Ah Oh!

I found a guy selling steel at a great price from an empty lot down by the railroad tracks.  Also, it's been a long time sense I've been in a smokey office with the guy behind the counter openly chain smoking cigs like they're going out of style (which they have). Sounds a little sketchy right? Despite the smokey atmosphere, Dean was a good guy with fare prices. I scored about 45' heavy gauge 3.5" "mini channel" for $60. Not bad, not bad at all. 

Now comes the Ah Oh! 

With the camper (finally) off the trailer I could go back to my plans and make sure that my original measurements we're correct. (The original plan was based on rough measurements.) Even though the camper was 20' the platform that the camper sat on was just over 18'. Bad news as I was originally hoping to build a 24' mini-house. Adding a strong extension to the back of the trailer doesn't scare me as much as the position of the axles, which should be about 10% back from center. Adding 1' to the front and 5' to the back puts the axles too far forward and just doesn't look safe... and 2000 miles is a long way to drive with an unsafe trailer swaying behind. Sadly, I needed to tweak my design (updated, but not completed,  design below).

Funny how things work out. 

I actually like this new shorter design better. I was beginning to think that 24' was too big and starting to move too far away from the original concept of what a tiny house is all about. Small and cozy, just enough room for the bare essentials, easy on the environment and most importantly, efficient and inexpensive. With the the axles slightly back of center, I can safely add 1' to the front and 3' to the rear for a total of 22' I'm losing most of the 2' in the bedroom which likely means a full bed instead of a queen, or maybe a Murphy bed. How much time do you spend in the bedroom anyway? I would rather have a larger kitchen and living area. I also tweaked the design to accommodate the new 4'x4' windows.