Results from our search for a quick tiny house move

We want to pass along the results from our search for a quick tiny house move.

I was all ready to post on Craigslist but with the great results we received in such a short period of time I decided not to.

Within 24 hours of announcing that we were looking for a new space to move to we had 4 offers to host us by people we know directly. This was through general word of mouth and email to specific people. Both Jeff and I also posted flyers at our desks (work and school) that were copies of the 2nd blog post we did saying what we were looking for.

Within another 2 days of the announcement we had another 2 offers that were from friends of friends. One was through Facebook and the other was through word of mouth.

We first posted about our move on our blog on the 6th and had 6 solid offers by the morning of the 9th. When we moved to Seattle we had more offers but we also had surprise media coverage by the neighbor paper where we wanted to live and had months to prepare while we were building.

You’ll see on the map that the 6 possible spots to move to vary in location from the same neighborhood that we’re in now to up to an hours' drive away from work and school.


Although we’ve enjoyed living in Ballard these past four years, it’s now changing. Huge apartment buildings with hundreds of units are being built. Older houses are being torn down and three or four units are being built in their place. Some older houses are being saved but two units are being built in their backyard. The roads to the freeway and to downtown were congested before, now they’re worse. So we’re ready for a change in atmosphere… we considered all offers seriously. All six offers had what we needed and we felt very welcome at each location.

Bainbridge Island was very tempting. To have the experience of commuting by ferry from an island! How many can say they have lived on an island?

On Capitol Hill we’d be a shorter distance from our work and school locations. Being closer to downtown is very appealing too because we enjoy going to live performances. The location would be very close to my brother and his family.  We'd see them more often which would be great.

I haven’t yet been to Index but I’ve been told that there are some very eccentric people living there. It sounds fun to be surrounded by such interesting people.

The location in Kent seems to be not quite rural, not quite suburbs and is a great location. Very nice hosts and an open vista between our house and the next one over.

All 5 of those locations had their pros and cons. Population density and congested roads. Commute time short or longer. Being closer to entertainment and family.

Then…. we went to the Snohomish location. We really enjoy spending time with the hosts. One of them said, “We have lots in common but we’re different enough that it makes it interesting.” They have 2.5 acres and it’s fairly rural. We’d be a only 3 mile drive to restaurants and the library. We’ll miss walking to the grocery store and restaurants but we’re actually interested in how rural ‘feels’. We’ve built our own house, I garden for most of our food and we have many other self-sufficiency skills. We enjoy quiet, and ‘slower’ will be good for us.

When Jeff graduates this coming June we’ll be moving again. We’ve both experienced the city and the suburbs but neither of us have experienced rural yet. Living with this couple will be a great way for us to experience it, learn from them, and know if we want rural when we’re ready to buy a place to live and settle down the next time we move. Snohomish it is. Our move date is August 31st.

Sure, our house has wheels... but how mobile are we really?

Recently we starting wondering how easy it would be to move our tiny house to live somewhere else.

What do we have to do so the move goes smoothly?

How do we find a new space to rent?

In what areas would we want to live?

Urban or rural this time?

We started thinking about this because the owner of the house where we've been renting tiny house space for almost 4 years is looking for a new job. Not all of the jobs he's applying for are local though. Some jobs are far enough that he'd sell the house we currently live next to, in fact.
We didn't expect to have to move until June 2014 when Jeff graduates and starts working. Until he's done with school, we need to stay in the Seattle area.

Getting our place ready to move should be easy compared to the many moves we did when living in larger conventional spaces simply because we own a whole lot less 'stuff'.

Because our trailer is rated to carry 7000 lbs maximum we'll have to box everything up (dishes, clothes, etc) and move our 'stuff' separately. We have trailer skirts that also cover the wheel wells that we can easily remove. We have a wooden fence that surrounds the trailer tongue where we store gardening equipment, our propane tank and bikes that also removes easily.

I rent a room in an office building for use as an art studio. I planned that workspace so that both tables and metal bookshelves are on wheels so I can configure my space depending on my project needs. Those wheels will make it easy to simply wheel everything to the elevator and out.

So far, so good, huh?
Where to move though?

When we were building our house and planning our move, I posted on our blog that we were looking for a space to rent in Seattle. I also asked two members of my family who already lived here to pass along the word and we were also lucky that a writer for our neighborhood paper wrote an article about alternative housing and linked to our blog.

We happily received 12 offers for a place to live! Rental costs ranged from free farther from Seattle to an unbelievable $800 a month (she said she wanted to pay off her student loans and didn't care that we brought our own house with us).

