We Have a Baby and She Weighs 480 pounds!

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Our little project, based on my mind wandering and basically thinking out loud about building a small camper, was based on two premises:

One was that we could build it for the $1200 second round of stimulus checks that is still being discussed or not by our elected officials in Washington. Even though the checks not even in the mail we decided to give it a shot anyway. Well that $1200 premise was pie in the sky and we've made new friends with the fine folks at Lowe's who have enjoyed taking our cash upon every visit. 

In reality this is turning out far nicer than my original idea and it's been a lot of fun challenging myself to better my skill set. Figuring out how to complete something that was started by another and still make it our own has been really great fun. And it's been great doing this all with Kim. 

The second premise was that it had to be light enough to tow it with my Jeep Renegade which was really not intended to be a toy hauler. The rated towing capacity of the Jeep is only 1000 pounds and that has to include all the gear that gets tossed in to make camping an experience that after a weekend away you still say "let's do this again!" With that in mind my goal was to be about 750 pounds-ish when complete. With every piece we added to the camper as we've built cabinets and added the plywood skins, I've worried that we're fast approaching that number. 

Today we hooked up to the Jeep and towed it to a certified scale to get a piece of paper to get a registration at DMV and to my surprise we are at 480 pounds. There's still the outer plywood skin and some cabinet doors and the galley hatch to add but I honestly cant see exceeding 600 pounds. 

So we met one of my two criteria but I cant be happier. 



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