The Decision

Okay, so I've been working on my tiny house design in Sketchup. I have learned quite a bit from it. My strategy has been 'work on it until you're not sure what to do next, then google it.' It's worked out quite well. However, I've decided that I'm not going to be using this plan.

I mentioned in a previous post that I'm pretty much in love with the design of the Lilypad tiny house, and that remains true. While the curved roof doesn't scream 'home' to me, it's interesting enough that I don't mind, and I'm prepared to sacrifice the immediate feeling of 'this is a house that someone lives in' for the extra headspace.

At the moment, plans for the Lilypad are not available. BUT they will be. After stalking the Lilypad facebook page I found a post saying that plans are in the works, though there isn't a set date for when they'll be released. That's okay. I can wait. I still need to gather materials anyway.

The biggest draw for me with the Lilypad is the separate areas it includes. It has a sitting loft, sleeping loft, study, bathroom, and kitchen. And, in the study there is a closet that spans the entire length of the wall! This is one of my biggest necessities when considering tiny house plans, and it's solved already.

The 'office' area I'd turn into a sewing/craft room/dressing room. The sitting loft would be a relaxation/entertainment area.

Some Problems

This post is dedicated to problems that I see arising while trying to build my tiny house, and some solutions I've come up with. Let's start with the obvious...

1. Money

I'm poor. I've been poor all my life, and I will probably be poor until I die. It's something I've come to terms with, and it doesn't bother me all that much. I don't judge my worth based on wealth. What does bother me is that when you lack money, you lack the security of a roof over your head and food in your belly. This is the primary reason I want a tiny house. I need to be safe in the knowledge that if I don't have money for rent I'm not going to be homeless.

Unfortunately, being poor means that I don't have money enough to finance a tiny house anyway. My tiny house build isn't likely to start for at least a year--maybe two, depending on outside influences. On the plus side, this gives me time to save up. Not nearly enough to save up the $20k I need for my budget, though.

Which leads me to Tiny House Lending, where you take out a loan that other people fund and use it for your tiny house. If I can manage to save up at least $6000, I'll have enough money for about 10 months of payments, plus I think there's a grace period before you have to start repaying your loan (I think about 6 months, though I may be mistaken). My rough time period for building my house is about a year, which means I'll have enough to cover payments until the house is done, then enough time to get a job to continue the payments.

2. A Place to Build

While there's no guarantees about anything at this point, I have a couple ideas for this. The first is seeing if I can build on the land that belongs to my extended family members. The second involves talking to some of the people in my local community to see if I can build on their land. Alternately, I could build at the site I'm going to park, though I'd like to avoid this so I don't anger the neighbors. And lastly, I can look into renting somewhere to build.

3. A Place to Park

I'm fairly lucky with this one compared to most. A friend of mine is going to buy a house with a decent bit of land, and I'm going to park my house in the backyard. I know a lot of people are skeptical about doing things like this with friends, but every time someone's warned me off about these things they've usually turned out for the better (i.e. 'don't move in with your best friend; it will ruin the relationship.' We've been besties for going on 10 years now, and living together for 3).

The house will be somewhere in Indianapolis, and my friend is against places with a Home Owners' Association, which works out great for me. And after some digging I was able to find out that (at the time of writing) in Indianapolis you're allowed to park an RV in your backyard (though you can't live in it), and you can have two ADUs in the back. I'd prefer to get my house accepted as an ADU, but I'll take what I can get.

4. Transportation

I don't drive. This isn't a problem for towing the tiny house to the final destination, because I can just hire someone for that, but what about getting materials during the build?

The only solution I have for this is to learn how to drive, which is unlikely because I have panic attacks just sitting in the driver's seat of a car. I'll have to figure something else out.

5. The Build Itself

I'm alone in this. It's depressing, and more than a little discouraging. I don't have many friends. Only one of them seems willing to help at all, and they all think I'm either crazy for wanting this, or doubt that I can do it. This means that I'm going to be building everything by myself. I don't doubt that I can do it, but it's going to be difficult getting around the mental roadblocks.