Six offers didn't work out because they had enough space, but we couldn't maneuver the house into the space. The two free spaces were great locations but farther than we wanted to commute. Another one was an empty lot surrounded by tall pines but no water or electric service we could figure out. The offer with the high price tag we didn't even consider. That left two offers. We could fit into either space, both are nice couples that we'd like to live near, they live in the same neighborhood... but we connected with one couple more than the other because of many common interests. Jeeps, rock climbing, yoga, organic gardening.

We feel extremely lucky that we found such great neighbors, new friends, and live in a walkable area where we can grow fresh food in the backyard. 

We met some very nice people while doing our search the last time. If we have to move soon, then I'm sure we'll meet more very nice people. Hopefully, finding a place to move the tiny house will be as easy this time as it was the first time.

If you have suggestions on how you'd approach a move like this, or have suggestions on where we should / could move, please post a comment. Lots of people are interested in living in a tiny house but how easy will it be for them to find a place to live in it?

We'll keep you posted on whether we have to move or not...

Heating a tiny house

Well, we followed the suggestions as to what insulation to use to build our tiny cottage (2" thick rigid foam planks sealed around the edges with expanding soy foam). But because of the ratio of exterior walls to interior volume, and that we have no air pockets like a heated hallway or closets, we are chillier than I had expected us to be.

I think because it's a very tiny home that takes less energy to heat, I expected it to be toasty inside all of the time. Oh, not so...

On average, we run a 20 to 25 degree difference compared the outside temperature without running the heat, or summertime fan, during normal working hours. (If we never turned on the heat at all this would not be the case.) It turns out that we're cooler in the heat of summer yes. But also cooler in the cold of winter.

There had been an unusually cold day (29F degrees) last month but then it quickly warmed up again. We were comfortable that night so I thought that if the cold weather lasted longer that we'd stay comfortable enough. This past week/current week the high was/is supposed to hover at 32F and the low will be about 22F. This has meant a steady cold and it's been much trickier to stay warm.

Last night we'd had the Newport 900 boat heater on for about 4 hours. At 9pm, the outside temperature was 33F, the inside was 67F with the interior humidity at 48%. This morning at 5am outside was 24F, inside was 52F, and (since we don't keep the dehumidifier on at night) the humidity was 59% . Not as toasty as I'd like to be inside. We were used to turning the heat on very infrequently before moving into the cottage, and we'd simply wear a sweater and slippers at home. In this place, we use more fuel to heat the place and we wear an extra sweater. (We've become quicker at getting dressed first thing in the morning too!) If producing less of a carbon footprint is the reason you want to live in a tiny house, you'll have to figure out how to use less fuel for heating even if this is less expansive than heating a larger space. Insulation is the key; I have no definitive answer as to what to use yet though.

We have winterized, and will continue to do more as we think of what else can be done. We know the following information for sure because (tech geek that he is) Jeff bought two scientific temperature rods that he hooks directly up to his laptop for digital readings:

In early November we started by buying honeycomb shades to better insulate our windows and they keep the inside warmer by 6 degrees. Yes, we bought Low E double pane windows and installed them properly. We have 10 windows plus one skylight.

The industrial felt floor cover feels warmer to the touch than the wood floor, but we've tested it against the wood floor and it doesn't help the inside temperature at all.

I have stuffed dense foam into the 'attic fan' vent louvers and the bathroom exhaust fan outside as well as stuffed the skylight area.

We bought a dehumidifier because we started to get condensation on the window interiors and we don't want mold to form. Before we had the gauge to measure the humidity, the first 36 hours the machine was on we filled the 12 pint reservoir. Since then we leave it on from 5am until about 8pm and it takes two weeks to fill. We now hover between 49% and 60% humidity (gotta breathe but we don't cook at home and we shower at the gym or indoor pool each morning after we workout). We like how the dehumidifier evens out the temperature in the cottage by blowing cooler air up so that the heated air is forced downward. We sit downstairs and want it warmer until we go upstairs to sleep. The sleeping loft area gets heated fairly quickly by the two of us breathing since it's about the size of a two person tent.

We bought a heated water hose from http://nofreezewaterhose.com and it works exactly as advertised.

We've thought about insulating drapes but have decided to wait on those. I need to do more research.

If we were to build another tiny home, or to make some suggestions, it would be:

• Buy more heating power than you think it will take if you live in a place that gets cold. (Will a radiant heated floor work in a tiny mobile cottage? I don't know.)
• Either buy a different type of insulation or beef up the 2" thick panels because it doesn't retain heat well since these structures are all exterior walls.
• I don't know if having a full loft, rather than a partial loft, would keep it warmer downstairs in the winter. It might, but it might also be much hotter upstairs in the summer. We like the air circulation and light. The high ceiling in the living area makes it feel larger so I'm not sure we'd change this design.
• Jeff suggests fewer windows.

We hope that you're staying warm this time of year.

