A kitchen sink

Last week we found a sink for the main cabin (our cabin) and a sink for one of the kid's cabins. This week we found one for the family cabin! 17 bucks, you can't beat that! I scrubbed it out this morning and it cleaned up pretty nicely. Even though these are just little pieces, it's exciting having it come together and see things get crossed off our list. Especially so when it comes with huge savings. Little by little, we will get there.

Sleepless Nights

So last night, we redesigned the 3 person cabin to near perfection I think. I had a few reservations before, a little of this or that I wasn't quite satisfied with. We just need to convince the children that 3 to a cabin IS acceptable. One of my daughters was near tears last time we talked about it, She's convinced 2 per cabin is maximum occupancy. I'm convinced we can save tens of thousands of dollars...

All of this was quite exciting, but yielded an absolutely restless night. Must remember,.... NO designing before bed!

"Your Money or Your Life"

If you haven't read this, then do it! Great book!

Found Treasures

We found two kitchen sinks yesterday at the Habitat Re-Store! That was exciting. Out very first material purchase. First the sink, then build the house around it. We also saw the range we are after at Costco for a great price, but we are a little strapped at the moment.

We taped out our floor plan for the tinyhouse on the living room floor last night too. It only used about one third of our living room! Surprisingly, it felt more spacious than imagined, like "ya, this actually WILL work." This is a good exercise that I would recommend. It helped us make a few tweaks for the better.

This is actually our old floor plan (10x20) but it gives a better idea perhaps of what's taped on the floor. It's based on this but reduced to 8x20 to fit on a trailer. 

Letting go of STUFF

Getting my old Marshall amp ready for sale. A guy is coming to look at it tomorrow and he will buy it. I hope he gets the same enjoyment from it I did. I've had this thing for 20 years. When I bought it I was sure, I was positive, that my path was music and stardom. We are talkin’ rockstar baby. But then came love, marriage, children and the rockstar lifestyle lost it’s appeal or perhaps just feasibility. As much as I love playing this thing, I haven't done so in years! It's still hard to let it go. Part of it is the money (taking a loss) and part of it is sentimental. Either way, this is happening and the greater yearning is for simplicity, freedom and to live in a tinyhouse of my design built with these two hands. 

Tinyhouse on wheels

I think we have decided to build our tiny houses on trailers. What we sacrifice in square footage we gain in mobility and freedom from the building department. We would no longer be forever tied to one location and I just think our odds of flying under the radar are better. Instead of 10x20 with a generous loft we will be doing 8x20 with a micro loft. It will necessitate constructing one additional tinyhouse but that's okay. We can always sell the extras when the kiddos fly the coop or my wife's idea, start a bed and breakfast. I'll post some pictures of the new concepts soon.

Solar Design

I have been working on the design of the PV systems for our cabins and this book has been indispensable. Definitely check it out if you're going solar.

Just some other cabins I've drawn

 This is my first tinyhouse. 200 sq ft footprint, plus the loft.

Why a Tinyhouse?

Our tinyhouse didn't start out SO tiny but finances dictated. I began by designing a 900 square foot home plus a basement for root cellar and storage, ample covered porches to enhance outdoor living and aid in rainwater collection. It looked too good to be true! Wow, wouldn't this be great?! Well absolutely, yes until I started realizing the real cost of building that home, bringing in the utilities, site work, installing a septic system, drilling a well, building permit fees, and the list goes on. Essentially we would be moving out of our 2000 square feet and into less than 1000 square feet and more than likely maintaining the same debt level...

Deflation of my enthusiasm followed. So I thought about smaller; I thought about 200 square feet to skip all the red tape. But how, pray tell, do you put 8 people in 200 square feet??? We build 4 tinyhouses, that's how! One for my wife and I, one for the girls, one for the boys, and one for a family/ dining/ kitchen.  It was sounding pretty good though I hadn't verbalized it... I was scared to. How do you ask your wife, “hey, honey, how would you like to live in a really small house with a composting toilet and no washing machine? Does that sound good? Oh ya, and we also have to cut our electric usage to virtually nil. What do you say?”

Thankfully I have been blessed with a wife who is ridiculously supportive and has an adventurous spirit. She thought it was a great idea! Okay, hurdle one cleared, now for the kids. The oldest two, whom I thought would be the least excited, are the most excited. They can't wait. “You better not wait til we move out to do this, Dad!”

Humanure

The Humanure Handbook, 3rd edition. Read for free online.
http://humanurehandbook.com/contents.html