Cutting metal and welding to the tiny house trailer

Last week was all about METAL. 🎸

I went to Metal Mart to purchase the metal that will be the bottom of my trailer. I initially planned to get some 5V metal roofing just because it’s simple and affordable enough. Luckily, they had a bunch of mini-rib metal out in their “boneyard”, so I was able to score a sweet deal with that. I saved over $200! I also purchased some 1″ square tubing to attach to the side of the trailer. You’ll see why later in the post.

One issue that’s been hanging over my head is how to secure the trailer when I park it on my property. There’s a whole lot of videos and resources for building a tiny house and where to park them, but it was hard to find how to secure them where you park them. Doug had a great solution and suggested we add cement tubing to the property and use metal rods to connect the trailer to ground. This will allow me to level the trailer and provide some stability against strong winds. No trips to Oz for me! 🤞

To do this, we needed to add some pieces of metal to the trailer with a 1 1/4″ hole to connect the rods. Doug had a scrap piece of metal (because of course he did) that was big and sturdy enough to cut into six pieces. They’re about 8″ by 6.”

Doug was in charge of cutting the six pieces. Phil joined us and cut off a couple corners because these will jut outside of the trailer, and no one wanted to accidentally slice their leg. I was in charge of drilling the hole. I got to use a drill press for the first time, which was a lot of fun. I started with a smaller bit, then a bit bigger bit, and then the 1 1/4″ bit. Getting the 1 1/4″ bit through was hard! It took a lot of patience and a lot of oil. After a quick filing to smooth out the edges, they were ready to attach to the trailer. In the end, they looked like price tags.

Before welding them to the trailer, we had to prep the trailer. I used a grinder to take off the paint that was on the trailer where we would do the welding. Doug was in charge of welding these pieces because I wasn’t going to put holes in my brand new trailer.

Once he was done welding a piece, I would follow with a wire brush to get rid of any burnt paint, wipe the area down with paint thinner, and then spray paint the area so it wouldn’t rust.

I got to cut the square tubing to size, and we were able to weld these pieces on with a mig weld. I learned how to mig weld many years ago, so I got to brush off those skills again. 👩🏻‍🏭 Doug tacked the pieces on, and I did some fine welding work. Although as the day went on, the look of the welds greatly declined.

This project was incredibly difficult simply because it is summer in Texas. It was over 100 degrees, and we were wearing long sleeves and pants for protection. We basically had to take a hydration break every 10 or 15 minutes. Luckily, we made it through and finished up the project.

Overall, this project took us three days to complete. Want to watch the progress in action? Check out the video! There you’ll see more of the process with the metal and also some vineyard work.