hey there welcome to my channel where i take you on tours of tiny homes creative homes and
showcase stories of people living alternatively in today's video we're going to meet kenny who
created an innovative home out of a dilapidated camper using many of his family heirlooms you know
how it feels when you walk into your house and you're comfortable you see all your familiar items
and you can sit down and just truly just take a deep breath and relax one of the most creative
things about this nomadic home is the fold down roof and fold up deck and this story definitely
proves that one man's trash can be another man's treasure and even his home if you like these kind
of stories make sure that you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you know
every single time i publish a new video but right now let's take a tour of kenny's creative camper
hi i'm kenny faust and i want to welcome you all to my tiny house on wheels
i always wanted to travel i wanted to be able to be independent of anybody else's
influences and as soon as i was free of work i was gonna go travel so you imagine that you're
me out riding my bicycle down an old paved road close to my home and i see this old
beat up looking rv and i instantly thought i know what i need to do with this thing i
went and tore the whole back off of it built the front part to match my back part and hooked the
two of them together i'd wake up in the morning with 15 different project ideas in my mind i'd
bounce around to one to the other the challenge of making it work was what really mattered
i wanted to make something that was entirely my own creation i hadn't seen it done but i had this
idea of taking the styrofoam panels and gluing fiberglass reinforced plastic to the face of them
and basically making my own little what you would call a sips panel and then the
exterior cedar framing was sort of like well i need to kind of have some structure around the
outside i think a lot of people i've told this story to kind of look at me and go i don't know
man that's you're gonna just the whole thing is just gonna start cracking and falling apart on you
i've been over some pretty rough terrain and traveled a long ways it's held up like a champ
i put this entire box together for two thousand dollars i found the rig for fifteen hundred
dollars twelve hundred dollars for tires sending a solar controller and two lithium batteries and
all the other stuff i'm sure i'm past 10 but not very far unless you count gas of course
the ego is a 1976 dodge with a 400 chrysler motor in it and dual exhaust it was a champion
built rv the whole top of the aluminum had all rotted off of here so it all just needed to go
took a few months to build this i had it torn completely down to the platform
at that point it weighed 4 500 pounds i put everything on the top
and it was up to 75 this is a 10-5 gross vehicle weight it only gets eight miles to a gallon
the first time i took it out i did not have solar on it at all now it's got 1100 watts
so now we're at the front of the rig and i had just found this beautiful
sun and moon combo in california so i just strapped that on there
and i really like the way it looks i was trying to decide if it was too much but i think it's perfect
none of the gauges worked when i got it i had to replace the fuel gauge the water temperature the
oil pressure and the voltage thing and i was really pleased with the way they came out in here
then you might imagine what a 1976 dodge might ride like it's got a very stiff
suspension it steers fine it runs down the road it doesn't get blown around
but it's just kind of rough and it's kind of noisy but i'm happy with
the the ride quality if i'm not going too far on any given day and it is so much fun to drive
because it's got the motor of an old hot rod car in it i never had a hot rod when i was a kid
but the sound at least gives me the impression that i can you know feel good every time i started
it still runs like a like an old truck but it has a lot of old truck features like can you imagine
what this is down here well that's actually a dimmer switch if you're my age you'd know that
and if you don't you probably won't see one now what i found when i was taking
apart stuff in my house was an old murphy bed and was able to trim it and it just seemed to
fit perfect as a headliner and i couldn't be more pleased with the way it turned out
so when i found this rv i had to tear off the entire old rv body and i had this box that i lined
up the wheel wells this is the space between there that sort of created a an opportunity to create a
outside storage area it's worked out really fine for me because i can actually keep a
lot of tools in here two propane tanks air pump my instant water heaters in here my water pump
and a few other essential ingredients in making this into a livable space i have a hot and cold
running water out here i don't use it much but it could be an outdoor shower or an outdoor kitchen
it is above my 20 gallon tank which is under here and then this is actually the drain from
coming out of the shower and going into my gray water tank this is eighth inch mahogany wood
i glued directly to the styrofoam and covered with a marine grade urethane so this is a four by eight
sheet of styrofoam with no wooden structure inside of this wall and the styrofoam itself and the
exterior cedar forms the structure and what you do avoid without using uh studs for the interior
part is you have no thermal breaks you have a const a solid piece of styrofoam here another
one and another one and so in fact gluing those together and gluing the wood directly to it you