So there we have it. The biggest hurdles that I need to overcome. I need to do some thinking on the last two, but at least I have a plan for the majority of them, right?

Inspiration

I'm starting to compile some information on the Tiny Houses that I find most inspiring, so I can see what things they all have in common. At the moment I'm completely enchanted with Anita's Lilypad. I think my favorite part of the design is that it has so many individual spaces, and it includes a big closet!

I'm starting to like curved roofs more and more, which is a bit unfortunate as they are much more labor intensive and costly than an average roof. I'm also having trouble visualizing how the roof is vented and sheathed (does the plywood just bend? Wouldn't it break?) and there is a surprising lack of resources on these topics that I can find online.

So far it looks like the best resource will be PAD's Don Vardo plans. These plans are only for a 12' long vardo, and the height is only 7.5'. My house will be 24x13.5', so I'll have a lot of altering to do in Sketchup. Normally I'd try to muddle through it myself with the things I already have available, but the curved roof is intimidating and I'd feel better working from a pre-built plan.

Almost every curved Tiny House I've seen has exposed rafters, which I'm not a fan of. I like the aesthetics of them, but I have had many an awful experience with spiders falling on my head and it's kind of turned me off having them in my own house. I think that would be a good thing, though? Probably less work involved, and more space for insulation.

Of course another inspiration is the Lucky Penny. I've been looking through the blog posts on thisisthelittlelife.com to see if I can answer some questions (for instance, 1" rigid insulation bends), which has been pretty helpful.

Non-curved inspiration includes the Tiny Tack House, Mini Motives, and the Sol Haus. These houses are all very different, and it's making it increasingly difficult for me to decide what I want my house to be. I wish I could set up a tour of a Tiny House, but I am very far away from Portland. I'm considering hopping on a bus one day and checking out the building site in my city, though the community here is very different from the house I want. They only have very small houses with no plumbing, so I'm not sure if the experience would be what I'm looking for. (I'll eventually volunteer to get building experience, but for right now I'm not sure it would be helpful.)

I did buy a very discounted bundle of Tiny House stuff, which included 12 of Michael Janzen's plans. None of which have a curved roof, unfortunately. And, because money is an issue for me and my Tiny House, I'll probably end up using one of his plans as a base and altering it to fit my needs. This means no curved roof, but I can dream...

One last piece of inspiration comes from this Tiny House, which was featured on Tiny House Nation. I'm not fond of the interior setup, but the exterior is something I like a lot.

Some Things I Need

Since I'm in the very beginning of designing my Tiny House, I'm focusing a lot on what things I need my house to have. This means evaluating my life and seeing what I can stand to get rid of and what I absolutely need to keep, as well as thinking about what I want out of life in general. Here's a condensed list of things:

• Solar power
• Rainwater catchment system (with pressure pumps)
• A large closet
• A place to sew
• Rabbit-proof

That doesn't seem like an awful lot, but I feel a bit self-conscious with my decision about the closet when every other blog I've seen about going tiny includes getting rid of a lot of your clothes. But I'm very involved with an alternative fashion, and I can't see myself ever giving it up. The sewing place goes hand-in-hand with that. I make most of my clothes, and I'm starting to sell them online, so sewing (and crafting) needs to have a dedicated space of its own.

Because of my determination not to have to downsize my closet, I've found myself abandoning things I originally wanted included in my house. These things include: a front porch (I can just build an extension that isn't on the trailer), a large kitchen (I don't cook much anyway), and tansu stairs.

Tansu Stairs

I really do love the idea of storage stairs, and I don't particularly want to use a ladder every time I need to pee at night, so I found this sketchup file of a tiny spiral(ish) storage staircase. I'll be altering my own staircase to be even smaller than the 3x3 included in the plan, though.

