Personal Experience: How a Girl Remodeled a Tiny House on Wheels

The heroine of this story is a graphic designer named Annie from Germany. In October 2018, the girl was traveling through the USA and dreamed of buying a tiny house on wheels.

At the same time, Annie's friend accidentally found an ad for the sale of an old Mercedes Benz bus, which was already 40 years old at that time. The girl asked her friend to buy the van, even though she hadn’t seen any photos of it yet. They finally met in January of that year. Annie affectionately named the bus Elsa and started working on it. The girl shares her challenging but interesting experience in Instagram.

When I first saw Elsa, I started screaming and crying with joy. It was not easy to realize that I had actually bought this old van.

The most amazing part is that the girl managed to do most of the work herself, despite having no prior experience. The hardest stages were helped by her father.

She decided to get rid of all the old furniture right away: even cleaning the vehicle's body from anything unnecessary took about two days. Then Annie removed the old coating from the walls and floor, and here things started to get complicated. The entire body was rusted, and in many places, holes had already appeared.

There was especially a lot of rust under the wooden floor, so it had to be removed. Instead of heavy plywood, Annie chose a lightweight and waterproof wooden floor with polyurethane insulation. This floor will definitely withstand all the furniture. By the way, she planned to make it manually from wood.

The walls and floor were also completely replaced. In the ceiling, they even managed to create a mansard window with an unusual shape. In the driver’s cabin, Annie decorated the ceiling using thick fabric and aerosol adhesive. The main thing is to let it dry so that no unevenness appears.

All the furniture was made from wood. It resulted in a full-sized dining table, a bench with internal storage space, and a loft bed. Currently, Annie is working on a wardrobe, in the lower part of which she has hidden all her electronics.

By the way, the dining table was made from a floor panel that was purchased for the floor. Annie decided that she could save literally on everything — and it worked!

I had never worked with wood before, but I secretly always dreamed of doing it.

Beneath the bed, Annie managed to fit her entire wardrobe. There are holes in the boxes so that clothes don’t mold due to high humidity.

I don’t have that many things: six large boxes — all I need.

Photo source: Instagram profile @elsa.the.bus