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!

 

Work Continues on the Dormers

May 25, 2013 – My mom was in town for a few days to visit and pick up a friend from the airport; which worked out great for us as she was a big help today (thanks mom). My mom used to be quite the woodworker and builder tackling roofing projects and building cabinets and other furniture items for the home. Growing up, whenever I asked my mom for something she would say, “oh honey, we can make that”. It was annoying at the time because I didn’t get what I wanted and more times than not, we didn’t make it. But it did teach me that you don’t always have to buy what you want, sometimes you can tackle it yourself. Hmmm, a tiny house comes to mind.

We got back to work putting up the other dormer wall and putting up the rafters. Like I mentioned before, the dormers were not in our building plans and we were making it up as we went along. We consulted YouTube, other tiny house blogs, and builder friends, and hoped for the best. One thing we had to figure out was the angle to cut the rafters that would sit on the dormer walls. When you know the pitch of your roof, it’s easy to figure out the angle you need to cut. However, when you don’t know what the pitch is, it’s a little more complicated. Of course there is always math to help you figure it out. Using the Pythagorean theorem and taking the Sin, Cosine, etc. will eventually give you the number you need. At one time I spent a while figuring this all out, but of course didn’t keep my notes and rather than give myself a headache again, we decided to go with the trial and error method. After a few cuts, we settled in on an eight degree angle for the portion of the rafter that attaches to the ridge beam. Knowing this, I was able to find a calculator online that informed me we had a 1.68/12 pitch roof. Definitely not very steep, but it should shed rain and gives us maximum head room in the loft. In the winter we might have to rake the snow off the dormer roof section, but it’s such a small section of roof that it will probably be just fine.

While Pete and I measured and cut the rafters, my mom chiseled out the wall sheathing that was in the way of the rafters. By then we had all the rafters ready to be nailed/screwed in place. The rafters that flank the dormer walls are doubled up with 1/2 inch plywood in between. This gives us extra strength in addition to making it easier to frame in the side walls. By quitting time (6pm cow milking time) we had the dormers up and all rafters in place.

It’s amazing how much more we accomplished with a pair of extra hands! Pete said my mom should come over every weekend. 🙂

My mom chiseling away the sheathing.

We used long construction grade srews to secure the rafters to the dormer walls.

Winter Lull

January 21, 2013 – Happy New Year folks! It’s a good thing that “do a better job keeping up with the blog” was not one of my resolutions. Nothing has happened on the tiny house since my last post other than being covered by a giant tarp, twice.

Pete and I had the good fortune to be able to take a trip to Costa Rica after Thanksgiving for my brother’s wedding. The trip was partially funded by my dad and step-mom, so thankfully we did not have to completely drain the tiny house fund, thanks dad and Ruthanne! Pete was already downstate, so I called up Jeff to get some help covering the tiny house with the tarp before heading out of town. I thought we did a decent job securing the tarp, but when we got back from our trip, the giant tarp was lying on the ground. Luckily we still had the 6 mil poly and another tarp covering the roof; so the house was still protected. We had hopes of being able to work on the house during the winter; at the very least of getting the dormers figured out and the roof completed, but we also wanted the house protected from the elements. Especially the housewrap, as apparently the manufacturer recommends having the house sided within 90 days of putting on the housewrap. Since we knew that wasn’t going to happen, we figured at least covering the sides of the house with a tarp would be good enough. Unfortunately, it was kind of an all or nothing deal. The tarp is such a monster that it catches the wind pretty easily and needed to be tied down very securely. In doing so, it made it not worth trying to remove it to work on from time to time; so the tiny house will sit until spring.

So far, we’ve had another very mild winter. This is the third year in a row that we haven’t seen much snow. We got a few inches over the weekend and our temperatures dropped quite a bit, but we’ve only had to shovel once…and by we, I mean Pete. Although we enjoy outdoor winter activities, it would also be nice to have spring come early and get back to work on the tiny house.

We stopped in at the Modern Woodsmith a couple of weeks ago to take a peek at our door and drop off the door knob and deadbolt. I got a call today that it’s ready to pick up. It turned out so nice and we can’t wait to install it. It still needs to be sealed, which we will probably wait until spring to do.

In the meantime, we have been trying to pare down our belongings in anticipation of living in such a small space. We’ve started in the closet and have a bag of clothes ready to go to Goodwill as well as a few other odds and ends. Since not much work will be done on the house for a little while, I’ll do my best to come up with tiny house topics to write about. If you have any ideas, send them my way.

The door is made out of african mohogany. There is a nice tiger stripe effect that will show more once we seal the door.