Empty Camper Shell and Successful Craigslist Shopping

 The past few weeks have been really busy with demolition, purging rooms, looking at land to park the Kozy Kottage, and preparing for a camping trip that we have been planning for months to visit the Joel Salatin farm. 

Here is the latest of what has been going on in the Kozy Kottage destruction.  After going through layers of mouse poo filled insulation (YUCK!), foam board, carpet, vinyl flooring, and paneling we have finally reached the aluminum frame.

 As I am writing this my husband has the sawzall cutting through the aluminum frame so hopefully by the end of the week he will have the frame cut off of the trailer.

We love the idea of re-purposing and found people that have been able to use some of the pieces that we don't want.  The windows and door were sold to someone who was building a small camper on their truck, the propane furnace was given to a lady who needed heat for her camper that she currently lives in, and the aluminum frame will be sold/bartered to someone that is building a fishing icehouse.

*My own plug for homeschooling* Through this project we are traveling picking up Craigslist finds throughout New Hampshire.  Today we were talking about the places and decided to flag each spot on our New Hampshire map as a geography lesson for our son.  My son loves to talk to people! Needless to say, he has done lots of talking the past few weeks.  This has been a great all around homeschool project.

We have found some great deals on Craigslist! I have become a Craigslist addict savvy shopper.  A couple of days ago, I got an alert for some free Andersen windows.  After several emails we scheduled a day to go pick them up.  These are heavy duty, double paned, casement windows. This saved us tons of money! They are in great condition and did I mention heavy.  If the ladies of church are reading this, start sneaking in some muscle building protein in your husbands diet because we need the extra muscle for the day we put that beast of a window in the frame. 

The Beast of All Windows

 

 The next Craigslist find we picked up today that was 20 minutes down the road will become sheathing.  We found 20 pieces of OSB in excellent condition for $54.  We need a total of 37 for our Kozy Kottage so this was a huge blessing.  Normally, these cost around $9 a sheet so we basically got 14 pieces for free! The guy threw in a piece of plywood and some other scrap pieces of OSB.  This utility trailer that we built for less than $500 has been a great tool the past few days!

I just LOVE our trailer!

I am off to go rest the back after attempting to help lift those heavy windows. May need to throw in some of that protein in my smoothies.  

How We Made a 10' x 6' Utility Trailer for Less than $500

We have been busy the past couple of weeks doing some demolition but mostly building a trailer so that we can haul stuff that we find on Craigslist, Freecycle, supplies, or lumber from the local sawmill. 

We really want to repurpose or upcycle as much as we can to build our Kozy Kottage so I am always looking for free or great deals.  As I find these deals we have discovered that we have no way to haul these supplies so I was on the hunt for a utility trailer. Utility trailers are not cheap, wow, I had no idea. The cheapest I could find was around $750 used and most are in the thousands.  I found a great deal on a pop up camper trailer, that was already stripped down to the rails, on Craigslist for $300. We offered $250 and the guy accepted our offer. We pulled it home, luckily, it wasn't the adventure that we had with the camper.  We had to start with sanding off any surface rust then applying a primer.

After applying the primer the trailer needed side rails so we repurposed the bed rails from the beds that were in the camper.  My husband used a sawzall to cut up the rails and a welder to put them on the trailer.

Once the side bars were put on we applied a layer of black paint and now it is ready for a floor. Just down the road, 1.5 miles, we have a lumberyard and building supply. We got a really good deal on the lumber since we could buy directly from the supplier.

The trailer is very close to finished just need to add some side walls and possibly some kind of tailgate. The trailer came with all the wiring for lights and electric brakes so I found some trailer light kits at a local bulk supply store for a total of $8. We are already using it to get more lumber and now I can keep looking for building materials on Craigslist or Freecycle! :)

Here is what we have spent to build this 10' 9"x 6' 5" trailer:
Trailer: $250
Side rails: Free re-purposed bed rails
Paint (leftovers will be used on the tiny house trailer): $60
Lumber, Screws, and Washers: $140
Lights: $8
Total: $458.00