Life in a Magical Gypsy Vardo Style Caravan

one of the things that I really love about tiny houses is that they're often packed full of the character of the people that live in them and that's really the case with this next place we're about to visit I guess you could say it's a real gypsy dream hi frenchie hey good to see you this wagon is absolutely adorable Thanks what was your inspiration behind creating something like this I worked at ferry festivals in the UK and I was inspired by the Gypsy vardø the traditional boat op gypsy wagons I saw at those events and I just wanted to live in a caravan and they were really expensive here they're plastic white awful things so I just decided to build my own it is just absolutely packed with character isn't kind of like me so what's it actually made from and so it is kind of like based on a traditional boat up with the canvas but it's a bit away from the traditional sense because it's got a MIG welded steel frame as there as the interior right so I built the steel frame onto the trailer and then it's got plywood on the outside and it's 25 mil box-section through the middle and so in between the Box section there's 25 mil polystyrene and then ply on the inside so it's fully insulated all through the walls so this wagons really one that's designed to be moved around isn't it the whole thing weighs a ton and a half with all my stuff in it so that's good and you need a decent sized truck to pull it but it is poly ball and what about the windows here what are these made from it's just like tent windows right so it's made from vinyl and but they've got zips on them so you can unzip them to let them air in or you can zip them all the way off in the summer and I've also got and they made me fly screens that velcro to the inside so in the summer I tend to just have the fly screens on the window and the breeze comes in and out all summer I really love all of the artwork on this caravan as well it's just so pretty yeah the whole caravan really has been a work of art I'm really really blessed to have lots of amazing friends in my life that are really talented at creating things so you know Dave with the beautiful fire which we'll look at later and yeah there's heaps of art in here that my friends have given their time and energy to just beautiful yeah but also your own talents as well because you actually built a lot of this yourself didn't you yeah yeah um I built most of it myself made a lot of expensive mistakes along the way but learn a lot now just before we go inside I would love to know a little bit about this place where we are because this looks incredible here yeah it's great it's a communal space we have big communal gardens there's chickens behind us that produce eggs and there's giant organic veggie gardens there's pizza ovens there's glow worms and a river we can swim in the river in the summer and it's set on about nine or ten acres I think I'm not totally sure of the size yeah and in the big house people live communally and they all they all eat in the evenings together and just a really I mean we're so close to the city here but really far away there's no phone reception here in my Caravan I get no internet connection at all it's really good it's really light you know completely off the grid and out of the connectivity which is great I just choose when I want to go and can't connect myself onto the computer perfect yeah well this caravan is absolutely gorgeous from the outside can't wait to see what it's like on the inside yeah we've got come in look at the heart work on that door first thing you know it really is that is beautiful yeah so this again it was my friend Reuben I feel like he's such a magic person that he brought a lot of stuff into my life so these are kind of like protection symbols these are these are my protection people all the way down here and they just started up here in they weren't no in the beginning and this dragon he's extremely fluffy and he's a protector and when this dragon just appeared one day a little while after that my partner appeared in my life and my partner's really fluffy and he the dragon reminds me of him so it's kind of like Reuben called my partner Jules into my life and how do you think your partner feels about being likened to a dragon I think he's into a embraces the flat base fluffy so dragons are pretty cool so look on the inside yeah after you oh this is absolutely magical walking in here it's just like being greeted by a work of art yeah all my friends have just made so many beautiful pieces of art here oh and how wonderful that you can have all of those contributions from your friends to actually form a space where you live yeah and this kitchen space looks absolutely lovely thanks yeah it's it's mark 3 I like it looking a little bit character character esque and a little bit wobbly I think one of my favorite bits is this cupboard because it's a Yong Yong in yang here and it's a double folding door so great you can get underneath the sink here you can pull it all the way back and I wasn't sure this was gonna work hair oh it's a bit of an experiment and like was it actually good work but it totally did and where does your water come from here so I've got a container outside so I shower in the house here as well I don't have a shower in here obviously so I just take water from the house and I've got a container that's under cover outside and so that feeds up through the floor into the it's like a galley-style foot pump like for a boat right there and then it feeds up into the sink and then I've just got an outlet that comes down and underneath the caravan and I just move that around because I don't use a lot of water in here so the trays are quite