Until Spring we'll be posting to this blog only once a month. Currently we're fine tuning the cottage to make it more comfortable so there's not much to post. As it warms up here though, we'd like to settle in a bit more by building a small deck and planting a vegetable garden.

Happy Holidays and have a very Happy New Year!

Cold Feet

It's been interesting living in our tiny cottage since the beginning of September because we've experienced temperatures between 95F and 29F.

Recently it's been getting cooler so our wood floors have felt uncomfortably cold to me. I tried wearing a couple of pairs of socks to keep my feet warmer but that didn't seem to help. I bought slippers to wear over a pair of socks but that didn't seem to help either.

So I went sneaking off to look for other solutions. I say sneaking because Jeff and I agreed when we first started construction on our cottage that since we love the look of wood floors, we would not to carpet it. Rugs cover the beauty and we also didn't want off-gassing materials in the cottage.

I figured that if I bought an area rug, that we could still see the wood grain around the rug so I wouldn't be actually going against what we'd agreed upon, right? Since I'm the type that prefers to ask for forgiveness, rather than to ask for permission, I snuck off to find a solution that would appeal to both of us.

In our relationship, I have found that when I look at something (like our 'new' used settee) that I can imagine what the end result can look like but I'm not always good at explaining my vision to others. I bought the settee knowing that if Jeff'd been with me that he'd have thought it was too ugly and could never look any better. I could see it's potential though, and we really needed something to sit on, so I went for it. Since it's been recovered and restyled he really likes it. I figured I would try this with a rug...

I looked at both new and used options. I figured that a used rug had off-gassed already so that was what I searched for first. I looked in the better furniture consignment places near us but found nothing in our size or color so I went to four big box stores that carry area rugs then to rug warehouses... and found something that I had never thought of as a solution.

My needs were:
natural fiber
no off-gassing
fairly inexpensive
visually appealing (or at least not too bad to live with for the cold months)
insulating
warm to the touch

My final choice was industrial wool felt. It's 1/2" thick, light grey, has no scent, is soft and warm underfoot. At only $1US/sf I was able to cover the living room and kitchen floors for about $60. I found it at a carpet remnant warehouse but any carpeting store will have it. They sell it as carpet padding.

I explained to Jeff what I wanted to do after the purchase. He saw it rolled and wrapped (and didn't look excited about it) and said he'd be willing to give it a try. When he came home the evening that I had installed it, he stood at the front door and said that it looked a lot better then he'd thought it could. He stepped onto it and liked that it was warm and soft too. It has received a thumbs up so far.

I'm not sure yet how it will wear underfoot but we have had a no-shoes-inside policy (to preserve the soft douglas fir flooring and now to keep the felt clean) and I have put what look like tacks covered with teflon under the legs of the chairs so they glide across the felt. The felt may be a great solution.

It's been only a few days so far, it's been about 30F to 50F, but it seems to be noticeably warmer feeling inside the cottage to both of us. I'll let you know in a month or two if it really is the solution to the cold feet problem...

Downsizing: The saga continues...

In a previous post I suggested that each of us who wants to downsize ask ourselves, "If my place were to burn down today, could I live without this item?" I thought that if I didn't need it in daily living that it could easily be purged. I have also explained that in our choice to voluntary simplify that we don't want to feel as if we are punishing ourselves. We want some comfort, not simply the bare necessities, so downsizing turned out to be easier said than done.

Selling things was hard for me. I had my own shop tools because I really enjoy creating sculpture by welding and woodworking. These tools have been in storage for awhile because I had found shared space where someone had these tools for me to use. Now, as I sold my tools I felt as if part of my identity was being ripped away. Will I be able to find another place in Seattle where I can rent shop time like I did before the move? I hoped so and had to believe that I will. I reasoned that I will be able to buy tools again if I ever really need them.

Since Jeff was in the build space all day near the end of construction while in California, we moved all of my tools and other odds and ends from my storage unit there. He was very good at talking with people who came to look at the items after I posted them on Craigslist. It was cash only & prices were firm. I probably set the prices lower than they needed to be because we were pressured with a deadline to move to Washington very shortly. I didn't want to have to bring more things with us to sell later. I was also happy to hand over the sales task to Jeff and not to have to deal with it (the psychological discomfort) any longer.

Jeff's only big items was his mission & leather furniture. When I married him he came with a whole apartment full of well made furniture that could be handed down to another generation or two. We have lived in many apartments and houses over the years and his was the type of furniture that when people came into our space for the first time they'd say, "Wow!". It was comfortable, it was beautiful, it was sturdy. Rick was moving to Albuquirky a few weeks before our move to Seattle and he said that he wanted to buy it all. Rick got a really great deal, Jeff was pleased to see his collection stay together and that it went to a friend, and this sale saved us from writing ads, etc.

What we sold: wood/metal shop tools, apartment full of furniture.

