Tiny House Living

After two years of battling cancer, and still battling it, it has really taken a toll on us financially. We are still above water, but used a lot of resourses to do it: selling off the equipment, woodlot, sheep, and soon...one of our houses.

 

The woodlot was cut by a logger who stole the wood; 75 tractor trailer loads. That went to court, but he was handed down a deferred sentence. The restitution is $1800 a month, and a $2000 fine if he pays me per month after Feb 26th 2019, or $200 fine if I am paid in full before that date. He just had all his eqipment repossed by the bank, so I suspect he will be going to jail soon (he has a serious gambling problem) and just do not see him paying me $1800 a month after Feb even.

 

But when some people from church wanted to rent our home, we thought it would be a good idea to make money on that house (2500 sq ft @ $1000 a month), so we spent $1800, and 5 weeks of working on this Tiny House and moved in. We actually like Tiny House living. before everyone was so spread out, but now we are forced to be a family! The house has lower costs all in all, and while it has a long way to go before it is really how we want it, it is getting there.

 

About the toughest thing has been for Katie and I. The girls initially did not want to move here, so we told them they could each have their own rooms. This is a four bedroom house, and while TINY rooms, there was (4) bedrooms, where as our old house had only (3) bedrooms. But if you do the math on that, it does not work out well; (4) daughters and a (4) bedroom house...it means Katie and I sleep on the couch/floor. We want to keep this houses small size, so we will have to be creative in doing that, but that is our goal; to stay living Tiny House style.

 

The house was in rough shape. We stripped it right back to the studs, replacing the sheathing, studs, clapboards, while adding wiring (it essentially had none), adding insulation (it also had NONE), then replaced the wallboard. We also swapped the physical locations of the living room and kitchen, made the bathroom bigger, and brought everything out of the basement like the cold water and hot water tanks. We also jacked the house up, and stiffened the second floor stringers because they were only 2x5's spanning 18 feet, 2 feet on center. Sagging 4 inches, we jacked a few inches out of them, and sistered on new stringers. Having a sawmill helped of course, in getting the costs down, and the strange lumber sizes made. 

 

Sadly, the people from church signed the rental agreement, and then realized how much a 2500 sq ft home costs to heat, and bowed out. It kind of sucked as we already had moved, but now we are thinking about just selling the other place. We own it outright, so the extra money would be nice.

Tiny House Living