It's Almost Time!

This week marked a huge step in our little adventure. We put the down payment on a 14x34 Derksen barn a few days ago! It's pretty huge by tiny house standards, but still what most people would consider insanely small for a family of 5 with pets. 

Our floor plan is finalized, and we've started buying the building materials for finishing out the interior. We decided to stick with LED lighting to minimize our electricity usage since we are going with a 50 amp RV breaker box. We managed to get all 5 fixtures for a steal since a certain Blue home improvement store had them on sale, too! That fits perfectly into our "Finish It Cheaply But Nicely" mentality. I also scored the front porch light for only $8, marked down from over $40 on Amazon.

On the next trip to Blue, we're going to get our wiring, light switches, pvc plumbing pipe, and the concrete blocks. Hopefully by then I'll have my plans fully rendered so I can post more photos! For now, here's a (very colorful) rendering of our tiny bathroom.We had origionally decided to use corrugated tin for the bathroom walls (sealed to prevent rust), but I'm pretty sure my husband has decided to go either a more traditional route, or to use the tin as a half-wall, with cedar finishing out the rest of the height.

Progress

Here's how much we've done so far:

1. Finalize floor plan
2. Start packing
3. completely panic because either there is no way I'm going to be done packing in time, or there is no way we're going to fit what we need in the new space
4. Remind myself that storage units were invented for a reason

All in all, things seem to be going mostly smoothly. 

New Beginnings & Crazy Plans

Sometimes life calls for a fresh start, a cleaning of the slate. Often, this means going in a direction completely opposite what you are used to. I'm starting this blog over with a fresh start to reflect the changes our lives are about to experience. All wiped clean and made new again. Hopefully I can remember to keep up with it!

This blog started out as a medium for chronicling the stories and adventures of Pippa the Corgi. Well, Pippa turned into Pippa and Dante. Then Pippa and Dante and Thor. Then Pippa and Dante and Thor and Thumper. Dante passed away and we were down to three again, with a temporary we were raising for a family member while he was away. Now, we are looking to move the three corgis, as well as our three kids, and two house rabbits into a 714 square foot cabin.

Yup. I'm crazy, right? Life gets so stressful at times just trying to keep up and trying to make ends meet. You accumulate so much...stuff! all while still having nothing worth showing for the money you work so hard for. We have a dream of building our dream house one day. Nothing fancy, just a simple farmhouse styled cabin. Acres of land for our goats to graze, watching them from our front porch while a breeze blows by. Our kids having a chance to grow up playing outside, picking flowers and coming home dirty from head to toe because they just couldn't resist rolling around in the yard.

Right now, we live in almost 1700 square feet with a yard that is almost the same size as our house. Packed in like sardines with our neighbors *literally* within sneezing distance. The kids don't play outside much because there is no real room to run, and we drive 30 minutes each way just to care for our goats. Not exactly living the dream, right?

Recently, my husband got hurt at work, and though we are lucky that they are still giving him some hours each week, it is nothing compared to what we are used to. We are scraping money together for sandwiches to eat, and panicking when we are low on feed for the animals. We lost our house when the housing market crashed in '08, so when things get tight like this we go in to full freak-out mode. After sitting down and talking, my husband and I (along with my mom, who recently relocated to the country), had a wonderful and insane idea. We're going to build a small cabin out at her place to stay in for a couple of years so that we can downsize, get rid of all of this money stress, and finally save up for land of our own.

I know this is going to come with its own brand of stress, but I can't begin to tell you how much I am looking forward to this change of pace. As soon as we made up our minds I immediately sat down with my graph paper and had our plans finalized within days. We are now only a small step away from getting started, and I'm excited, terrified, nervous, and giddy all at once. The kids seem to be more excited than we are. My 3 year old princess keeps coming up with ideas like loft beds so that their bedrooms have more useable floor space, and my 5 and 7 year old boys are being just as helpful. They are looking forward to being able to spend their days playing outside, rather than watching tv just to stave off boredom. I am overjoyed that the entire family is so happy about this plan :)

I'm rambling, and I really need to start sorting things out (gotta decide what is worth bringing, and what we can live without), so I guess I need to get off of the computer and get started on the next step of this adventure!