vehicles (321)

Photos of French Carpenters’ West Coast Trip

We are running photos of our French carpenter friends Menthe and Yogan documenting the trip they took this summer along the Northern Pacific Coast, exchanging their carpentry skills for room and board.

This is a tiny home they built in 10 days on an old Dodge flatbed truck in Humboldt County, California.

We are posting one of their projects each day for a week here: https://www.theshelterblog.com/

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Yogan Carpenter Meets SunRay Kelley

French carpenter Yogan and his friend Menthe have made their way up the coast to SunRay Kelley’s compound in Washington and say:

“SunRay make a new crazy project , we work with him, very cool…”

Above: Yogan’s photo of SunRay’s solar/bio=fuel powered diesel truck

More on Yogan’s trip: https://yogan.over-blog.com/

Yogan started his trip here a month ago; read about it here: https://www.lloydkahn.com/2015/09/04/yogan-carpenters-pacific-coast-journey_4/

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Jay Nelson’s Suzuki Camper Built for Foster Huntington

Jay Nelson’s work has been featured in Tiny Homes and Tiny Homes on the Move. Foster Huntington’s Toyota Tacoma camper was featured in Tiny Homes on the Move.

From Foster:

“The car is a Suzuki SJ410. It’s the predecessor to the Samurai and has a 1 liter 4-cylinder engine.

The camper is made out of marine plywood and thin copper sheeting. The camper has a sleeping space that’s just over 6 feet long over the cab.

 Jay Nelson designed and built the camper in two weeks with some help from some friends.”

Jay’s Website: https://www.jaynelsonart.com/

More on Jay: https://www.lloydkahn.com/?s=jay+nelson

Foster’s website: https://www.arestlesstransplant.com/

More on Foster: https://www.lloydkahn.com/?s=Foster+huntington

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Single Mom Converts Schoolbus Into Tiny Home

“Reality: Tiny Home Living 

As I sit listening to the rain fall on the well-sealed roof (roofing tar, folks, it’s a miracle worker) with Mazzy Starr streaming on my Pandora via shared wireless, my feet are propped up on the stove and I sit on my daughter’s bed/the couch, I can honestly say I think it’s going to be alright.

The Hardest Part: driving the bus home, and then up the steep driveway and into this spot. Scary is the right word to describe the overall feel of that event. Other feeling words: anxiety, panic, distress. And then a sense of accomplishment and desire to never repeat the experience.…”

From Anonymous

https://tinyhomebusconversion.wordpress.com/

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Roll Your Own-The Complete Guide to Living in a Truck, Bus, Van or Camper – 1974

Hi guys,

I found this aged photocopy while going through a box of files from years past. It was tucked in with folders of research notes, press releases, rough drafts and galleys of articles for various publications and several rejected or killed stories that I’d had vague hopes of placing in other print media; all this from the days before the Internet. Everything looked so crisp and quaint, especially the neatly typed articles on 20 lb. bonded stationary.

Times do change. Something that has held fairly constant for me my entire more-or-less adult life though is an interest in vehicular living in long or short form.

 I had already been doing it in station wagons and a van by the time I came across this book in my local library. “Roll Your Own” by Jody Pallidini and Beverly Dubin was a classic of nomadic literature, a period companion piece to “Caravan” by Stephen Gaskin and “Vagabonding in Europe and North Africa” by Ed Buryn. I never once found a copy of “Roll Your Own” outside that lone library copy. I ran this copy off a dried-out, tattered, yellowed, and bug-eaten copy of the Whole Earth Catalog if memory serves me. It came out maybe 40 years before Tiny Homes on the Move, proving to me at least that good things never go out of style.

 Nels Norene

Thanks, Nels, I was able to track down a used copy on Amazon for our archives.- LK
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Expedition Camper Vehicles

“Hi again Lloyd,

I would be stoked if you threw my name in the hat of those who build cool, small spaces for that TV show…

I just finished another adventure vehicle…

https://pauljensencustom.blogspot.com/2015/07/fuso-recap.html

It is a 2003 Mitsubishi Fuso that is one of the original expedition campers…It has been to more countries than I can name, from Antarctica to the arctic…Around Australia and lived in full time for two years.…Pretty hard miles when the new owners got it and hand it over to me for a change…I was given a lot of creative space and the results are something I am especially proud of.…Have a look…”

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Seeking Builders of Tiny Homes on the Move

We’ve been approached by a film maker who is interested in telling the stories of people/a person who specializes in converting vehicles into tiny homes that move. Ideally, we’d like to find someone who does this for other people and makes a living/makes a business of it.

Vans, house buses, house trucks, trailers, or sailboats or houseboats. Please contact me if you know of anyone in this category: lloyd@shelterpub.com

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