Another set of Plans

  

The pictures here are from "Lucy" by Shaye and Tom over at DiyHouseBuilding.com. She's their own creation and an amazing little house I discovered through Pinterest. Which I'd barely used before but is now becoming a dangerous addiction.

All the pictures on their website are worth a look, and clicking on either of these will take you to their page. I love how light and airy and open their house seems, even though it's only about 8 feet by 24 feet. And it's so exciting to see how international Tiny Houses have become! They're in New Zealand, got inspiration from the States, and now I'm looking at their plans from Missouri for a house I may someday park in California. Hooray for the internet, right?

I did purchase their plans and plan to use them and the first set to start to put together my own. My days have been very full of graph paper, measuring tapes and storage calculations. I woke up early this morning to the sound of rain outside, imagining what it would be like if it were only a few feet over my head, thinking on what all I needed to have room to store.

I fell back asleep to lists going past in my brain. Clothes, shoes, jackets. Towels, sheets, blankets. Toiletries, toilet paper, soap. Plates, silverware, cups. Pots, mixing bowls, knives. Non perishables, refrigerated food, frozen. Spinning wheel, loom, sewing machine. Fiber, yarn, fabric. Books, DVDs, video games. Desktop, monitor, speakers.

What else, what else, what else...

Revisiting a Wild Place

I spent the last week and a half in California, visiting my moms and spending time where I grew up. And along with lots and lots of talking, watching the Tiny documentary on Netflix, showing my mom my possible floor plans, and eating at every restaurant we could think to visit, we drove out to where we lived until I was 16.

The house I grew up in is gone. It was a single wide mobile home and falling apart by the time we moved to town. In its place, the new owners of the land have built a giant house. Nearly a McMansion, though a very lovely one from the outside. They've done very nice things with the land, a new pasture in place of the old one, and it is good to see the place being taken care of.

But we didn't drive up and knock on the door to go looking. Instead, we went down the road and I visited my wild place. So the picture up there is two months and 30 years after the last one I posted. The road's a bit closer to the tree, the trunk's a bit wider...but then so am I!

It was an incredible visit, to get to share these plans I'm making with my mother, to hear them come out ever more real as I described the research I've done, the decisions I've made, the steps I'm taking.

And it was incredible to again sit where I had as a four-year-old girl, breathing that air, listening to the glorious silence of the country, and know I'm doing what I can to reclaim the same sense of possibility I had then.

Finding a Wild Place

Some of the fondest memories of my childhood are of the long walks I used to take with my mother and sister. Living in the country there were few cars on the road and we'd follow the twists and turns for miles, talking about everything and nothing, making up songs and teasing each other. Every holiday, when family came, we'd do the same, taking our guests along the well worn paths outside our home.

I know now it was as much a way to escape the house and my abusive father as it was to get some fresh air. Staying inside meant being subject to his rages and moods, meant being ridiculed, screamed at, or blamed for his own failings. But even if it was at first only a means of escape, it grew into much more for me.

Part of it was that my sister and I each had our own "Wild Place". We picked a tree, or bush, or patch of roadside that to us was full of nature's mystery. My mother would take us to them, pulling us in a little red wagon when we were very young, and we would spend time hiding among the leaves and playing with small toys we'd carry from home. I remember my mother's wild place was a giant oak that I called the "Robin Hood" tree, because it looked like the tree Robin's wanted poster was nailed to in my favorite Disney movie.

Walks now aren't quite the same, living in a town as I do. I can walk for miles, yes, and see many different houses and yards, see how other people are living. But there are very few wild places within a mile of my home, as there were when I was small.

A tiny house wouldn't necessarily be in a wild place, either, but when I think of living in one, when I think of curling up in a home I built myself, looking out to see the walls and shelter I've created, I feel that same sense of safety, of glorious calm and right I always did hidden in the leaves of my wild tree on River Road.

The picture above was my wild place, taken thirty years ago last month. I can think of few better gifts to give that four year old girl than a place of her own, a home she'll never want to escape. And I'm determined to give it to her.

Potential

I have always loved craft stores, office supply stores, and home improvement stores. Walking in and seeing so much potential, all neatly arranged and ready to be realized, thinking of all the things that could be made with the materials around me...it's intoxicating.

And even more so, now that I have actual plans to carry out. 

I've spent some time exploring both the Habitat for Humanity Restore and Lowe's in the last month, looking over what they have and feeling a secret thrill when I recognize something I've seen used online, when I identify building components that a few months ago I never would've recognized.

I wandered up and down the aisles at Lowe's, discovering they have the Ondura roofing I'd look at online right there in the store, finding that prices were actually better than they'd been online on several things, and gathering up paint chips to dream about the exact shade of pink and brown I'll eventually paint my house.

I've started a lot of projects in my life--mostly failed knitting and sewing ones, if I'm being honest--but this one feels different. It feels real, like it already exists and is just waiting for me to find it.

I am a Nerd

So I basically live on the computer. I have a desktop and a laptop, and I work in front of a computer all day long. I am a child of the digital age. I also LOVE data, and spreadsheets, and trends and formulas and digital organization.

All of which has led to me taking every extra moment in the last couple weeks poking around online and making a giant spreadsheet of what every component of the house will cost. (I also have another tab in that spreadsheet that's an inventory of what I own and will be keeping, what I'll need to purchase, and what I'm replacing. Like I said, nerd)

This is hardly a complete list at this point. It doesn't include the tools I'll need, though I hope to borrow some from friends and have some already. It doesn't include the hardware to put the components together. It also--aside from a few items--is the full price of each of these things new from the store. I intend to shop around, and I already know craigslist can deliver quite a lot of this for quite a bit less.