happy to kind of get a little bit of a a water every now and again and I only use natural natural products for cleaning and stuff so there's nothing there's nothing bad going into the environment and being British I'm really into my tea so tea shells are really important so this is all day this is all tea mostly of course how could you leave that out yeah and my partner's a trained earnest a joiner at the moment so he made me this beautiful tea tea tray so just yeah really love it that's lovely sweetheart yeah I mean we've been in this house for a few minutes and it seems like almost every single item that you point out has some connection to people in your life and friendships and that's just well it just makes that space so special doesn't it yeah it really does I'm really blessed to have somebody amazing people yeah my life yeah you really get by with a little help from your friends oh so true and your living space here this just looks so comfortable and cozy yeah so originally here I had a blanket box which was probably only about this big and it just wasn't comfortable for sitting on it you could perch on it and but you couldn't really lounge on it you know this is a lounge space so I made this much bigger when I custom-built it put in there and also it means that you can sit on it and I can play guitar on it I do my meditation on it you can have two or three people lounging around on here really comfortably and also underneath here is all my clothes and so this lifts up and that's it hey so I've got my skirts and my dresses and my trousers and my tops so it's just really really organized and easy to access but the thing that really makes a difference in here is the fire so Dave who helped me with the project initially he also built the heart of the project and which is this beautiful fire here I really loved how you said that because a fire really does become the heart of a project doesn't yeah it really does and Dave made heaps of effort made me a really special fire hey we had a glassblower lived here I win and he made the dampers from glass so they've got like vortex marbles on them and I'm a checker dance instructor so down the side of the fire there's seven marbles and they're the color of the chakras and then on the other side Dave welded a Koru into the into the side of the fire and then there's a clear marble on the other side so that when the fire is lit you see their fire light coming through from both sides as well as from the front so it's amazing how it's such as such a beautiful design and yeah he put heaps of effort into it was really nice the floors quite lovely in here as well isn't it this was actually a steel um kind of don't want to tell people because it looks so real eh but it's actually not really wood um it's a lie no and it totally keeps the weight down because it's just it's really super lightweight and I contacted a flooring company and they said how big how big how big a piece do you need and I was like oh four and a half meters by just over 2 meters and they were like oh we'll just send you an offcut like 30 bucks I know awesome cuz this flooring is normally really expensive hey but looks like wood doesn't it it really does Inc and the cat seems to have found the most comfortable space I've always wanted a cat but I had to wait till hours not on the road so much oh but I got the cat kind of chose me she came from the SPCA and she came from you know a little a little box room with heaps of other cats to cat paradise a-actually it's kind of human paradise really yeah yeah she's the queen she's you know and I've also in the kitchen here I've got a little cat door underneath there underneath the shelves so she can get in and out and it's just kind of out of the way and she spends a lot of time sitting under the shelves looking out the window it's like cat TV now the bid area just looks so cozy yeah yeah the bed was important the bed was really important I like my sleep and I like my relaxation and behind the headboard there's actually there's a little cupboard that you can lift the lid the lid off it and you can store stuff down the back and there's actually quite a lot of space down there to just store random things that you need out of the way extra storage is always good in a small space and speaking of extra storage you've also got quite a bit underneath the beer don't you yeah because it's a queen-size bed and it's quite high up I've got heaps of storage under there hey so I've got my tools under there I've got all my blankets I've got my towels I've got you know just everything really everything that I don't need in this space is stored under there no I know that you've got access to the house for when you need to shower and stuff but do you have a toilet in here I do it's a little bit sneaky actually and so I obviously have access to the house for the toilet as well and across from my Caravan there's a compost toilet and but sometimes in the night when it's really cold and it's raining hard out you just really don't want to go outside to go to the toilet Hey so I built a little sneaky toilet and it's just here it's just a cartridge toilet so I built it actually into here it's just it's got a sealable lid and when you go to empty it in the morning you just literally lift and look it up here take it outside pour it on a lemon tree trees love this stuff and yeah just give it a wash and then stick it back in for the next night and then it's super useful hey just real simple yeah another thing that has happened kind of as I've lived in here and as I've been using the space is that a lot of the stuff has appeared kind of organically like you know this was actually originally a tea shelf so it's not being used as