CALLAWAY, Va. (AP) - Last summer, as the pandemic forced many to stay at home, 12-year-old Eli Chapman was busy building one.
Situated atop a hillside in Callaway is Eli’s $1,500 creation - a tiny house built from scratch.
The project, which began last August, was documented from start to finish in a series of videos produced by Eli’s brother, Parker, 15, and posted to Eli’s You Tube channel “Half-Feral.”
“I kind of do think it’ll be a really good experience,” Eli said in the first installment recorded last July.
Each video, narrated by the Benjamin Franklin Middle School seventh grader, details the steps of the building process. The first one starts with building the frame on a bass boat trailer, purchased off Craigslist for $180, and continues until the final nail of the interior siding is driven.
Parker Chapman, a 10th grader at Franklin County High School, recorded, edited and produced the videos that included his little brother’s how-to narrative interspersed with bits of humor.
“The last nail … music to my ears,” Eli said with a heavy sigh while holding a nail gun, during one of the final videos.
Eli said he’d had the idea for building the tiny house for a while. “We were camping once, and we just started drawing in the dirt what we wanted to build,” he recalled.
At first, he thought he could include a loft, but realized that he wouldn’t be able to because of size constraints. “I wanted a loft so bad,” he said.
Being on a tight budget, he had to be creative with the materials he used. He found a sliding glass door in good condition for $40. The tiny home’s tin roof came from an old press box. Old wooden pallets were used for the interior walls. The interior windowsill and table were crafted out of 100-year-old wood found in the family’s farmhouse.
While Eli helped measure, cut and paint, his father, Paul, helped with operating the larger power tools and the heavy lifting, while his mother, Tara, served as a member of their support crew.
With the exception of running water or a toilet, the 8-foot-by-7-foot space has all the creature comforts of home.
There’s a fold-out futon Eli received as a Christmas gift and a hammock that connects from one corner of the room to the other, offering enough space to sleep three people comfortably.
A chair and table allow space for eating and doing homework.
A hanging chandelier, LED strip lights around the perimeter of the ceiling and outside white lights around the front door provide ample light.
A flat-screen television, gaming console and DVD player, along with a dartboard, ensure Eli is rarely bored.
“I sleep out here every night that’s not a school night,” he said.
His final project has garnered fans and followers from around the world. It also earned him the semi-amateur badge award from Graeme Jenvey, a video producer in Charlottesville who hosts his own You Tube channel called “Woodness Goodness.”
“He kind of motivated me,” Eli said. “He came down here and toured it.”
As for what’s next, Eli has his immediate sights set on other projects around the family’s property, while also keeping his options open for a future career.
“I hope to build another one eventually and maybe, when I get older, build houses for a living or be an architect,” he said in one video. “That’s really what drove me to do this.”
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