But it gives me a good place to start, and a very rough initial savings goal. It also is exciting, knowing that I could--technically--get my trailer right now and get started. I'm going to wait until I have a place to build and a lot more of the components, but seeing it all laid out...it makes all seem real.

Name for a Tiny House and a Purchase

So in my attempt to read everything Tiny House related in the last few months, I devoured Ella's Little Yellow Door blog. It was wonderfully inspiring and impressive--she built a house while wearing a skirt!--and the writing was engaging. Also, it was incredibly fun to see pictures of her tiny house going through my home town area of San Luis Obispo!

But the thing I loved most was that she named her house. I have always loved English Cottage names, the sense of a larger identity than just a number. Rivendell, Bag End, Brinkley Court...all evocative and interesting.

It made me want to name my own tiny house. But what? 

I do plan to paint my house. I have a local connection for cedar siding that is incredibly reasonable, but the color is not my favorite. And since I'm going to paint it anyway, I'm going to paint it my very favorite color combination of pale pink and chocolate brown. So the name could follow the color. But Rose Cottage is the most popular house name in the UK...and I just have to be different.

Or there are names based on animals. Wolf Den, Raven's Nest, Beehive. My initials spell Bee, so that one seemed obvious...but then I'd have to paint it yellow and I didn't want to do that.

I ended up downloading lists of animals, of trees, of colors, of gems...trying to find something that spoke to me. Rejected names were "The Tiny Pink Palace" (my roommate pointed out it sounds like a strip club, thank you, Chad), The Cosy Castle, Brownberrie Cottage and 221B Baker Street.

In the end, I decided on the name at the top of this blog. Bee's Rose Bramble. Light pink and brown, soft and tough, pretty but difficult to get rid of.

What do you think?



And the purchase!

It's going to be awhile before I'll be able to start building. I'm saving up now and my tax return definitely helped, but I have a lot of things to finalize first. Not the least of which is going through everything I own and getting rid of most of it!

That said, there are a few things I know I'll need, too. I want to make sure everything in the house is something I love, not just something that is "good enough". That said, I'll be getting rid of my mass produced plates and dishes, in favor of handmade ceramics. I might do some of those myself, if I can get access to the facilities here. But I imagine I'll be buying some of them, too!

And I started that this week. It's just a pitcher/mug, but I love it!

Possible House Plans

 I've been looking at pictures and plans and blogs and websites for months, now, trying to decide what I want for my own tiny house. There are so many options! I love the look of the original Tumbleweeds, but there are some really unique designs as well.

After looking over everything and my budget, I purchased the plans for the Tiny Green Cabins' Prairie Rose.

It's on sale now for $39 and at least gives me a really wonderful starting place. I don't know if I'll stick to the plans one hundred percent, but I've been able to calculate a general idea of the cost from the materials list, as well as examine the framing details.

I've also been playing around with first graph paper and then Floorplanner.com to start to plan out the inside, too. 

I've also signed up to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity during their Women Build event this spring, to get some real life experience in building. I've always been one of those people who's learned from books, but just like spinning, weaving and cooking, actually putting the theory into practice will be a bit different.

No actual construction going on yet, but I think I'm making progress!

Starting the Tiny Life

I grew up in California. Until the age of sixteen, I lived in a single-wide mobile home on ten acres. Unlike many of the other kids I rode the bus with every day, I loved being out in the country, being able to climb up the hill and lose sight of all civilization. I loved climbing under the spreading branches of the trees on our land, making small forts for myself, pretending I was Laura Ingalls Wilder, or the main character from My Side of the Mountain.

These days I live in Springfield, Missouri, in a 1500 square foot three bedroom house I share with two roommates. I'm on a pleasant residential street, with a large backyard, a large front yard, and a single car garage stuffed with unpacked boxes from when I moved here six years ago.

I first heard of Tiny Houses years ago. A friend at the time linked me to Tumbleweed, back when it was practically just Jay Schafer. I examined the website, but the idea of living in such a small house didn't match with my 24-year-old certainty that I'd soon be married, working on having four kids, and building myself a modern log cabin, with five bedrooms, a den, a family room, and everything I could've dreamed.

Ten years later I am still un-married, still kidless, and much, much more aware of who I am and what I want out of life. In the last few years I've gotten a steady job for a company I like, I've gotten out of debt, and I've spent quite a bit of time figuring out what's important to me.

These days, it's definitely not the piles of things bought to combat a childhood of being poor. It's not the hours spent cleaning this house that is so much bigger than my needs. It's not the masses of clothes, more than I can wear in a month, or the multiple set of dishes and silverware, enough to fill the sink three times over. It's not the clutter that surrounds me with every moment.

So when a co-worker showed me pictures of her recently completed tiny house, when she let me come visit it...I remembered what that friend had shown me so long ago. And in the past few months I've devoured everything that's come since, the companies and blogs and movement that was in its bare infancy when I last looked.

And now I'm going to do this. I'm going to create a house that is just for me, that fulfills my needs. I'm going to create a space that is mine, that holds only things I love and things that serve me. I'm going to recommit to what's important to me...and to myself.

I'm going to build a tiny house.


I have very little construction experience. I took a wood working class in college, I helped build sets for theater, I've put together tons of Ikea furniture. I can follow instructions, but this is going to be a heck of a project.

But I'm excited, I'm hopeful, and I'm determined.

And I'll be writing about it here, both the thoughts behind it and the process itself. Fingers crossed this will soon be full of pictures of a house being built! Until then, plenty of musings to follow.