There’s a movie where David Byrne says: “Metal buildings are the dream that Modern Architects had …. It has finally come true, but they themselves don’t realize it.” It’s true; you can order a whole building out of a catalog or off the web, but admittedly it will be a low brow affair that architects would not acknowledge as anything but crap. You might say that the same situation exists with tiny houses.
You see “tiny houses” on every home décor show on television, with occasionally insufferable owners talking about how much it will improve their lives and how they are helping the planet with this “new” concept. Of course, this concept has existed in one form for at least half a century: it’s called a mini motorhome (or Class 3 home).
However, since these were often covered in tan plastic with orange and brown stripes, they are well off of the radar of these new tastemakers. No, these tiny house people will supposedly spend an average of about $60,000 (that’s a figure that I saw listed, which I think excludes A LOT, by the way) for one of these modernist boxes, or a cutesy-ass dollhouse-looking thing (probably with LIVE LAUGH LOVE in vinyl letters on the wall inside). The fact is that another more cost effective solution could exist that is close by, possibly even in your backyard if you are a certain automotive media mogul with often-criticized hair that we could name.
With a mini motorhome, the big issue is that the “home” part often outlives the “motor” part. They are usually made of rust-free panels with wipe-it-off plastic inside that will survive a nuclear blast, however they typically sit a great deal, are forgotten, and then cease to run. After a few years, the ‘running’ engine part pales in comparison to the cost of getting brakes, tires, steering, transmission and so on up and going. It is then economically unfeasible for this thing to ever move under its own power again. At the same time, a moss-covered motorhome is typically not something that makes you the envy of your neighborhood, even if the inside could be cleaned up, updated a bit (or keep the now-cool orange plaid seats), and be perfectly useable as a guest cottage.
So how can you get the remaining value out of these now-immobile small homes without receiving citations from the city for an ‘unlicensed vehicle’?
Get an MCMummy, the Mid Century Modern façade for your dead camper!
You can have what looks like the tiny house of your dreams for a small fraction of the cost of a tiny house. Just like those toys advertised during Saturday morning cartoons used to say, “you get to put it together!”
Let’s start with our shitty Dodge-based Class 3 that his been a paperweight since at least the Clinton Administration:
Here are the steps:
First, order your MCMummy for MCM Industries. They offer several sized kits that cover virtually any mini motorhome made from the mid-seventies up through the turn of the century.
Second, while you wait for shipping, prep your old motorhome for the kit. If it isn’t already leveled out, go ahead and do that so it isn’t sitting on the tires. Drain any vehicle-related fluids..if you want to sell the non-functional motor that’s fine but it sort of defeats the purpose of making this simple. Rip off mirrors, spare tires, wipers and such. Get your electrical hooked up and however you want to do water and sewage. Optionally–but I would recommend it–seal off any openings on the body and maybe seal the roof and any gaps on seams with tar or driveway coating. Also, paint black any sheetmetal that might be exposed through the ‘louvers’ and maybe even tint the windows for the ultimate in a stealth look. Add screens over the roll-down front door windows. Wow, now your crappy ass motorhome looks even worse. But just for now.
Yeah! Your MCMummy wood-and-metal sarcophagus has arrived on a skid in pieces
Once your kit arrives, set out all the parts, do measuring, cut to size (there are some parts that need to be cut to fit your door placement and such), and build the walls.
After that, go all Amish on this shit and do a barn raising! Lift the walls in place, connect them and your ancient eyesore is now something hipsters will look at and nod while they scratch their chins.
There are louvers that allow the old windows to see out but do not conform to any one particular brand of motorhome (and provide shade in summer but allow low winter sun to come in). Check out the ‘bay’ window with a planter sitting on the hood.
There you go! Shit to Shinola….not to be confused with Larry Shinoda, who was the Corvette designer that penned the Rectrans Discovery motorhome. Let’s be sure that we have that straight:
Will it work? It’s essentially just a fucking fence surrounding a Carter-era Winnebago. If it seems like a bad idea to cover up a dirty, mildew covered exterior, remember that there are companies (like BathFitter) that make a living off of sealing up your old moldy shower.
Is this true sustainability? I mean, every motorhome that rolls off a dealer’s lot is destined to become essentially 8000 or so pounds of shit that will be in a landfill for all eternity. For this object to take on a new life at minimal cost is equivalent to recycling a couple thousand water bottles and certainly worth exploring, as well as saving you around $50,000 that you didn’t have to begin with.
