Life devoid of artistic expression is dull. Structures of old often had ornate design elements that gave them individual character. The turrets, towers, and dormers built into old Victorian houses here in America are beautiful to look at. Modern architecture however has become pretty basic. The landscape here is now covered in sad lifeless tract housing. In order to mass produce housing as cheaply as possible these cookie cutter houses have now become the norm. Malvina Reynolds wrote a song called “little boxes” that describes this perfectly.
Anyone interested in vandwelling or tiny houses is already thinking outside of the “box”, but why not take it a step further? Your home should fuel your imagination and zest for life. As I reported in an earlier post, I built a real rock castle inside of my first step van. Your home is your castle right? Well, I plan on perfecting that design in this second van!
The substratum of the castle wall…
I am going to have a little curved hobbit door as the castle entrance. A hinged door would have taken up valuable internal space. I thought of a door that would draw upwards into the wall like in a real castle. But I decided that would have been complicated and gotten in the way of things I want to build on the back side of the wall. So instead, I decided to cut down a standard pocket door frame and have the door slide into the wall to one side.
After framing in the wall and door frame I sheeted it with 1/2” plywood and cut my curved castle door entrance. Later I will cover this wall with sheets of foam and carve a 3D castle into the foam using hot wire foam carving tools. There is a product called “styrospray” that is used to put a hard coating on finished foam sculptures that makes it more durable. I will be using this product before painting the rocks of the castle wall!
The castle door was offset slightly to one side because of the layout of the front seats. The door is about 30” wide x 40” tall, (perfect size for my inner child to crawl through)!
On the interior side of the wall I built a loft for my bed and will have two small closets underneath the bed on either side of the door.
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
~ George Bernard Shaw