You Built What?!: A Home for the Long Haul

Made From Scrap Half of the caravan is salvaged parts. Walls and a door, for example, came from a remodeled house. Webb Chappell

After their landlord sold her house, Tristan Chambers and Libby Reinish found themselves scrambling for a new home. They agreed then to never again endure the insecurity of leased living. It was 2010, “a time when we didn’t know where we were going, but we still wanted to have roots,” Chambers says. Unable to afford a conventional brick-and-mortar house, they spent roughly a month’s rent to build what they call the Whittled-Down Caravan: an Oregon Trail–style mobile abode made mostly of salvaged parts.

Chambers and Reinish, who were living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the time, had no clue how to construct a mobile home. So they spent two months learning woodworking, wiring, and other essential skills from the Internet. A three-month build kicked off with little more than a 4-by-8-foot utility trailer topped with a plywood box, which served as the caravan’s rolling foundation. Wooden boards made up the lower interior walls, and oak arches completed a bare-bones frame for the roof. The couple wanted to cover the frame with wooden planks, but calculations showed the wood could overburden their ride—a four-cylinder Hyundai sedan unable to tow more than 1,000 pounds.

Eco-Kitty Corner: Lionshead the cat [above] was used to living outside—not in a caravan or car—so the couple built her a porch from wire dorm-room shelves, two-by-fours, and plywood.  Webb Chappell

Once road ready, the 574-cubic-foot wagon weighed about 600 pounds. The couple towed it for 1,800 miles on a four-month-long journey that ended in Northampton, Massachusetts, and eventually settled down near-by. Their cat, Lionshead, tagged along. An outdoor “catio,” accessible via a flapped door in the caravan’s rear wall, helped to placate her after cramped car rides.

Chambers, 30, and Reinish, 27, now own an immobile home and rarely use the caravan. They’ve added a gas stove, though, and plan to install a composting toilet, a heater, and insulation to provide friends a cheap, cozy place to crash. They also intend to post full construction plans online. “We find a lot of people are interested, but they’re intimidated,” Reinish says. “I can relate to that. I remember thinking, ‘Is this going to fall apart the minute we hit 55 miles an hour?’”

(Get the specifics of the project and a video on the next page)