The give away was quicker and easier than the sales were (of course). I was short on time but we lived in a large apartment complex so I took a few color pictures, made some flyers and posted them in each of the buildings lobbies early one Saturday. By 5pm all of the items had been removed from my apartment by very happy, nice people. I didn't have to post them on Craigslist or Freecycle or cart them off to Goodwill and I felt as if lightening my load had made me happier as well.

What we gave away: desk, leather computer chair, collection of masks from around the world, plants, quality queen & twin mattresses, lacquered storage chest, lamps, house wares, antique armoire, dining table, file cabinet, shelves, clothes...

Not all things went though.

What we kept: 2 folding leather chairs, 1 wooden chair, tableware and silverware for four, pans, some clothes / shoes... currently we have a large toolbox in our living room with some fabric thrown over it for use as a sofa as well as 3 other boxes of hand tools / building supplies. As construction slows these tools will go into my brother's basement. I also have 4 boxes of fabric that are currently in my mom's house and these will come to our house for storage under a real sofa once I find one that fits our odd requirements (needs to fit in the 22" wide door, needs to be shallow, but can be 7' long). What I'm thinking is 4 to 6 dining chairs attached side by side with some padding on top; a unit that will look like a Swedish settee. I do woodworking, and I can sew, so making something like this (rather than buying something from Ikea) will be easy and is much more appealing to Jeff and me.

What we bought: a really decent mattress, coir floor mats with rubber underneath them for the foyer because it's going to be wet soon and we need a place to drip while we remove our shoes when we arrive home, a small 'side table' with shoe cubbies below to sit on in the foyer while removing our shoes, 2 wire hanging baskets for fruit to free up the counter tops, screws and other stuff to finish building.

Tip: Give yourself more time to get rid of things than you think it will take. You think it will take 6 months? Give yourself a year. I feel as if I could have recovered some of the money I'd spent on the items if I'd sold them instead of given them away, or sold them at higher prices, but I simply felt rushed to sell them so they went for yard sale prices. Avoid the stress of rushing, and avoid the feeling of losing money off the good work of downsizing, by giving yourself lots of time to get comfortable with the process.

What We've Learned So Far

As we look back, we could have saved both time and money if we'd have done a few things differently. Well, now we know. Hopefully this information will be of use to you:

All trailers are not created equal.
We bought the size we wanted but never gave any thought to the color. We have a ‘midnight blue’ trailer… but we will have dark green trim on the windows with redwood siding. Though not a really big deal, this multi-color combination is not one we would have chosen on purpose. I have sanded the trailer wheel wells and they will be painted to match the window trim later. When parked, the trailer tongue will either be covered by a small deck or will be surrounded by a low fence so it won't be noticeable. When we're traveling (not often), people will be looking at the tiny home on wheels, not the trailer tongue.

Make sure to buy windows with tempered glass.
The plans we bought didn’t mention this. We also haven’t seen it mentioned on anyone’s blog about building a tiny mobile house. Jeff happened across the fact that California law requires tempered glass in vehicles. Many other states probably require it too. Check into the requirements near you before you order windows.

Your construction plans will need to be tweaked… no matter what.
Trailers come in all different sizes (and often haven’t been built to be level or perfectly square) so any plans you buy will need to be adjusted. We bought a set of construction plans that cost us $1000 although we had seen very similar plans to these in a book called ‘Yard & Garden Structures: 74 Easy-To-Build Designs' c2001, page 64 (though you'll need to call them to get this set, you can find others on eplans.com) that cost only $45 for the 'study set'. The reason that we bought the more expensive set was that we had thought that they'd have some special information that we'd need. Well, they did give us some information about bolting the foundation to the trailer but we would have done that anyway and because tiny house bloggers/builders show construction pictures, and will answer questions, we could have gotten any other information that way. Find out exactly what the plans do, or don't, include before you buy. Most plans for a tiny sized house (sometimes referred to as a garden shed) don't come with utility plans and some come with roof plans but some don't (remember to watch your height if you're building on a trailer). Shop around, stay flexible and know what you'll get before you buy.

Shop around for your materials.
Home Depot was willing to give us a contractor’s discount of about 10% because we asked for a bid from them for over $2500 worth of materials. We didn’t buy all of our materials at the same time (because of a limited build space and the total cost of materials) and stopped using them because availability/delivery was promised in 2 weeks but it took almost 6 for our first order. This delay impacted our building schedule. Also, their delivery service either can’t get the address correct or won’t deliver at the agreed upon/promised time. This made life a bit more complicated for us since we were not building full-time. After the second delivery glitch we started to use a local, independently owned home supply/lumber company instead. The service is much better and the prices are actually comparable. Which leads to:

Try to buy as much as you can all at once so that you will pay less for delivery.
We have carted as much of our booty back to our lair by ourselves as possible. We have access to a friend's truck which we can use for materials pickup but it’s not always available at times that are convenient to us. The most common company to head to for a rental truck is always time consuming and a hassle so we really don't want to use them. And my Jetta wasn’t going to be happy trying to move the 20’ lengths of lumber that we wanted for the siding or for as much total lumber as we’d need to build even a tiny home. We've had 3 deliveries for this project at $80 each. That money could have been used for much better purposes than the 1 or 2 mile run from their store to our build space. Either have a gracious friend who owns a truck that you can borrow often, have a place to store your supplies and collect/buy them before hand, or buy all of the supplies you need ahead of time and load them all onto your new trailer.

