Home Built RV: The What and Why.

We all have a bit of wanderlust in us and as we approach retirement we itch even more for seeing places that we were not able to in our younger days of work and family first.  As I look over the horizon of my life to come, I anticipate how nice it might be to pick up on any given day and head to the beach or the mountains.  Maybe I'll go to that music festival or City Street Scene that I read about in the paper.  My hope is that I will have the time to do the fluff of my life, the drifting onto the casual and non constrained.  These are nice thoughts and great fantasies, but alas, the reality of budgetary constraint becomes ever present as my wife asks how will we pay for these great adventures.  You know how I like to shop when we travel!
Over the past couple of years my wife and I have been researching how we might be able to best extend our travel days now that time may be more plentiful and deadlines much disappeared.  One of the areas that we investigated was that of acquiring an RV (or Recreational Vehicle).  We grew to understand that there are basically three Categories of standard RV's.  There are Class A, Class B and Class C.  The best way to describe these would be that a Class A is what a lot of Folks might call a "Bus".  A Class B would be a large "Camper Van" and a Class C might be better described as a Trailer with designated sleeping and kitchen facilities.  All have their place and purpose.  The cost of each is somewhat unique, but can range from several  thousands of dollars to over a $ Million depending on taste, up-fit and size.  The Class A and Class B are usually self propelled by either a Gas or Diesel motor.  The Class C being a trailer needs a tow vehicle in order to be moved unless it is transported and set-up with the initial sale.  The advantage to this type of travel is that you aren't living out of a suit case, which makes it seem more like a "home" environment.

In review of this as an alternative I had a couple of major concerns since we have not owned an RV.  First there is the expense and it is not something to be taken lightly.  Because of the investment I also wanted to make sure that we would actually use it.  My wife and I both shared the belief that it would be tragic to put several thousand dollars (from our investigation the price range we felt we would be at was between $15K and $150K) into a vehicle and not use it.  As I was quickly reminded "that is a lot of shopping"!  Also, I for one am fatigued by "monthly payments" and feel a strong need to avoid financing or at least minimize it.
My second concern was our ability to physically use it.  How convenient would it be to relocate and how would it be to move and park at campsites.

As I looked into our alternatives and received emails with new letters from different RV sales agents I ran across a sub-culture of DYI projects that caught my interest and I began to drill down into their work.  Inspiring I thought to myself.  This led me to assess my abilities and resources.  I began to question as to if I could maybe do something similar.  Since I had an older trailer and am fairly good with building project in the past I began to create my design.  I also liked the fact that it would give us a chance to see if we would actually take the time to use an RV if we had it, but not have the large investment risk.  So have I got you thinking?