Click for source

Rabbit proofing is sort of self-explanatory, I think. I have a rabbit and I want her to be able to run around the house freely. Her bedding box will be accessible to her either from the bathroom or the cleaning closet, I haven't decided yet.

Also, because I want to be powered entirely by solar (I'm thinking a 1kw system to start with, then I can add more if I need to) I can't have the electric stove, heating, and water heating that I've been used to my whole life. This has required some research, but I think I've come up with acceptable alternatives.

I'm pretty dead-set on having a wood stove to heat my house. I don't want to use propane because it isn't a renewable resource. Having a wood stove means having more storage space to put wood (I'm not really worried about this) and having to do maintenance and clean up once in awhile, but I don't mind that.

For the stove I've decided to go with an alcohol stove; probably a two burner, so I can make tea and cook at the same time, if the mood strikes me. In the place of the oven I'll have a toaster oven and a microwave (both will remain unplugged until I need to use them).

As for the water heater... well, I kind of came to a compromise. I'll still be using an electric water heater, but I'll be turning it on when it's time to take a shower, and off when I'm finished. I don't take too many showers anyway, so having a 15-ish minute time limit doesn't mean much to me. At the moment I'm considering a Japanese soaking tub as an alternative to a bathtub, for those times when I have enough water and feel like relaxing with a bath. I haven't decided on that yet, though.

Japanese soaking tub

There really is a lot of give and take when figuring out your tiny house. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. It's not even really that surprising.

I'm working on learning sketchup and I plan to post some pictures of my house concepts (even if it's just on gridded paper) eventually. All in all, I think I've got a pretty good floor plan mapped out, and I've managed to fit most everything I want.

The Why...

I discovered the Tiny House movement about three years ago when I found a link to tumbleweedhouses.com on Facebook. I went through the process of choosing what I want my house to look like. what amenities it should have, what color it should be, etc., and when I got to the end I found out they wanted a whopping $60k for it. And thus the tiny dream died.

Tumbleweed model: Destroyer of Dreams

But about a week ago I found another link, this time to a tiny house that had been built for only 10k! And, the best part, they had links to various sites. Turns out the Tiny House movement has a lot of DIYers, which is fantastic! There's even a Tiny House village being built in my city for the homeless. They're always in need of volunteers, apparently, so I can even go and get some experience before building my own house!

Since discovering this I've been doing so much research my best friend is starting to get annoyed with me. I've learned more about plumbing in the past three days than I have in my entire life. But I'm so excited! A Tiny House is perfect for me. I can customize it however I want, and I've never had a problem with keeping useless things. I can move it, which means I can travel if I want, and the best part is that after the initial investment, I won't have bills! No rent, no electricity, no water bills. It's perfect.

Another thing is that I'm always happier with things I've made myself. I always keep my handmade clothes and accessories around longer, and use them more frequently. They're just better, in my opinion, because they were made specifically for me. How can you beat something like that?

My best friend is less enthused. We live together and have been friends for 8 years now. We're pretty much inseparable. She doesn't have a problem with having a Tiny House, but she says she won't do any labor on it and if I want it so bad I have to do it myself.

I'm designing my house for two people (myself and my friend) to comfortably live in. One big issue I've encountered in designing within the space confines is that we have a lot of clothes. We're both involved in an alternative fashion, so things accumulate. Not a crazy amount, but between the two of us we use a closet, a dresser, and a wall-mounted closet. A lot of this can be fixed by getting rid of lesser-used clothes (mostly by my friend), and with extra hidden storage spaces.

The big problem with my personal Tiny House dream is that I have no way to finance it. I don't have a steady job (I do various online work because of personal reasons and it doesn't pay well) and I have student loan bills to pay off before I can do anything else. Being able to live debt-free, without any bills is what I'm aiming for.

So why am I starting a blog? This is something I really want, and I want to document my journey with it from the very beginning. Even if I probably won't have much to share beyond thoughts, lists, and findings for quite awhile.