I'm sure that we'll learn more as this project progresses so we'll be posting more on this topic in the future...

Facts About Our Project

We certainly didn’t expect to be asked by the media for interviews when embarking on this project. Well, because I’ve been trying to get the word out so that we find a space to live in our tiny cottage while in Seattle, the media has contacted us. We now have a side bar item titled “Media Inquiries” which (so far) answers these questions:

Why are you building a tiny house to live in?
What does this project mean to you?
Won’t it be too small for you two to live in full-time?
Why do you think it’s important to downsize your possessions?
How do you think this project will change your lives?
What are the facts about your tiny cottage?
What are you looking for?
Have there been any parts of this project that were unexpected?
What would you tell others who see your tiny cottage and want to build one too?

If you have other questions, don’t hesitate to ask. We’ll add our answers as they are asked to the side bar link as well as to this post.

Softwood Flooring

This past weekend we laid a Douglas fir tongue and groove floor, on top of rosin paper, over the floor framing. No subfloor. It took 3 of us to lay the floor (Thanks, Scott!); from 9:30a to 5p including a lunch break. It took me another 2 hrs after dinner to smoosh putty into the floor cracks wearing heavy rubber gloves. I tried other methods but this way was the most effective. We chose Douglas fir because it has a beautiful grain and was far less expensive than the prefinished hardwood floors we had oogled. Until this week when I started to research no VOC finishing options we didn't know that it is the softest wood. We now have a rule that we won't wear shoes in the house so it will look great longer.

Flooring lesson #1: Use the right tool for the job. We had a table saw and thought that we could use it to cut the floor boards. Because we're stubborn it took longer than it would have if we'd just rented a chop saw. It took one of us at the table saw trimming ends while another of us held the other end of the 8' long board in order to get a straight cut. Do yourself a big favor and use a chop saw for this job. We did rent a pneumatic soft wood flooring nailer and loved the tool.

Flooring lesson #2: The first few rows along a wheel well are the hardest and slowest to install. After the first 2 1/2 hours we had only about 5 rows nailed down. After lunch we picked up speed once we got into the groove of things.

Flooring lesson #3: Brute force may not work when flooring so take a deep breath and think of another solution. The milling of lumber is seldom precise so sometimes the tongues from board to board don't align so the groove of the next board won't attach. We loosened the nailing on the lower board when this happened and shimmed it so it won't squeak later. We found brute force didn't help this problem...

Flooring lesson #4: Be prepared to be carded when buying plastic wood which is the putty we used to fill between the floor board cracks. We don't exactly know why we were carded but others obviously have more fun with this putty than I did. Nightclubs sometimes have a 2 drink minimum but we weren't told that there was a maximum on putty purchasing. We used 2 small cans.

Flooring lesson #5: Because we didn't install a sub floor (to save on weight), the floor boards need to be butt jointed and end nailed directly to the floor framing. Jeff had calculated the amount of flooring we'd need but can't remember the formula he used. I can tell you though that his calc was so amazingly close as we were left with only about 4 feet of board left over; all in small unusable chunks.

On Sunday we rented a random orbital floor sander and we worked from 9:30a to 2:30p. We started at 35 grit paper and went to 80 grit. The machine had a dust collector (which was fantastic!) and was very easy to use.

The vote was unanimous. We agreed that this was a fairly easy job to do. The hardest parts were the backache that came from bending over the pneumatic nailer to whack it with the hammer and lifting of the floor sander onto the trailer with the backache from the day before.

Tomorrow I buy the floor finish and will start to apply it on Tuesday after work.

Downsizing – How To - Part 3 of 3

What will you need to live comfortably?
We've recently scaled back our energy and water consumption drastically and have noticed that we're still quite comfortable. This practice will be easy to continue in the Tiny Cottage.


We've decided to use propane for heating, cooking and the on-demand hot water heater. For most lighting we'll use a bunch of LED rechargeable battery-powered strips and occasionally a couple of LED Christmas light strings for mood lighting.

We chose a compost toilet which is huge compared to everyday toilet sizes but this unit requires less fiddling with than others we found. We'd rather use this sort of system than to own a black water tank and experience the joys of finding a place to dump it.


