmower that was too heavy for us, even collectively, to move!

Then The Wife had to help me move each wall-section from the storage stack to the bench where I carefully measured then cut away any excess material in order to keep the weight down.

By then my physical situation had improved enough that I was able to get each of these lightened sections back out to the trailer and reinstalled on my own. Followed with the 1/8th ply sheets that went over top of the original, rather rough-looking,  panels to form the finished walls. (By cutting away unnecessary bits of the original walls, the two layers of the finished walls actually weighed less than the original single-layered wall.)

I cheated a bit on my restrictions when I dressed up the insulated ceiling with more sheets of 1/8 ply, which was a bit of a challenge given that my range of motion on the right side was still limited and I could barely get that elbow shoulder high before things inside me started screaming. But that was the best kind of physical therapy, so I kept at it. (I passed on formal physical therapy because I was already overloaded with appointments and people-time.)

But eventually I got the walls and ceiling in and was able to paint (not my favorite thing!) everything in preparation for building and installing the interior bits. You know, cabinets, bed, that sort of stuff.

I originally thought I would cover this trailer in a single post but this sucker is already running long, so stand by for part 2.