tinyhouse

[dragonlady7]

via https://ift.tt/2PNom3O

so. this morning i woke up and went to change my clothes and discovered that i had a tick like totally embedded in my boob, so that was gross.

it left a bruise, i’m not pleased.

the rest of the day was good though. Older Sister picked us up in her van and six of us– her, me, Mom, Farm-BIL, Oldest Nephew, and my Dude– rode over to Jamaica Cottage Shop in Vermont to look at their tiny house models.

I took disappointingly few pictures, like an idiot, but here’s one:

not a great photo but it gives you an idea. that’s farm-BIL from the back and he’s like six twoish.

The model I like best is this one, the Vermont Cottage C https://jamaicacottageshop.com/shop/veromont-cottage-c-living/.

I was figuring I’d have to get financing to do the pre-cut kit but BIL thinks the kits are not worth the savings in effort of doing the cutting. He figures he has the time to do the cutting, and the skill, and we could do it for about a quarter the price if we buy the raw materials ourselves. Which, for me, is the difference between taking out a loan and putting it short-term on a credit card or possibly managing to pull from savings in a short-term kind of way. So that’s hopeful.

I’d figured on building from just plans with Dad, but I knew he’d have the time to spend on it, and I couldn’t ask that of BIL. But he figures he can do it and can spare the time, given the quality of the help they’ve got on the farm this year.

Anyway that all feels very hopeful. It’s nice to feel hopeful about something.

After that we drove over to Salem NY to pick up some more wholesale half-gallons of milk for the farm store, since people suddenly bought all that was there. They also sell ice cream, so we got to get ice cream sundaes for lunch too. Nephew was especially delighted.

He’s a fairly handy young chap, and Dad had planned to have him build the tiny house with us, so I buttonholed him and asked him if he still wanted to be involved. He teenagered at me, at first, and said he “wouldn’t mind”, but I said well you don’t have to, I just thought you might like it, and under this pressure he admitted he’d like to be involved. So I said we’d try to schedule it with him in mind.

Ironically enough I may not be able to spend as much time at the farm this year because I’ll have to work more at the job that actually pays money, to afford to buy the raw materials for the cabin, but it’s a much more attainable goal if it’s like, five thousand dollars than if it’s twenty. So we’ll have to see about that.

(My criteria for “tiny houses” was that there’s room to have Farmkid over for sleepovers, since she specifically requested that, and I figured it’s probably worth building it big and sturdy enough that if I someday stop coming they can repurpose it into apprentice housing and put in a tiny kitchen or something. Ideally I want a porch where I can practice banjo in a rocking chair, too, but like. We’ll see.) (Your picture was not posted)

Comments

[harpers_child]

That's a really cute cottage. I'd put a rail on the loft for safety reasons, but I'm also clumsy as hell. Will you sleep in the loft or downstairs?

[dragonlady7]

I was thinking I'd want a loft railing too!!

So the reasoning behind the loft was to have a place to put a spare bed, but seeing them in person, honestly that's a big enough space that I could put the bed and clothing storage up there and then I would feel like I could have visitors in the space below.

[unicornduke]

That's so exciting!!!

[dragonlady7]

It would be super exciting if I could make it work.

[galadhir]

Oh that's lovely! I like the fact that you have the loft as a bedroom. Then you can have the downstairs as more of a living room with a sofa-bed for guests. Couldn't you put in a tiny kitchen for you, and maybe also solar panels for hot water and laptop/phone charging?

[dragonlady7]

I want to build the space big enough that there'd be room for a tiny kitchen, but I have no need of one-- I do much of the cooking, in the big house, so I wouldn't use a tiny kitchen. But the house would be more useful if it had one.
Re: solar panels, no, the area where the house is has a fair amount of tree cover. I could only put in solar panels if i were building somewhere that got some direct sun, which this doesn't. The farm is getting a large solar installation as we speak, however, on the hill behind the house. And the tiny house will be less than 100 feet from the greenhouse, which has power. For the yurt, i just reeled an extension cord across the road, and rolled it back up every night, but for the tiny house I'll probably just bury a power line-- there's a digger, now, so it wouldn't be hard to bury a line of conduit-- possibly also a line for running water, even if we don't plumb the water in for some time. I don't *need* running water but I did research gray water disposal systems so that if I did install some it would be usable.
So anyway-- the tiny house can be solar powerered! But not by some dinky panel on the roof, no.

[galadhir]

Oh nice! The solar installation sounds much more efficient. And if you have power you'll at least be able to make yourself tea and toast when you don't feel like going into company. Running water would be good too. Could you do some kind of reed bed for gray water filtration. It would be quite pretty to have a reed pond nearby.

[dragonlady7]

The site is actually the gravel bank of a stream, and my occupation of the site will likely be intermittent, so I wouldn't set anything up that would *require* water. I'm most likely to just dig several channels and backfill them with woodchips, and incorporate that into the landscaping in ways to try to channel the runoff away from the creek (so as not to pollute it directly).
I had been thinking I might try diverting part of the creek to make a bog garden nearby, though! The only issue is of course that sometimes the creek floods, so anything close to it enough to be wet in the dry season has to be durable enough not to get swept away in the wet season.

But yes-- I aspire to having a little electric kettle and maybe a toaster. Maybe!