Houses on wheels made in Romania

I had the chance to discover a very nice story to share with you. It's about young enthusiasts who are building houses on wheels in Oradea. But the story is about more than just building wooden houses. It is about youth, enthusiasm, courage, principles, principles, mentality, perseverance, soul, humanity. It is about people who are beautiful in face and soul, people who love wood and treat it with respect. But let me tell you the story.

Studying in Timisoara, going to Germany and living in a wagon on wheels. 

Cătălin Șendresc is a 29-year-old from Oradea. Now he makes houses on wheels. His story begins as a student. "When I was a student in Timisoara in 2011 I started a company to open a hostel. At that time, there was a program for young entrepreneurs, but in the end I didn't get funding. The company was put in inactivity and I left the country. Eventually I ended up living in Munich with my girlfriend who was from there.”

When he got to Germany, where he met Christiane, he thought of settling there. "With rents being expensive in the city we chose to live on the outskirts of the city in a small forest with other people in this kind of mobile, worker's wagon type of mobile homes. That's where I had my first contact with living in small spaces, with the downgrading phenomenon. It's interesting to live in a smaller space because you realize how many things you really need to live happily somewhere.”

The beginnings, the first little house and coming home.

It was in 2015, when the idea of living in a house on wheels was being revived in Europe. Christiane, knowing him to be handy, one day suggested he build one. "I was working in a hotel at the time, this trend of little houses on wheels had just started in Europe and one day, my girlfriend suggested that I should build one. That very evening there was a program on TV about these little houses and I took it as a sign. I was not a carpenter but I had worked with wood many times before and I was handy.”

Catalin bought tools and got to work. The idea was to build a house and see if people would be interested in buying it. "I bought cheap tools that more hassle than help and that's how I got started. This was in the spring of 2015. We built a little test box to see if there would be people interested in it and indeed there were. We also ran into people interested, we ran into competition to get in our way. Next, we moved to Oradea...”

When he arrived in Oradea, he reactivated the company he had set up years earlier in Timisoara and changed its areas of activity. To stop working only on inspiration, he took a carpenter course. He then looked into the legal requirements for building houses on wheels. It was much harder than the work itself, but slowly but surely everything got on track, speaking of houses on wheels.🙂 He rented a hall, hired a friend and they started work.

The team now and the houses they make. 

The beginning of the project in Romania was not easy and if you thought that it now has a big factory with hundreds of employees, you are wrong. "At the beginning, the organizational part was more difficult, we had to find out the legal constraints of building the huts on wheels, which were not easy to find out at the time. Slowly everything came together. When I could afford it, I rented a rented hall, an employee who is a friend of mine and now we are 4 people in a small village.n the permanent team, the two Romanian workers, the girlfriend who is in charge of the German side and a friend from Portugal who is in charge of the design and image of the company."Sometimes more people are needed, but they do seasonal collaborations or outsource activities.

For construction I use softwood - resinous - because the trailers are for category B to be towed by a normal car that can carry up to max. 3.5 t. The houses are 2.54 m wide, 4 m high and between 4 and 7 m long, depending on the model and the customer's requirements. They also use oakbut only for parquet.

The house is basically an open space with only a separate bathroom. The entrance is in the living room, as wide as the width of the house. At a certain point the staircase leading to the "loft", where the bedroom is, narrows the space.

This is where the kitchen starts, equipped with everything you need.

Following the stairs is the bathroom with shower, sink and toilet, separated from the rest of the space by a sliding door.

The staircase also serves as a storage space, with drawers built in, as well as a high space to hang things (wardrobe 🙂 ).

The attic bedroom is generous. From the bed you can watch the TV, which sits on a console that doubles as a mini-library.

The house is fully functional, with cold water, hot water, electrical system, underfloor heating or wood-burning stove, double-glazed windows.

On request the houses can be equipped with solar panels. Water and electricity connections are the same as for caravans.

The working time for such a house, from the moment of agreement with the client (signing the contract) to the handover, is 4 months. Can you believe it?

Finished with natural and organic products, wood from sustainable sustainable forests. 

From the very beginning, they have focused on the quality of the materials, on products that are as healthy as possible and with as little impact on the environment as possible. Despite the difficulties they faced in finding the right materials, the not exactly low prices, they never compromised and that is what brought them success. "From the beginning we cared about the quality of the work and the mentality behind what we want to do. That is to say, we didn't compromise on the quality of the materials or the ethics behind the wood. We used environmentally friendly, healthy ones that have a lower carbon footprint in the production process, even if they are more expensive."Customers saw the quality, appreciated the reliability and principles and paid the right price. To insulation of housesFor example, no polystyrene or basaltic wool is used but hemp, and the anti-condensation film is made from recycled paper.

Wood finishing on the inside is done with oils environmentally friendly. They were looking for a product they could trust even to treat kitchen worktops that they eat. They found them at Naturalpaint and they also get the coloring pigments, varnishes and eco-friendly paints they use to finish the exterior wood. "The eco-friendly indoor wood oils we trust to even treat our kitchen countertops, the pigments we use, and the eco-friendly outdoor wood stain we buy from Naturalpaint, a partner we rely on for product quality and professionalism. Our wood paints are also water-based.”

For one of the projects they used the wood-burning technique, known as the Japanese technique, for outdoor protection Shou Sugi Banbut also used in the past because it protects the wood very well, making it last for hundreds of years. They are already thinking of using it more in the future.

The wood they bring in is 90% from Germany, from a gater that cuts the wood to the larger sizes needed to build the structure. Being constrained by weight, any eliminated joints are welcome. But there's another reason they bring the wood from Germany, even if it costs more. They trust that the wood comes from sustainable sources. Cătălin and his friends are principled people who love and respect the forest. "We are of the opinion that Romania is deficient when it comes to replanting legally felled forests, and there is really no point in talking about illegally felled forests"Cătălin told me sadly.

Techniques, tools and inspiration.

After the carpentry course he did and some labor problems, he gave up buying cheap tools. He switched to high-performance tools because he was convinced that he had neither the time nor the money to break wood and work for nothing, and a good tool does most of the work. I also use hand tools, especially when the power goes out, he says humorously. They have Japanese saws and chisels that they use to put their "signature" on the houses: stylized traditional Romanian motifs, which they make on the patio posts or eaves.

I was curious to find out where their inspiration came from, how they came to house models which I still do. The answer convinced me that it's all about will and determination. If you want to do something you will certainly find out how, especially now that information is more and more "out there" and circulating very fast. "The internet was the primary source of inspiration in the beginning, and I recommend all enthusiastic carpenters to look it up in specialized English and German terms. I won't lie, we were inspired by what the Americans were building, but I bet no one will dispute that they too were inspired by the architecture of Swedish houses."Gradually they came up with their own designs, inspired combinations of materials and design, innovative in the industry.

And a fitting conclusion to these beautiful people.

The way Cătălin Șendresc tells his story is moving and motivational in equal measure. If I didn't know I was from here, I would have said it was a story 'imported' from abroad. And how many such stories aren't hidden away somewhere in some corner of the country. And the ending had to live up to the story: for the future, the team plans to build cottages of the same quality for people who, for various reasons, do not have a roof over their heads. They want to make houses for social cases. "We want to succeed!", says Catalin, and I believe him.

You can see videos, tutorials on how to build houses on wheels and more on their website www.tinywunderhouse.com.