Friends, family and the birth of our Utopia the Tiny House

Some people call their family when they go into labor and are having their first born.
We called to help raise our first house.
It wasn't that it was a large home or particularly difficult undertaking as it was a time constraint - we were closing on the land on January 22nd and wanted to be into the house by April 1st.   On top of that, we needed to do so while Ross continued to work a full time job as an employee at Creative Visions in Monterey and getting time off for the project was difficult.
In stepped his mom and dad, Nick and Cathy.  When they came, his sister Anji followed shortly thereafter.  Suddenly we had half a dozen people standing at the wheels of our base floor lain trailer, ready to raise the roof, as it were.

The framing for the walls was like magic.  Words were passed quickly back and forth between father and daughter, sister and brother, mother and son.  Jeff and I wedged in where we could, took commands when they came and did what we could where we fit.  They worked like a well-oiled machine in a way that would put the Brady Bunch to absolute shame.  Needless to say, the walls were done in a few frames, as it were.

Once this was done, it was simply a matter of putting the truck on the end of the hitch and cranking it up the hillside.  We had cleared a nice spot for it, after all, and the truck could tow 10,000 pounds, right?

Unless the tires are bald and it has been raining on the clay and redwood feather mush you're trying to climb.
Instead of getting up the mountain we went sliding further down the hill with our trailer and its walls, the weight simply too much against the natural slip-n'-slide we were up against.

"There is where you live now," Someone commented.  We all laughed because it was the first place we had chosen but there were too many trees in the way and we didn't want to cut back any more.

"Should we wait til' it dries?"

"Nah.  Let's get a come-along."

I stood there, useless and baffled by the conversations going on around me once again.  One trip to Home Depot later (did I mention we went there almost every day for those two weeks?) we were back on track.   We (Jeff and Nick, though I certainly tried and discovered that houses are heavy) ratcheted the house from the bottom of the hill all the way to the top one click at a time.

From there we had cleared most of the hurdles and tree stumps that could get in our way.  The rest was putting the walls up and adding the gables to get the "barn roof" I was hoping for (I needed the extra head space so I could stretch out and sit up completely.).  Remember, this house was being built for not one person but two, so every inch was going to matter!

While the guys lifted walls and constructed a roof I set to staining what would soon be the exterior walls.  The color?  Barn red, of course.  Anyone who has ever known me knows my fascination with the "Little Red House" that I've always dreamed I'd live in.

I promise you some of the stain was left on the wood and not all of it ended up on my hands...forehead...hair... face...

Anyway, Ross ground down anything leftover on the trailer sides we didn't need while Jeff and I wrapped the house to protect it from the weather.  After the house was wrapped (everything is easy when its this small) we did some exterior work by laying and hammering bead board into place.

Once I could hammer no more and the guys decided to work on the roof - we were also competing with oncoming storms - I wandered off and started pulling strands of poison oak off of the redwoods.

Yes, that vine in my hand is poison oak.

They say when it rains it pours and let me tell you that this was the point in which it started pouring, metaphorically or otherwise.

Just when we were in the midst of windows, frames, soffets, fascias, wine, plans and tea, Ross sprained his ankle.  Heck, it might actually be broken - we still haven't gone to the doctor for it. Hey, there was no health insurance at this point...

Not only did Ross hurt himself, the green truck took a rather bad turn and, just to remind us of silver linings, some itty baby seedlings began to sprout: Future food!!!!

Here, we took some much needed time to sit back and breathe.  Clearly we were in too much of a hurry and something was suggesting we take it easy.  At this point we were so exhausted we had begun looking for reasons to fight so sleeping in a morning or two couldn't hurt.

It didn't last long.
Soon thereafter we were back up and whooshing through the interior of the house, the electricity, the road and the water all simultaneously.  We certainly had enough hands to conquer all!

 I learned to use a Skid Steer and giggled like a mad woman all the while because I totally need one of my very own.

I learned how to wire those little boxes that the plugs to into (so I didn't learn all the names/terminology) and how all of that worked back there.  I laid a floor and helped build a door, walls and shelving.  I can proudly say I did a large chunk of the interior work; tongue, groove and all!

A stain later we were ready to move in.

When was the last time you moved?
It's just as awful now as it was the first time.
Did I mention it chose to rain while we were trying to beat the clock?  Some stuff arrived... wet.
Everything was in a constant state of stress and disarray at first, but it didn't take us long to change our tunes.

Within the first day of moving we realized, however, that not only had we moved to Paradise but we were now in a position to be "glamping" our days away!
Everything felt magical (it still does) and different.

If you've made it this far you've made it to the end (check further back in the blog if you didn't for the beginning of the adventures!) so thanks for coming to join in our adventures!