[Editor’s Note: I genuinely and unashamedly think this is a fantastic and actually do-able idea! Would anyone here buy a Bishop-Designed, Autopian-Branded RV-to-Mini Modernist home kit? Let us know and maybe we can get some suppliers on the hook! – JT]
Credits: Wikipedia, Tumbleweed Houses, Pinterest, NicetoownRV, Dreamstime, RoninRV, Mike Utoober
Ana, you know I only left you $80 including tip on the motel dresser. Stop lying.
Tiny houses are not a real thing.
Finding a dozen hashtag whores who claim to live in them does not make them real. Any person in a major city can find more people living in tents on sidewalks than there are tiny houses in the world. Somehow, #sidewalktent is not as fashionable on insta…
Who peed in your Cheerios this morning?
Lol.. cherrio mate
I always thought that the $50-100k people spent on an overweight and half functional “tiny house” would be better spent on any travel trailer of the same size. Twice the functionality and half the price. Only in California do you find cities spending $400k on tiny houses and temporary lots to house the homeless. (& those don’t have cooking or shower facilities).
I am amused but also know enough about old RVs to understand that the “home” part is the he real risk as water leaks in the roof start rotting the wood frame as the interior becomes infested with toxic mold and maybe the occasional mushroom.. This is why we have redneck flatbed made by tearing the rotten structure off that back of a class C motorhome and closing the back of the cab with plywood. Most old motorhomes are like cheap stick built houses with aluminum siding and unless they are carefully maintained and stored under cover they work loose and leak. The ones that last are molded fiberglass like a Chinook or aluminum shelled like an Airstream.
There’s also the recent issue of previous owners using the RV as a meth lab or moonshine dispenser.
Cool idea but I built a 22×10′ tiny house that is 12.5′ tall for <$10K and it took me only about 200 hours + another 200 hours for the finish work.
I bought a $500 22' trailer off Craigslist then built the framing in a day by myself and with 5 people we built the walls, put on the roof and the windows and doors in. R40 roof, R30 walls and R20 floor, costs almost nothing to heat. It really does not take that long to build a tiny house. Broke the axle towing it into position and broke the tow hitch off my Tundra as well (it was pretty rusted).
I'm afraid there is pretty much no way that the current generations and all the ones after are going to be able to afford housing in this great nation of ours so everyone will end up living in tiny houses.
As a side note the tiny house is the best place I've ever lived and I've lived in some pretty swank pads.
gridlok- that sounds pretty cool and affordable! Of course, I’m looking at the kind of person that barely knows which end of the screwdriver to bang on, and your skill level is obviously stratospheric next to that.
I mean, the reason someone like Jason…OH MY GOD….I just did a whole project based on a design brief by Jason….what the FUCK was I doing??
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Let’s see the goods!
I’m probably the only one here that came into this article hoping for a Ween reference of some sort.
Lol keep it brown mang.. already commented on a Boog-mobile once this week
First, I’m always leery of anything advertised as cheap and/or one size fits all, especially if no price is given. I do see this as a practical opportunity for say a hunting or vacation property where lesser amenities are acceptable. I would shoot for removing the engine and transmission, and place a generator under the hood for off the grid power. The other excess room a place for batteries powered by the generator and solar panels on the roof or area adjacent. Create a panel system that allows for various sizes, think insulated Lego bricks on a grand size and spray foam insulation for between the RV skin and decorative shell. This would be ideal for off the grid. As cheap as crappy RVs and mobile homes are you could increase the size as needed. I didn’t see any water/electric areas so what run a hose that will freeze up? Or place water catch system on the roof which drain into water tanks between separate unites where the tanks and heated living space act as insulation. Think about it have a metal water tank you can build a cooking under. The water is heated and circulated through pipes that heat the living space provide hot water and for free because campfire is always burning.
I was in a “house” one time and I glanced at the window. Wow, I thought, they have really insulated these walls well as they are about 16″ thick. Then I looked closer to realize that they built walls around a mobile home or RV and matched window placement and added fillers to close the gabe between walls. Well done, but suddenly a 200 square foot house is actually about 1200 square feet of useable space.
knowonelse- that’s true, but I promise you most of these dead RVs have plenty of space around them so the size issue likely never really is. The real question is what to do between the walls and the side of the home to stop more mold buildup.
Closed-cell spray foam. It’s not a 100% panacea, but I’m struggling to think of anything better—mold is insidious and tenacious stuff. An effective water barrier plus closed-cell foam should prevent any moisture pockets where mold will want to grow, and the foam itself is a poor medium. The biggest risk is if you get a leak somewhere between a wall and the foam—it will probably take a long time to notice, and by then the trapped water will have done its destructive work. That’s why an effective water barrier is critical.