Since we can't make water (and no, it doesn't always rain in Seattle) we'll need a garden hose hookup for showers and will use a grey water system to give it safely back to the environment. The installation of rain barrel or two will happen after the move so that we will use less 'grid' water and we already have a very low-flow shower head that has an on/off mechanism to bring with us.

We'll need an extension cord from our host house to give us power for only our tiny frig and the LED Christmas lights. At some point we might go solar but we don't yet know where we'll be parked (if you have any leads for us in/near Seattle then please let us know) so we're not sure that we'll be able to get enough power off of that to be cost effective. We'll figure this out after the move.

Will H. recently gave me a great mandoline (manual veg slicer) so we'll keep that as well as our manual juicer, some utensils, a few dishes, pans, cups and a favorite cutting board. The Champion Juicer stays for a while but will go at some point. I use it often now but haven't yet decided how often I'll use it after the move; they're expensive to replace.

We're looking to downsize, not to live like we're punishing ourselves. Voluntary simplicity can be comfortable. Keep the things you need and use and get rid of the rest.

What goes?

Things we don't use often or at all anymore include a food processor, microwave, crock pot, Foreman grill, toaster, Ronco food dehydrator, rice maker, blender, hand mixer, lots of towels, sheets and clothes along with the before-mentioned tools and most books.

Important papers will be scanned and kept on disk. Antique family photos will be scanned and my brother will get the originals. None of these will be missed.

What brings you happiness?
I'm not a 'recreational shopper' but my teenage son does outgrow his clothes so I do occasionally find myself in a store and sometimes I do get an urge to buy a nifty-new-thingy just because I'm there.


I try to remember that money spent on something that I don’t truly need now, takes away from other areas in my life where it could be more enjoyably used. I love to travel, attend live performances and take classes. Now, before I purchase something, I make much more of an effort to ask if how I’m spending my hard-earned cash will actually make me happy.


Usually, I know that the item-of-interest will only be used for a short time before I get bored with it, it exists but I don't really see it, or it gets stored in a closet. Instead of buying one, can I borrow the nifty-new-thingy from a friend? Can I rent one for a couple of days just for 'the experience'? I remind myself that once its life with me is done that I will spend more time and energy getting rid of it and I know I'll be doing the environment a favor by borrowing or renting rather than buying too.

Have you downsized your possessions or changed your spending habits? How and why?

Downsizing – How To - Part 2 of 3

How much time and energy do you want to spend on your 'things'?

When I buy something, even if it's from a thrift shop, I've spent time looking for it and money to purchase it. I've learned to pay cash instead of using credit so that I'm not paying the hidden cost of interest on it as well. Even if it was free from Freecycle, it cost me time to read the listings and time and money for gasoline to pick it up.

I pay rent to house the item while it lives with me, I also need to pay to move it when I move, some people pay a cleaning person to keep it dusted, buy a security system to make sure that no one steals it, and some of us fall for the idea that if it feels crowded in our home that it's a good idea to pay rent to hide things in a storage facility. (Ug, don't do it!!!)

When does the time and money suck stop when it comes to the things we own?
Certainly not when we want to get rid of it. This requires research to see what can I sell it for, renting a van to move it out of storage so that I can sell it easier, time to write the blurb to put onto Craigslist or Ebay, time to meet with people to see if they are interested in buying it, and on and on.

I definitely plan on buying less in the future.

Downsizing – How To - Part 1 of 3

How am I downsizing my possessions and how can you do this too?

How do you decide what to keep and what to get rid of?
Do you really love the item or are you keeping it because it cost you a lot to buy it, a good friend gave it to you or you'll fit into it again someday when you lose weight? Unless you really love it and use it often, it can go. If you want to keep it because of a memory, then take a picture of it so you'll still 'have it' to remember it by.

How much space do you want to fill?
Although Jeff and I will be moving into a home with a footprint of 8'x20' we are currently renting a 700sf apartment and have rented as large a space as a 2200sf live/work loft. Needless to say we have things to sell off. Those things include furniture that we love and use daily (but won't have space for) as well as items from a storage space that I have had for 4 years and haven't looked into in about 6 months. All of it goes. Craigslist, Ebay, gifting to friends, charity donations. I've done yard sales but won't do them again.

The emotional aspect of downsizing:
The other day I felt very overwhelmed. Jeff was helping me empty my storage unit and I had forgotten how much was in there. As I wheeled the MIG welder to the moving van I smiled remembering the last item that I made with it but then thought, "This will need to be sold. I'm losing part of my identity!"

That's often how we think about many of the items that we buy. For example, we buy a shirt because maybe the 'look' says something about us to others or by wearing it we feel a certain way. We don't usually buy it because it simply covers what society says it should or have decided that it will keep us warm enough in cold weather.

