The Best-Laid Plans ....

This'll be a short post.  I intend to continue blogging about the processes of building my tiny house, and about general and specific handy tips on Living Tiny.  But as of today, I will not be allowed to keep nor live in the home that I have been building.

The main idea was to find an elegant way to move home to help care for my elderly mother.  Having my own home, owning my own place, ruling my own space ... that was all part of it too.  As were simplifying my life, and saving for retirement -- and in fact being able to move my home to my eventual retirement destination!

Alas, as the Bard said, "The best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley."

A lovely broken heart bead, by the talented Friskeybeads, available here at her ETSY shop.

My tiny home does not fit the local definitions of a granny flat.  It has too many axles.  It's *too big*.  And I am not allowed to live in a trailer anyway.  There has been a whole series of misinformation, misunderstanding, and conflicting data, apparently.  Plus the fact that no one in municipal government really groks tiny houses, yet.

So now I must move it out of town.  And moving it out of town while still working on it, and still paying it off, and still paying rent elsewhere -- AND not being any closer to home to help look after my mother -- all add up to selling it.

It is sturdy and strong and tight and warm.  It is well-insulated.  It has a lot of windows.  And it's at the perfect place in building for a taller person to take over, move a couple of lofts upwards a little, and make it habitable by someone taller than Hobbit-height.  The place can be finished, inside and out, to suit the next owner .... as much as it hurts to say that, because I've poured a lot of hopes and dreams and ideals into my home-that-cannot-be.

If you have any interest in purchasing (and hauling away, sorry!) a well-built proto-tiny-home shell in Southern Ontario, with impressive insulation (it's currently WARM inside, just from the dehumidifier running!), please leave me a note below .....

How Firm a Foundation?

One of the first questions you need to ask yourself when planning a tiny house is one of foundation.  Where are you putting this thing?  Do you have land?  Or are you setting it somewhere temporarily, to move somewhere else later?

The answer to this question is an important one, because it helps determine the shape, size, and layout of your home, and everything that goes into it.  If you have land, are you setting your home on a basement, a half-basement, a so-called crawl space, a slab, or on padstones/pilings/footings?  Land allows you to look at making use of buried/bermed construction, a dome-style home, a tower layout, or just about any shape you can imagine!   But once built, it stays where you've built it.

Using a trailer as a foundation for your tiny home is both liberating and limiting.  Liberating, because you can build it in one place and then move it to another -- you are not tied to your construction zone.  On the other hand (and this is crucial), a trailer strictly dictates the size and proportions of your home.  In choosing a 20'x8' trailer as my foundation, I was constrained to utilizing those specific dimensions and proportions.  And try as I might, I could not fit into it the exact configuration of shower I really wanted -- this would have been simplicity itself with a different house footprint.  Ah, well.

Tiny House Design for a trailer must be one of compromise.  Here's what I want, can I make it fit?  No?  Then what can I make fit?  Will that do for my needs?  If not, how can I change it?  (Of course, you might fall in love with an existing plan and not want to change a thing.  That's cool, too!)

More on evolution of design later.  For now, here's my beautiful trailer in its raw form, as I got it from the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company in mid-June this year: 

My trailer, placed just about where it will be located for the next while.  The big sugar maple to centre-left is the one we had a rope-and-tire swing on when we were kids.  The yard was just a simple lawn in those days.  Mum did a lot of planting over the years, and earned a Trillium Award one year for her gardens.  Now it all makes a lovely secluded setting for the Gatekeeper's Lodge.  I look forward to watching my cats watching the birds, squirrels, and chipmunks as they investigate the feeders.

Paring Down My Stuff

We accumulate stuff.

Stuff we can't bear to throw away; stuff that might come in handy some day; stuff that is Great Stuff -- just too much of it.  Things we give home-space to, things we lug with us from apartment to apartment, things that clutter our lives.  (Things that other people might treasure and use?)

I find myself wondering why I have a near-complete mint-in-boxes bisque porcelain Avon Nativity Set that I collected in the 1980's.  Like these here.   They're gorgeous, the most beautiful Nativity Set I've ever clapped eyes on.  But I've had them out of their boxes and on display twice.  I need to find them a new home.

Likewise the clothing that doesn't fit (it will fit someone!); the endless piles of books (I have an ereader!); the bookshelves (fewer books means fewer shelves needed!); and the knickknacks, tchotchkes, gewgaws, trinkets, thingamajigs and whatchamacallits that gather dust in such profusion that I no longer *see* them -- due to the dust and/or the profusion.  It is time and high time for a clear-out.  Plus it all simply won't fit into a tiny house!

For downsizing my stuff, I use a method which I believe I invented, called the Six Piles Method.  As is painfully obvious from the name, this refers to putting everything you own into six piles.  Towhit:


1. Treasures & Useful Things (preferably both!) -- this pile I get to keep!
2. Gifts -- be magnanimous and thoughtful!
3. Things to Sell -- nothing wrong with turning a few bucks on collectibles!
4. Items for Charity -- support the causes you believe in!
5. Recycling -- reduce, reuse, recycle, repurpose, and REMOVE!
6. Garbage -- whatever doesn't fit into the above five piles must be garbage, right?

