This winter, we’re much warmer in the tiny house compared to last year thanks to our work filling in the air gaps and adding more insulation. We’re still heating with the electric box heater because the walls aren’t up enough to install the wood stove, and anyway the chimney parts we need were on backorder for the last few months. We’ve finally ordered our parts and we’re now waiting for them to arrive. These things are all fine, except for one thing: we have a condensation problem. Our roof drips.

We have a lot of moisture in our tiny house because of all the cooking we do and the fact that we reduced most of the air gaps in the house.  And, you know, we breathe, the four of us. Mold is an ever-present concern because of my health history, so having a drippy roof is alarming.  Is our roof sheathing rotting above the insulation?  This is a big unknown, one that we really need answered.

We thought we’d muddle through the winter, install the wood stove which will definitely help dry things out, and use the two vents we have installed (which we’ve been using minimally because they vent out all the warm air, and while the electric heater does the job, it does the just just barely). Then some time in the spring or summer, we’d pull down the roof insulation, check the status of the roof sheathing, remediate any mold, re-install the insulation, and install the final ceiling pieces of wood.  Kind of a big task when you have a young baby, you’re living in the 200 square foot space where you’re working, AND you’re a full time farmer.

Well, we’ve come up with an unexpected solution to fix these problems.  It’s certainly not something we were considering so soon, but we’re going to move out of the tiny house.  Seth was offered a job that comes with housing on the farm where he’ll be working.  So we’ll be moving into a one-bedroom apartment that’s about twice the size of the tiny house.  Then Seth will be able to do the work at his leisure instead of cleaning up the tiny house between tasks and trying to do the work around the baby’s schedule in the middle of the farming season.

It’s not an ideal situation.  We love the tiny house and we’ve put a lot of work into it to get the design and finishes just right for us.  But it’s unrealistic to live in the tiny house with the baby while it still needs work, and the stress of it is wearing. However, it’s very nice to know that we’ll be living on the farm where Seth works. Such a big change, one that will be most welcome in the summer when Daddy is at work all day and Addie misses seeing him.

We’ll be moving at some point in the next few weeks. Once the snow melts and the ground is firm, we’ll park the tiny house at the farm as well. I don’t know what the future holds for us and the tiny house, but I am glad we’re not giving up on it. We’ll just have to take it as it comes.