When we were planning the tiny house I did an Internet search for ‘tiny house wheel well box in’ with surprisingly few results. You’d think that with the sheer number of tiny houses being built and all the various blogs and YouTube videos, there would be more info on the subject.
From what I could tell most people are just building tiny walls, insulating them, and covering them with whatever they cover the rest of the interior with. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, I just think it can be done a little cleaner and a little lighter.
I decided to build simple boxes out of 1/2 inch Baltic birch plywood and insulate them by puzzling together all of the leftover foam 2” polyiso foam scraps from our ceiling. It felt good to use up all the little bits instead of throwing them away. Once the glue is dry the whole assembly is fitted perfectly onto cleats in the floor and the wall.
The overall result is strong, clean looking, compact, lightweight, and well insulated, which is pretty much our building philosophy in a nutshell.
We made a good time lapse which I’ll post it tomorrow along with a step-by-step YouTube video. It’s not exactly rocket science but there are a few things to be aware of that can trip you up. If you’ve never built cabinets before these little box-ins are a great first project!
– Brian