“Metal buildings are the dream that Modern Architects had …. It has finally come true, but they themselves don’t realize it.”
I like the True Stories reference, but I think there is more of an inspiration here. Instead of building around the old hulk, I would strip the corrugated metal off and make a quonset hut. Much more in the spirit.
I want to love this. I really do. But it’s a little too smug for an idea that wouldn’t be half-baked if you set it on fire.
It’s like bad Post-Modern architecture… a pointless façade hiding an otherwise underwhelming building. In this case, it’s a not half-bad modernist façade hiding a molding, leaking hulk that’s probably off-gassing formaldehyde from the adhesives used to put the interior together. Your money would be better spent on a family tent than sleeping inside this thing.
And then there’s the constructability. The drawings are, frankly, appealing. The reality will either be every bit as crappy-looking as the RV – or nice enough that it would make more sense building it _without_ the RV and build an interior inside of your new “box.”
The better idea? Just go get a conex box and build something like an “ecopod” with material recycled from your local “Community Forklift.”
Millermatic- the issue is building the interior. To do pluming, add electrical, kitchen, bath, plumbing, etc….I mean…I get the sense that Jason (our target customer..apparently) would not do that.
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Ooh. I’m all for gentrifying America’s backyards, but. Trapping that much heat into an already-moldy and lichen-infested yard-vee is going to be the fast track to evolving a new species of fungus. Eventually, we’ll have to negotiate with it, and that will drive up the price of one of America’s last renewable back-40 resources, the Dodge 440 engine.
I mean, I would powerwash the thing before installing this stuff. But the 440- yeah, why not remove it? It would make a great table base outside if you couldn’t sell it, and now that ‘doghouse’ box between the front seats could be replaced by something else, like a fake fireplace.
Why not a real fireplace? Or a teenie hot tub?
Re: the headline —
The original ‘shit from shinola’ expression relates to a comparison, not a transformation.
It’s merely a style issue, but much better (imho) would have been something along the lines of “sow’s ear to silk purse”.
TyPo- it’s really more like a silk purse covering a badly rotting sow’s ear
The phrase “putting lipstick on a pig” comes to mind as well.
That is really the issue here. A rotten, old, decaying motor home is not made a better place to live when it’s enclosed in a box that looks good on the outside.
A better idea would be to junk the motor home and build a real cottage out of new materials, instead of depending on decades-old cheap crap that is falling apart.
This project assumes that there are no building permits being issued, no inspections, and no building codes. You can make a “tiny house” out of a shed from Home Depot, and not have all of the liabilities of a decrepit motor home to deal with. That plan assumes, however, that the individual that needs/wants to live in a miniature house had enough skills to properly build it. However, logic dictates that if said individual has those skills, then they are very employable and could easily earn enough money to live in a real house.
One of my co-workers (twenty or so years ago) had a box of shinola in his shoe polishing kit. I coveted that.
Damn rich kids and gentrification ruining the neighborhood. Pretty soon they’re gonna start complaining about my possum farm. You just watch.
Another idea is to take the money that would be used fixing up the non-running RV to buy an RV in good condition, and use that to live in and travel around to see this beautiful country.
Who is “The Bishop” anyway? Is this a real person, or what? I don’t think that we ever got an introduction to this new, (presumably) human writer.
Widgetsltd: I am human but I really don’t know who or where I am. Last thing I remember it was 1989 and I walked into the spray paint booth at design school. The metal epaulets on my Members Only jacket must have reacted with something and now I’m here. But this nice guy named Jason took me in. Who do you think is living in that shitty Tioga in his backyard?
Hmmm, I thought you were a talking chess piece.
He is multitudes.
That’s why he can only draw straight lines.
if I could do curves I could get back to where I came from
“With a mini motorhome, the big issue is that the “home” part often outlives the “motor” part.”
This is patently false. What happens is the roof starts leaking, because they’re all built from balsa wood and staples, then it gets parked for-ev-er. After many years you have a non-running motorhome, but it’s only non-running because the worst thing you can do to a vehicle is not drive it. The problems actually stemmed from the “home” part being a leaky water-damaged POS.
I like what was done here, but good luck finding an old non-running motor home that isn’t a rotten box of mold.
Shop-Teacher: that might be true, but the idea was inspired by a guy who apparently ‘just put new pluming into his’ and spruced up the inside a bit…but it doesn’t run. I could name names, but I’m afraid you’d know who he is…cough..Torch…cough
I figured as much. And it comes as no surprise that Torch’s RV is the antithesis of all RVs. He is our special boy after all 🙂
My guess is also that Jason bought his in California…finding one in the woods of Minnesota might be a different story.