I had to ask myself, "If my place were to burn down today, could I live without this?" I knew that I certainly didn't need it in daily living and so would not replace it. I can now sell it and feel more at peace with the choice.

Downsizing - It's hard. "Just Do It"

It's a fact that I can't take most of what I own with me when we move into our tiny hand-built cottage in August. I want to practice what I have recently read was called 'voluntary simplicity' but sometimes it’s still hard to part with items. Some items have value or meaning to me. They evoke feelings.

Books being one of them. I love books, almost everything is written either in books or on the web and I want to know about everything. How to make shoes, who invented eyeglasses, what makes people laugh; I want to learn all of it. I think it's mom's fault. When we were little she bought my brother and me a book called "Tell Me Why" and another called "Lots More Tell Me Why". The tag line on the books was something like 'answers to hundreds of questions children ask'.

She also used to take us for nature walks which probably started my love for the outdoors. I bought the Foxfire books as well as a bunch by Tom Brown, Jr about urban or wilderness survival as well as animal tracking.

Well, yesterday I did the first pass at my bookshelf and can proudly tell you that 6 boxes were sold to a local book store. Now I have only another 7 boxes to sort through!

How does someone figure out their favorite-of-favorite books that they don't want to part with? The ones that I buy can't be found at the library, even through the Link+ program.

How many boxes of books will be allowed to follow me to the new cottage?

On the Level

I've been talking about how our trailer isn't level. In fact, the floor of our build space isn't level either. This makes it challenging to create a fairly flat, level floor for our tiny cottage. Is a flat floor important? I mean, whenever we move the trailer the floor will flex anyway, and we don't generally play marbles on the living room floor. So what's the big deal? Certainly it would be simpler to just ignore it.

But Arlene and I are both the type of people who walk into a room and notice if a picture is 1/32 inch lower on one side than the other. And while we realize that we aren't going to make this thing perfect, and that no one will notice our mistakes as readily as we will, we also note that the degree to which this trailer is off, and the way in which it is off, will impact building the walls and roof.

From the front of the trailer to about mid-way between the two axles (the front 2/3 rds), the trailer is straight and true and easy to level. But from between the axles on back it dips so that if the front of the trailer is level, the rear end is about 1 1/2 inches lower than the front. Fortunately, the slope seems roughly constant. The trailer is made for hauling vehicles and normally comes with ramps that attach to the back, so it makes sense that the back end dips - that would be the end you load the car on from.



After leveling the front, I put a nail near each corner of our floor frame. Then I tied a string - very tightly - from one corner to the next so that I had a string box floating above the floor frame. On the front two nails, I set the string height at about 1/8th inch up from the floor frame. Then, using a level, I inched the string up or down each of the nails until the string was level. At this point, I had about 1 1/2 inches between the string and floor frame at the back. From the front to mid-way between the axles the string stayed at about 1/8th inch above the frame.

A few things to note: I checked the levelness of the string by eyeballing the string against a long leveling tool and doing this at several points on the string to make sure he string was taught and that I was being as accurate as I could. Also, if the strings are all level, the strings going from front to back and the ones going from side to side should be at the same height on the nails in the corners.



So I needed to create a shim that was 1 1/2 inches tall for the back. Then I needed to create other shims to support the other members of the frame - including angled ones for the sides because the depth of the shim needed to be shallower as we moved forward.

Measuring from between the axles to the end of the floor frame is 90 inches. Between the axles we need a shim of zero height; at the back we need one 1 1/2 inches. So we have a long short triangle. Measuring from between the axles, or the point of the triangle, to each place I need a shim gives me some measurement, say Y inches. The shim for that location is (Y times 1.5) divided by 90 inches tall. [ 1.5Y/90= height of shim. ]

The front to back boards needed to be cut such that one end was taller than the other, but I used the same the process to find the height of the end points, marked the board at those heights and drew a line from one mark to the other and cut it along the line.

Well, that was probably more than ever wanted to know about leveling. We made lots of other progress this weekend. I'll post pics and notes on in the next day or so.

Recent Progress

First, I should note that I'm still in school and so have to study a fair amount. Doing that at the build space means that when I need a break I can do some work on the cottage. But it has the down side of occasionally distracting me from my school work. :-)



Arlene has done most of the work of putting the floor framing together. In the photo below you can see that we used treated wood around areas that will be more likely to be exposed to water. There a few more photos of the floor framing here.



Originally we intended to build the floor frame next to the trailer on the shop floor. That is, in fact, how the plans suggest you do it. However, the dimensions of our trailer are different than the plans expect. So if we built the floor frame exactly as the plans suggest we'd be disappointed when we put it on the trailer and found it didn't fit. Measuring and setting up the frame on the trailer made more sense. We could adjust as we went. So the tip here, if you building one of these, is to measure measure measure.

