Bow-top Gypsy Vardos
Back in 2014 we researched into the various traditional forms of gypsy wagons, and then designed and built a couple of our own based on the bow-top design, but with a West Coast Conestoga twist. We lived and traveled in these 8- and 10-foot-long micro houses for a couple of West Coast years before selling them and moving to the East Coast. And, although tinier than a tiny house, both had sitting height saunas for 4-5 people under the bed.
We love copper and brass, and had access to salvaged Heartwood from ancient redwoods to trim them out. If you’ve never seen this type of redwood, it is not red but almost black, and the grain structure is so tight it is uncountable. The first wagon was a trial run, designed as we built it, and the second one took just as long to build, as we became very selective with the components, sourcing UV treated clear vinyl and heavy Sunforger double-fill canvas to sew our own fully removable tarp roof, with another solid clear vinyl tarp for long term total waterproofness, especially during travel.
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Anna Mixed her own palate of custom colors from readily available Rust-Oleum metal paints and they were used throughout the project on all steel components, from the trailer, to the EMT rafters, to the hinges. This had the hoogalifying effect of uniting many different manufactured steel products with different finishes to make them all appear similar and colorful within the same palate.
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We have really got into doing our own custom metal work, ideally using readily available used items, the 5 gallon bucket stove being a great example. Easy and quick to remake when it inevitably rusts out for next to zero cost, extremely quick to heat up, holding decent size 5x10 inch round logs, with heat shields to allow placement inches from a wooden wall, a baffle inside to greatly improve efficiency, and small enough to fit under a bed.
These stoves can heat up so fast I have gotten out of bed to start a fire in sub freezing weather and chosen not to get dressed because the stove is radiating heat within 5 min and starting to glow red after 10, and the little space under the bed is toasty within a quarter hour.
We developed our own latch system for the double-dutch front door; with a swinging Brazilian Rosewood bar latch for the lowers, and a hidden-in-plain-sight abalone micro-cord pull, wooden stake latch for the uppers.
This was surprisingly useful in the crime riddled California bay area, as it is difficult to break into structures which do not appear to have a handle let alone a lock…
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The roof system is infinitely variable. From fully closed and battened down, surviving the intense wind storms of Death Valley when the trailer threatened to blow over, to one side rolled up, to one or both sides awninged out for maximum shade and airflow, to completely removed and rafters taken out, enabling sleeping safely off of the ground, in a giant wooden cradle, with a canopy of stars overhead. And when the nights are cold, such as up high in the desert mountains in the winter, you can curl up in a toasty, heated bed, the stove banked down for the night filled with oak and madrone coals….
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I can tell you with no need for exaggeration, there is absolutely nothing like it in this world.
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Being practical people, as well as artists, after we built each of these wagons and before the final stage of painting and decorating, we thoroughly road tested them for weeks. Traveling both into the deserts of California and Oregon, and up as high into those mountain ranges as my 4x4 Toyota truck could pull them in the winter. They went through the aforementioned wind storms, flash floods, heavy snow, scorching sun and bitter mountain storms. We took them on sections of jeep roads so rough we had to crawl along at a walking pace, picking our way around boulders and over rocks as large as basket balls. Needless to say, they passed every test.
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If you are interested in owning one of these, or anything similar, send us an email of what specifically you are wanting and we can give you a rough idea of what it would cost and the features which would be included.