save a lot of weight you don't need plywood on here plus what's behind it is waterproof
so the doors on this side they actually hide another storage closet
in this storage closet i have a family heirloom 100 year old ironing board when it goes down
i can take this table anywhere that i need to have it then it allows me for a lot more storage i now
have a propane uh campfire ring i actually have a wi-fi antenna and a alarm system put into here
welcome everybody to my deck this sits on the back of this rig and i have found it to be as
comfortable a place to sit and enjoy the desert it is very inviting to people who are traveling
and brings them over i have a great time spending a little time with them
and enjoying the opportunity to meet new people and this does that for me i don't
have to go introduce myself to somebody else i'm sitting here and they'll come talk to me
the doors of course are from the restorer as is so much stuff 15 bucks for the doors
and the whole build kind of was formed around that with the inviting nature of being able to
swing both doors open and be able to sit on the porch and feel so cozy and homey i just love it
once you got a fold up deck you might as well have a fold down roof
and in fact these legs then lay inside of each other and it will fold up pretty easily
and then i can mount my bikes on the back of the deck and so it all worked out
come with me and let me show you the inside
what i love about this home is the fact that i was able to use so many pieces from my family history
these were bookcases out of my dad's office that just sort of you know fit perfectly as overhead
cabinets this old cedar chest is something that my great-grandfather had made for my grandmother as
a hope chest and apparently he had a lot of hope because it's like long enough it's a spare bed to
be looking at it from that perspective so it fit right in here it's so perfect for this setting so
perfect in this environment for the size the length the comfort it was it makes the bed
and it makes a couch so i couldn't have couldn't have done anything any better if i'd have tried
so when i was younger i spent a lot of time at my grandmother's house i remember finding and
seeing this checkerboard down in her basement when i was probably six or seven years old now
i've used one of these strange little metal things in order to make it into a table
that will work pretty well it's you know maybe i could do a better job with a pop-up table but
it works fine i've never had it drop anything so i'm happy with it so this is a spool cabinet and
the wood was so beautiful on it that it seemed like it needed to find a place in my house
these are the drawers that held spools of thread that were inside of this box and they just worked
out perfect to make drawer a drawer for my induction cooktop and my spices and and other
items and then this two drawers were able to be hooked together uh and holds my pots and pans
i found this box in the attic at my sister's house it had been there for the 35 years she had lived
there and it just was so pretty it needed to be stripped and changed but in fact you
know the way that it fit the refrigerator was so unbelievably perfect that you'd think i planned it
so now we are in the bathroom it serves as a break between the bedroom and the kitchen
and in fact it has the facilities i need in order to
swing this towel over here and pull a curtain across at night for privacy or when i'm taking
a shower for privacy when i'm taking a shower i slide this all the way over to here i pull
the towels out on this towel rack and i've got plenty of space in here for a full 32 inch shower
so i started out with a cassette toilet dumping it was horrible and it didn't last that long until
you needed something else this is a old craftsman roll around tool box cut this out and fit the top
of a five gallon bucket right on there put my peat moss on the other side i'm working on a
urine diverter for this side it's also watertight so i can take a shower i don't have to worry about
it i have a place to sit it doesn't interfere with my shower and i don't have to take it out
this is the most comfortable spot in the place for me i love the view from up here i love the
feeling of the little perch and the nest and a plenty high enough ceiling and then space beside
my bed for for a bedside table and storage in here and a place to have you know a tv that i
basically never use but i thought i would at one point i would have never have thought of a
window like this but my friend jean had this in her garage and says hey this might work for you
in addition to all of the things that i found in my grandmother's house i found this picnic
basket and i just had to have it because it's perfect for a laundry basket at this point
and then this is something that we picked up at a crafts fair i've got i've got two
of them it's one more of those things that makes it feel homey and warm and reminds me of my past
so when i get my projector out and i can mount it to this this little
ceiling mount and and run video through it then i had this old um this is an old map
came from a school and it just fits in here perfectly and i can pull it down just like that
i like sitting up here i like looking around and thinking that you know everything in here
is is entirely my creation it's almost a member of the family
you know how it feels when you walk into your house and you're comfortable you see
all your familiar items and you can sit down and just truly just take a deep breath and relax
i hope you guys enjoyed this week's video please make sure to like share
and subscribe and i will see you soon with another creative home tour you