one at the moment but a lot of time especially in the winter I'll sit here and I'll get the fire going but I want to still be able to see outside of my Caravan sighs be sitting reading a book and I was like drinking tea and being like what am i I need to put I'm gonna build a shelf so I just built a shelf here for my cup of tea yeah that's great and then yeah I have a lot of random trinkets so these shelves kind of came in as I was going along and the altars as well I put the altar in you know just to place there hold my crystals and and and have a focus for the week or for the month or for that day and I find that's really important for my own spiritual practice one of the benefits I suppose of a project actually taking three years is that you get to really get to know the space and understand what your needs are in it yeah totally and it's definitely been an organic process and my original design I mean the main stuff is still in the same place but everything else has changed you know the idea that the ideas I had in my head in the beginning when you actually realistically start living in a space they tend to shift around quite a lot but it's been beautiful you know I've just kind of done it round work and done it around festivals and projects and being on the road and you know just kind of fit it in with my life and done little bits here and there as I could and so your partner as well he's actually building his own Caravan isn't he yeah it's funny that's actually how we met we met online over our mutual love for tiny builds and we met up for coffee and we just geeked out for hours hey and we were we were actually friends for a very long time just with quite similar interests of building stuff and wanting to go on adventures and but yeah we ended up it ended up being more than a friendship and he ended up moving here and finishes the finishing is build on the land and yeah so we live together but we had separate houses which for me and for Jules as well as absolutely perfect because we're both really independent people would both got a lot going on in our lives and it meant we could have two three days a week where we were together and then the rest of time we were off doing our own thing and we just we didn't have to ever compromise on our experience you know this is my space my decoration my rules his is his space his decoration how he wants to do it and it's quite funny as well because you look at this carrot man I've pretty much built me in a caravan you know it's curvy its blingy there's like hippy taught everywhere chakra stuff you know glitter like it's totally just me in a caravan and then you look at Jesus build and his is very square practical precise full of wood like just you know very manly and and and very much like him like he's totally a very grounded kind of you know natural person so it's it's really cool and it's just a good way to live you know we we have a really amazing relationship everything in here is packed with so much character and it's so customized this could not have been a cheap thing to accomplish um it it's actually quite surprised and it wasn't it wasn't too much money and it costs twelve and a half grand all-in and that includes the tools and a few expensive mistakes twelve and a half grand yeah yeah debt is an amazing achievement and I've got some really sexy tools now hey I've got an Ag sir there's it's very nice now so not counting the tools in the purchase what do you think the actual cost of the caravan was I think maybe I spent about two grand on tools so just over ten grand on the caravan and it's a much cheaper way to live you can't have a lot of stuff because you don't have a lot of space it just frees up all that time where you're working in a full-time job paying for a mortgage it frees at that time for you to be you know I travel to festivals I get creative I'm involved in a charitable trust that me and a few friends set up ourselves I run social circus projects I do heaps of meditation and yoga I play my guitar I go mountain biking I spend time with my cat I hang out with my friends I put her in the garden you know just all of that life stuff that's so beautiful and and so amazing I get to do heaps more of that and I you know get involved in organizing events and it's it's just a really beautiful way to live I can I can pretty much get away with working a couple of hours a week teaching two classes a week I can just about live off and so it's like well three hours worth of work so you know that's really living the dream hey people are like oh you're so lucky and I do really feel that I'm very blessed in this life and I am looking but I also feel that you make your own look and if you put the hard yards in and you hustle all the time you know and you do the things that you love and then life's beautiful and amazing and you've just got to follow your dreams well Frenchie I have to say it is a really wonderful one congratulations and the Builder and thank you so much for showing me around no worries yeah my pleasure thanks for coming I have fast fallen in love with this gypsy wagon it's a warm welcoming beautiful space to live in but more than that it's just Frenchie everything in this space has some kind of significance to her in her life and that is what truly makes this place a home more than that though it's what it represents to her which is the ability to live a free and artistic life who could ask for

Channel: Living Big In A Tiny House

Views: 2,872,392

Rating: 4.905324 out of 5

Keywords: Tiny House, Gypsy Wagon, Gypsy, Wagon, Vardo, Caravan, TinyHome, Small House, House on Wheels

Id: FLZtljVoRjI

Length: 17min 55sec (1075 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 15 2016