Here are some pictures of the finished product of the Tiny House, Utopia

And, of course, the Narwhal Bar and Grill

That's it!  That's how you build a tiny house!  Stay tuned for how this works out for me!  And the book can be found here: 
http://books.squidoo.com/the-small-house-book

While I catch up...

Be sure to read our listing over at http://tinyhouselistings.com/nine-and-a-half-week-utopia/

I am trying to write more (I.S.H.W.M.O. Part 3)

I'll admit, moving into a tiny house scared me at first - enough that we had to build a shed for my stuff first.  I know, it's awful, because it stayed in the shed and I didn't need it after all!

Have you ever tried to build one of those Arrow Sheds?  They look pretty slick in the yard, nice and metal and sliding doors of absolute glee!
You may or may not have thought about it when you picked up one of these boxes: How could that shed possibly fit in there?  

This was probably more difficult than building a house, I'd say.  Everything is labeled with random letters and numbers in sequences that are random- and in chalk, so that if part has rubbed off it is unreadable.  The instructions are confusing and misleading and at times you just have to make up what happens next.

We even got a bag labeled "Extra Pac".  WHAT?

By the end of the third day with three of us attempting to work on this we finally stretched the ends out and drilled holes where we wanted them to go, not where they thought they should go.

I'll have you know our caveman method turned out just fine and it did not leak or fall down.
Then we dug a drainage ditch around this baby and carried on with our lives.

Now, I know you want to get to the house but this was all a test of patience, because first we had to clear the yard.  As you can see in this last picture, there was a bit of a brush pile going on where I wanted to put my roots down.  I'm not usually an advocate for cutting trees down but this was a situation where we needed to find a mutual agreement with each other for who could live where.

At this point Ross's parents came out to help us get things together.  His dad works construction, after all.
As you can see, everyone pitched in (though you may be hard pressed to believe I had any part, given that any pictures of me are selfies :P.) and tore it up.

Then Ross broke out in poison oak like a giant puffy rash-monster and I turned 31.

I should have written more often - part 2

Moving right along - we have a lot to catch up with.  On January 12th we scored on a sweet Trailer (before we actually owned any land) via craigslist.
January 14th was the day I got engaged.  January 18th Jeff sanded the trailer and painted the whole thing green (it was rusted and had rotted wood along the bottom).

We had to put aluminum flashing along the bottom to keep rodents out and lay wood across the bottom for the base for insulation and, eventually, the floor.

Here is the beginning photos from the project:

We lagged a lot because we weren't sure if the land was going to go through and it was hard to hang our hopes on some future idea that we had created perhaps out of nothing but fairy dust.  

On January 20th we received good news about geological reports we'd had done.  Two days later, the land and money were through;  we threw the trailer on a hitch, dragged it down to our raw land and we began to draw our plans.


We based them off of the Fencl by Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, pleased with the exterior idea.

 

I should have written more often - part 1.

So here's how the story goes:
We had this crazy idea to go buy a house to secure our future - there were three of us: best friend (Jeff!), fiance (Ross!) and I (Gina!).  We found many places along the way but never one that suited our needs.  Time and time again our excitement was put down by eroding foundation or expenses beyond our means.  I wanted to give up.  To be frustrated.

Then the real estate agent called and said there was a plot of land close to where we were looking before.

Here was the picture:

And here was the description:  

"Approximately 17.5 acres of beautiful land. Property fronts Valencia Creek and Tunnel Gulch with a couple possible building pads via tree removal. Seller use to log property in the 90's so there are dirt roads giving you access. There are other beautiful homes built in the area with power, septic, well, etc."

Certainly, I thought, this was going to be a let down.  It was listed at $235,000 and just down the street from a place listed for almost twice that amount.

We went to check it out and were somewhat surprised by the ... potential.  There was a beautiful creek at the bottom and redwoods all around.

It could work, we thought, but what did it need?  Soil surveys, potable water, a septic system.  Electricity, a place to live, a road.  Some tree removal, poison oak eradication, brush clearance.

We put together our dream and rubbed some pennies together.  The place had been on the market for a moment.  We offered $150.  They came back with $200 and "It doesn't *have* to be sold."

We took it.  We borrowed $250k from Jeff's dad so we'd have $50k leftover for whatever needed to be done.  For those of you who have not done something like this before, $50k is a very small amount of money for all of the things needing to be done.  We did surveys because the county had it listed as a landslide.  Turned out it was sitting on clay and sandstone and there was no potential for land-slide and there hadn't been - woohoo!

Then, Jeff's mom brought home THIS BOOK for Christmas and everything changed.