Wish me luck.  This is my current and ongoing project in the move from apartment-and-storage to The Gatekeeper's Lodge.

Clutter in the library, soon to be GONE.  (Well, most of it.)

Needs & Wants

There are two questions to ask yourself when you're thinking about building a tiny house:

What do I need?  (What are my personal requirements for comfortable living?)

What do I want?  (Some things are nice-to-haves; some things are deal-breakers; some things are trade-offs.)

Maybe you've moved far too many times over the years, and you've built up a clear picture in your heart of My Ideal Living Space.  Perhaps you grind your teeth remembering a certain feature or layout or omission from The Apartment From Hell.  Do you have a Wish List or a Check List?   You may have amused yourself by looking through tiny house listings or showcases, carefully noting the things that made you go, "Ah-haaaahhh!"

Everyone's different.  Everyone needs and wants different things.  Don't let anyone talk you out of what you want or need by invoking "think of the resale value!" or pronouncing "that's too wide/narrow/tall/short!"

My tiny house is being built with several features that make other people roll their eyes.  I looked at many many tiny houses, especially the wonderful designs at Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.  I came to the overwhelming conclusion that their kitchens were all FAR too big, and their showers were all FAR too small.  Yes, you read that right.  So my kitchen, including space to walk through it to the facilities, is 80" x 40".  And that feels huge!  My facilities, on the other hand, are two separate rooms:  a shower with enough room to stretch my elbows straight out without touching the walls; and a "loo", housing both the composting toilet for me and the litterbox for my furry roommates.

Aside from these amenities, I needed to be able to stand up in those downstairs rooms, AND in my upstairs sleeping loft above them.  (My knees are not as young as the rest of me.)  But the other thing to remember is that a trailer still has to be within the legal height for rolling down the road, if you ever actually want to move it!  Luckily I'm five-foot-nothing these days, so this set of factors could be made to work together! My brothers, however, are keeping score as to which one of them does the "Gandalf walks into the rafters of Bag End" thing more often.

The other important consideration about bad knees is "how to get upstairs" -- ladders are the usual for tiny houses, but let's face it, for some of us, they just plain hurt.  A staircase seemed a better option.  But a standard rise of 8" was also painful!  A rise of 6" is a lot more comfy.  Now, if I'm going up call-it-six-feet, in increments of six inches, that means a standard staircase of a dozen steps .... unless I wanted to take up an entire wall of the greatroom with the staircase (I did in fact consider it!) then there had to be another way ...

The answer was a Jefferson Tansu.  (I used to have their albums, didn't they break up?)

Jefferson Tansu:  styled after an ancient Japanese design that combines a cabinet with a staircase; then staggered (a "Jefferson" staircase) allowing a much shorter "run" for the overall "rise".  
Yes, it has grab bars situated for ease of use.  And yes, my knees love it.

 Built for me with elegance and style (and high grade plywood) by the highly-valued-and-long-suffering Max Sprinkle, this is the gem and centrepiece of my tiny home.  I bet you could commission him to make one for you, too.  I'll likely be able to supply his contact information shortly to those interested.
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Welcome to the Gatekeeper's Lodge.

This is a blog about one person's adventure in building a tiny house.  A tiny house, as you might know, is a home in complete opposition to the ubiquitous, modern "monster home" -- a tiny house is, by general definition, a home of under 1,000 square feet (although they seldom exceed 500 sq.ft.).

My home, as I am building it, will be 224 sq. ft.  The Gatekeeper's Lodge is rising on a 20'x8' trailer, and will stand guard on the family home, built in the 1870's.  Nestled on the patio, under the sugar maple tree where we had a tire-swing as kids, the Gatekeeper's Lodge will keep watch on the yard and the driveway, the gardens and the back porch.

I will be sharing my tiny home with my furry roommates, who are rescue Siameses.  I am giving a great deal of thought to making sure *they* have a lot more square footage than I do, with walkways, lofts, hidy-holes and dens.  If my home is a work-in-progress, this is mostly because I want to make sure they're as safe and happy as I am in the place!

It is also being built with an eye to conservation, to green practices, to solar self sufficiency, to recycling greywater in a self-contained fashion.  This blog will have some entries about building, some about planning, and some about research, not necessarily in that order!

It is my hope that visitors here will find food for thought -- if not for their own tiny house, then perhaps for conservation, sustainable energy, and living mindfully.  We all collect and give home space to Too Much Junk over the years, and herein I also intend to catalogue the sometimes-painful process of downsizing my stuff.  It is my hope that there will be luxury in "making do" carefully; peace that flows along with paring down the clutter; and delight and security that come from having my own space, my way.

A plan always starts with a blueprint, even if it evolves -- so let's start here:

The Gatekeeper's Lodge, Spring 2013