Now, we still have to work out some issues around leveling, but more on that later.



And finally, here I am sanding out the inside of the wine barrel.

Are you wondering what we have a wine barrel for? Me too.

Downsizing – Needs vs Wants

I’ve never been a ‘shopper’ but now I’m reallllly starting to think about any new purchases differently. This project is just starting and already I see changes in my behavior. I wonder:

Do I really need this?

Will it fit in the cottage? And

Will Jeff roll his eyes and sigh when I bring an item home saying,
"Sweetie, really, it followed me home. Can I keep it?"

For example, two months ago I was out and about alone and bought a small 'puzzle table' at about the same time that we were putting the finishing touches on our interior layout. After the purchase I looked online and found that it was made by an artist named David Kawecki in the 90's. I like his chair too but it won't seat both of us and is probably too big to come with us anyway.

Well, I bought the table because I thought it was an ingenious design (it disassembles into 5 pieces and can be stored flat when not in use) and because Jeff loves puzzles. I really thought he'd smile when he saw it.

I do love the table but Jeff did sigh when he saw it, and although he didn't roll his eyes, he definitely didn't smile either. I can deal with the fact that he might not be as enthusiastic about the table as I am but after trying to figure out where in the new floor plan I could 'keep' it, I'm afraid we will have no room for it. It'll have to go.

So now I have decided that until we finish the cottage I will have to start carrying my digital camera in case I see something that I think I might want to buy. I'll learn to take a picture of the item in question instead of buying it so that I can 'possess' it but it won't own me. (This idea will come in handy when Jeff and I travel in the future as I always sneak some nifty looking rocks into my luggage to take home. Never the tiny ones either. Pictures of rocks will be much lighter after a month of travel.)

We have also discussed trying to figure out what items to keep based on the square footage of personal storage space that we each will be allowed. We can use string on the floor to outline the box size then simply assign it a height. How many books, art supplies and clothes will fit in there?

Once we move into the cottage it will be very easy not to buy anything new since there will be no place to put it. The floor plan we have come up with uses healthy 'green building' materials, will be beautiful and will efficiently serve all of our needs and wants in a home.

Monday's post will be
Downsizing - It's sometimes hard but "Just Do It"
.

Downsizing – Part One

I've done it before, this thing called 'downsizing' of my possessions. It was 1998, I was recently divorced and living in SF as a single mom. I couldn't find full-time work in The City but heard through co-workers that there was an opening in their Seattle office.

I was offered the job and it was freeing to get rid of most everything that owned me in anticipation of our move. Freeing was definitely what it felt like when I considered moving.

What size moving van would we need, there were steps to move from so should I hire movers (Delancey Street Movers are amazing!), what size apartment will we need to move to and in what neighborhood to keep it all safe. Those answers would severely limit our choices of livable spaces simply because of what we owned, and trust me, I've never enjoyed limits very much.

Well, I gave away cherished items to friends who had admired them, sold things at a yard sale or gave them to charity. We left California with only the smallest enclosed trailer that held an antique birdseye maple armoire, some clothes, books, toys, 2 bikes and a few basic living items.

If it didn't fit in the trailer then it couldn't come with us.
It's a wonderful feeling that I look forward to again…

If it doesn’t fit into this tiny new cottage, then it won’t come with us.

Trailer Modifications

The plans call for removing roughly every other board from the deck. This helps reduce weight and prevent water from pooling under the floor framing. The screws that hold the deck to the trailer require a square bit instead of flat-head, Philips, or star (also called torx). We only had one suborn screw, probably because the trailer is new.



Sometimes a quick way to get a screw unstuck is to use a small, flat tipped, metal chisel. Place the tip of the chisel against the edge of the screw at about a 45 degree angle from the deck. Tap the chisel until you have a good dent in the side of the screw head. Keeping the chisel at about 45 degrees from the deck, rotate the chisel - keeping the tip in the dent you just created - so that tapping chisel will tend to turn the screw counter-clockwise. A few taps may loosen the screw enough so you can use the square-head bit to remove the screw.

Of course, if the head is stripped out it's better to just drill the screw out.



In the front of the trailer there is (was) a low bar. We needed to remove this, otherwise we'd have to figure out how to build the walls around it. Arlene used a rotozip, which cut through the supports quickly. Then she smoothed the edges with a grinder. Arlene is always telling me she likes metal, but all I see her do to metal is hack it, cut it, grind it, and otherwise turn it into dust.



Another thing you might notice from the pictures is that we have a set of jacks under all 4 corners of the trailer. The jacks will stabilize our work surface. Now if the trailer were perfectly square and level, making level floors and square walls would be a snap. Unfortunately, the trailer is actually bowed such that the highest point is above the wheels. But we have a plan...