For some reason I’ve been in a few houses that were actually mobile’s that were built over and around. Disappointing all of them.
This idea is sincerely cool as hell, but I feel as though I’d be deeply disappointed when I enter the interior of my shitty Winnebago.
Are you kidding? People pay big bucks to recreate ‘retro’ and now you have it for free!
I’d say The Bishop nailed the look! Heck, I’d almost rather drive that around than the dumb ol’ Winnie….
He doesn’t mention some additional potential advantages, though: keep that ratty 318 in fairly good order and your tiny house can have heat in the winter and cool air in the summer. Just be careful how you route the exhaust, and check the joints. For those with exhaust manifold cookery skills, there are even more advantages!
Think I’ll stick with shipping containers, however. Much easier to stack than cast-off RVs….
Yo
I’m just imagining at some point the RV gets fixed up and upgraded while hiding in that shell. Then one day, the prefab walls suddenly burst apart and the RV comes roaring out, guns blazing, A-Team style!
RadBarchetta: “I love it when a plan comes together”
Actually, based on some comments it seems like you want to see a mobile option with a functioning home. I mean, it would be like…five percent less aerodynamic than the original.
So we would have a MOBILE switch that would simultaneously:
-raise the suspension to get the wood parts off of the ground
-turn a section of the wood slats in front of the grille 90 degrees to let in radiator air
-front wheel-well-shaped panels open up to allow wheels to turn
-Snowplow-like headlights and signals pop up out of the planter in front, and side mirrors fold down
Ready to go!!
Yes, but please add a flamethrower made from old welding equipment and a pile of metal tubes that happened to be lying around. And the front of that house would be perfect if it transformed into an armored barrier with only a slit for the driver to see though. I pity the fool.
Kinda like taking a crappy Chrysler (Chrysalis) and metamorphosing into a beautiful Monaco Coach (Monarch Butterfly).
Got it.
I would take this a stage further and design something for a perfectly usable RV. My inlaws 33ft RV is stored in what only be described as an aircraft hangar. The property would look a lot nicer if the hangar was made to look more like a (not so) small house.
Also the sketch drawing makes me think that Ikea will be selling these kits before long.
What’s the plan to update the smell commonly found in these “vehicles”?
Ozone machine? Gasoline & a match?
Shake and bake meth, in parts of the Ozarks and cable television.
Yes, but with this classy cover on the outside it’s no longer a ‘meth lab’ but actually a ‘destination for methamphetamine artisans’.
Locally sourced, small batch and hand made?
Re: the metal building thing. Out here in flyover country “barndominiums” are all the rage. Although I think folks have lost the thread. They used to be interesting because you could get the weatherproof shell, septic, electric, etc all set up by pros, and then finish out the inside yourself on your own scheduele and save a ton. Now its mostly an aesthetic, and people buy em turnkey. Oh well. I guess folks okay with turning a wrench will always save in the end.
So it’s like a tiny Lustron house to encapsulate an old RV? Cool!
https://metalbuildinghomes.org/lustron-homes/
I make $2000 a week working at home, assembling small dolls haunted with the souls of dead Methodist ministers you can use to freak the shit out of your children to keep them off or on drugs, depending on your preference! They’re terrible, and I’m terrible, too! Other spambots should pay attention.
My, my, my…you’ve got to admire AI-generated spambots, they’re enterprising as hell. I’d say this is a viable upgrade from my Ghost In A Jar™.
Okay, if all the spambots start doing this from now on, I am here for it. If someone managed to hack into a spam account in order to post this – well done; it’s a tough call, but “to keep them off or on drugs, depending on your preference” is my favorite part.
We’re currently in a weird holding pattern with the spambots. We can kill or edit individual comments, but we can’t stop them. So we stomp on them when we can, but they come back and bring more bot friends with them.
Hang tight, we hope to have a solution for this soon enough!
In the meantime, “haunted with the souls of dead Methodist ministers” really made my Monday.
You guys need help from the community in the meantime? I’d love to help editing some of those spambot comments (which is such a hilarious solution, I almost kinda wish it would be a viable one).
The Autopian staff edit these when they to discourage spam and simultaneously entertain us. I’m just surprised they left the $2000/week figure. They often change it to something like 2.00 / year or the like.
Making dolls ““haunted with the souls of dead Methodist ministers” is a special etsy skill and commands top dollar. I’m surprised it doesn’t make more.
If I go to your web page, will I HAVE to look at your tits?
If you need help converting ministers to souls, please let me know.
https://milwaukee.craigslist.org/cto/d/wittenberg-1984-chevy-s10-conversion/7531195732.html
10K and you are good to go