Tiny House for Sale?

First off, let me start by saying, I LOVE MY TINY HOUSE!

We have no regrets building it either.  We both learned a lot and mostly, had fun during the process.  But, we don’t actually live in our tiny house. Yes, it’s our bedroom in the non-winter months. And it’s where we stay if we have company since the current home is just a one bedroom. But other than that, it’s just something very pretty to look at and sit in and daydream about the life we thought we were going to have.

When we started building the tiny house, our thoughts were that we would live simply, and maybe just work seasonally.  But then, we were bit by the farming bug.  And not to say a farmer can’t live in a tiny house – I’m sure some do, but with farming comes a lot more stuff and that doesn’t always work with tiny.

Probably the real reason we never lived in the tiny house is because while I was looking to live simply off-grid – Pete was looking to live with unlimited electricity and out buildings (it took him one winter off-grid in the tiny house to realize that).  As a compromise we purchased our current farm with a rough, fixer upper “pole barn” house and it was just easier to live in the “pole barn” house than in the tiny house.  We intentionally kept the tiny house simple without running water and because we wanted a larger kitchen, we skipped putting in a bathroom with the intention of building a sauna/bath house next to the tiny house.  As a result, the tiny house didn’t serve us the way we needed it to.

We’ve talked about listing the tiny house on Air B&B and we’ve talked about putting it on the original property to serve as our “camp”, but because we love it so much, it just seems like someone who will actually live in it as their home should enjoy it as much as we have.  With that – we think we’re ready to sell.

If anyone is interested in purchasing our tiny home, most if not all information can be found in this blog.  We wrote about pretty much the entire building process. Any other questions can be emailed to thehomesteadfarmanddairy@gmail.com.  We are asking $39,000.  Every build and design decision that went into the tiny house was done with quality and health in mind.  We didn’t skimp on materials and we always chose the least toxic most environmentally friendly building materials possible.

I always intended on having a post full of final pictures but the tiny house never seemed done. I think that’s because we never really made it our home. But below is what it looks like now.  Enjoy!

 

October 1st Deadline – Come and Gone

October 4, 2015 – While I didn’t meet my self-imposed deadline to officially finish the tiny house, we have made some serious progress.  We’ve held my mom hostage a few times and put her to work painting and varnishing our windows. It’s time-consuming and tedious work and I’m super thankful my mom was willing to do it. While she spent a few long weekends working on windows, I’ve been working on the trim work; also time-consuming and tedious.  And while my mom and I have been working on the tiny house, Pete has been working on farm projects; the tedious finishing work is not his forte.

Other tasks my mom took on was varnishing the counter top and refinishing the cherry drop leaf table she gave us for the tiny house.  Thanks Mom!

We recently dug a trench for a gas line so we could hook up the tiny house to the large propane tank. We also decided to have a concrete slab poured for the tiny house to sit on.  The slab is complete and we moved the house onto the slab this morning. We have to wait until next week to have the gas line hooked up and then we’ll get an electrician out to run power to the house.  I have more trim and molding to install and will tung oil the walls when that’s complete. And of course, we still need to build the ladder.

Once all of the above is done, we’ll move back in. At that point, I’ll call the house done.  However, it will still need kitchen shelves, a couch, two storage ottomans for our feet/dining chairs, and any other finishing touches that make a house a home. But, we’re getting there! 🙂

Zoey helped dig the trench.

We Bought Property!

Our most frequently asked question since we started building our tiny house has been, “where are you going to park it?” Our response has always been that we’re looking for land, but hopefully we’ll find a backyard that we could put it or if all else fails we could park it at the local RV park. I am extremely happy to report that as of last Thursday, which happened to be our 5 year anniversary, we can now call ourselves land owners!

Pete and I have been looking for land the moment we left college and headed out west. We would be driving down the road in Garden Valley, Idaho and I would say, “look at that land, we should buy that.” Pete’s response was always the same, “is it for sale?”. No, it wasn’t for sale but it didn’t matter because we weren’t in a position to buy anything anyway! We didn’t have permanent jobs and we knew we would be living in a new town in 6 months, but it was still fun to daydream about our future land and the farm that we would start.

To make a long and probably boring story short, the land we purchased (40 acres) had been for sale since we first moved to Marquette and probably for a year or so before that.  We had checked it out when we first moved here but the timing was never quite right for us.  At the beginning of the summer we finally decided to look at it for real and make an offer but it was no longer listed.  At this same time we found another piece of property that we liked but the seller was not yet ready to accept our offer, she was holding out for something better.  Because of her unwillingness to negotiate with us, I started checking the listings again and this time checked Craigslist (which I rarely look at for property).  Low and behold the original property was now being listed on Craigslist, not with the realtor.

Pete was in Montana fighting wildfires and when I told him the land was still for sale he told me to go check it out and make an offer. I thought I should wait for him to come back before looking at the property, but at his insistence my mom and I went and walked the property. I made an offer and waited to hear back from the seller. Then we found out that the seller who was not ready to accept our offer on the other piece of property was now ready to accept. There were pros and cons to both places, but ultimately we liked the 40 acres the best and we were able to settle on a price and proceed with the purchase.

Our goal is to start a small farm. The property is about 20 acres of pasture and 20 acres of woods, with the woods being mostly sugar maple. We hope to make maple syrup, raise laying hens and meat chickens, have a dairy cow and pigs, as well as a large garden. The property comes with its challenges; mainly it is off grid and it would be rather expensive to have power brought in. We also have to have a well drilled.

We are now under more pressure to finish the tiny house so we can move it out to the property when our lease is up on our apartment next spring. We’ll be roughing it for a little while. We’ll have to haul in water until we get the well drilled and we’ll have to rely on solar panels and/or a generator; we’ve been doing a lot of research on off grid living. We’re no strangers to backpacking and roughing it though, so this will just be one more adventure to have fun with.

Root cellar; it needs a new door but is otherwise in great shape.

The shed on the property is leaning pretty bad. We’re going to try and salvage it if possible.