Reddit user Viridion and his wife were sick of sleeping on air mattresses inside of a tent when they went camping. If you’ve ever slept on an air mattress before, you know it’s not the most comfortable sleeping arrangement around.
The plastic bladder often leaks air by morning, and you can never get the bed inflated ‘just right’ (even if you pump it up like this guy).
The couple’s solution? Build their own tear drop trailer for two.
Since he already had extensive metal-working experience, Viridion knew that fabricating his own tear drop trailer frame wouldn’t be a problem. It was building out the wooden camper body that would be the tough part.
My father and I always worked on cars together, and we have built several trailers together.. so all of that was easy for me to figure out.
Using wood tools was new to me, I borrowed a neighbor’s table saw and hand held jigsaw for most of the work. The router I borrowed from my father in law. Those are really the only woodworking tools that I used.
The camper sits on a 5′ by 10′ trailer frame and has a Queen size bed with a rear galley kitchen.
Some would-be tear drop trailer builders wonder how you register a homemade camper for legal towing. Viridion lives in Minnesota, and said that in his state, there’s a one-time $80 fee to register a trailer under 3,000 lb capacity. His completed teardrop trailer weighs only 1,000 pounds.
And unlike an annoying (and expensive) car registration that expires each year, the trailer sticker is good for life. (Although you do have to pay annually if the trailer is greater than 3,000 lb…. so keep it light.)
Viridion made it super easy for you to follow along with him on his teardrop camper-building journey because he took 133 pictures along the way! You can read comments about the build at this Reddit post.
To view all the pictures, visit the link below at Imgur…
