Posts from the “Little House” Category

Tiny house design

Posted on June 17, 2015

Ta da!  Presenting the Earth Morning tiny house design. If you’ve spent any time looking at tiny houses on wheels, you know they are all fairly similar in design because of the size constraints of the trailer.  Our tiny house has the same size constraints, but we’ve spent some time personalizing the inside.  As you can see, we’re inspired by the Tumbleweed lofted bed design, with distinctions: Our bathroom will be located across the tongue end of the trailer; we’ll have a large kitchen with counters spanning two sides of the house; and we’ll have a stairway instead of a ladder so Lily can access the sleeping loft. Our vital stats: Exterior footprint: 8’x24’, not including trailer tongue Interior dimensions: 7’4”x23’ Loft height: 3’11”…

Categories: Little House

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Choosing a trailer

Posted on June 7, 2015

Seth and I sent in a deposit for our trailer just after receiving the go from Grace Church, thereby guaranteeing that we will have a trailer by late June. We waited until we had a build site locked down before ordering because we wanted to be sure we bad a place to put it. No sense in getting a trailer and then watching it rust and taking up our neighbors’ parking spaces, you know? A lot of tiny home builders salvage a trailer from an existing RV and beef it up to account for the added weight of a wood framed house.  Seth and I decided not to go this route, despite our green thumbs, for a couple of reasons: For starters, salvaging a…

Categories: Trailer

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Welcome aboard, Grace Church!

Posted on June 7, 2015

If you’ve ever been to a large city’s suburbs, you know the houses are packed together like sardines.  Many houses don’t even have yards.  And while a tiny house is teeny compared to a regular house, one thing that you need when you’re building is space.  You need space to put the trailer, and then you need space around the trailer so you can lay out your walls and cut lumber and store tools.  And one thing that Boston does not have is space. Seth and I are Boston-area transplants.  We’re not used to having neighbors in every direction, peeking down into our business.  So when we were figuring out the logistics of building, we knew we didn’t want to try to build in…

Categories: Build Location, Little House

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The thing about tiny houses

Posted on February 24, 2015

Seth and I went to an open house this past weekend, courtesy of the Greater Boston Tiny House meetup group.  Chris Page finished building his house this past fall, based on the Minim house plans, and he invited 24 strangers to traipse through it throughout the day. We arrived late for the 10:30 start, breathless, navigating our way through piles of snow in a quiet neighborhood.  When we closed the door behind us, the chatter ceased for a moment and we introduced ourselves.  Then everyone talked again, all at once, asking questions and giving answers.  And without a second thought we were friends. I don’t know how these things happen. How does a common passion lead to instant community? But by the end of…

Categories: Little House

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Electricity for Dummies (and a couple of tiny-housers)

Posted on February 16, 2015

Can I get a hands-up for everyone who uses DC to power their life?  Aha! That is exactly one person.  I see you there, madam.  As for everyone else, hello, welcome to electricity.  I bet you don’t think about it very often.  I know I don’t.  It’s the most convenient thing in the world, in between indoor plumbing and ketchup.  (For serious y’all, don’t under-appreciate ketchup.) Electricity makes my digital life go.  It lets me read e-books on kindle, and shows me pictures of long-lost relatives and feminist Ryan Gosling.  It is also hella scarce when you’re thinking about living in an off-grid tiny house.  And since we’re in the design and planning stage, that is where we’re at today: sourcing electricity. Now as…

Categories: Electricity, Little House, Solar

Decisions, decisions

Posted on February 8, 2015

We are the only people I know who have a picture of a toilet on their wall.  Then again, we are the only people I know who are building a tiny house — which means we should probably go out and meet more people. But that toilet represents an important victory. As we’re coming to learn, building this tiny house is a series of decisions upon decisions.  Sure, you have to pick out the floor color and the stove and the refrigerator.  You also have to pick out how the refrigerator runs: propane or electricity?  If you want electricity, do you go with AC or DC?  Or both? How are you going to supply electricity, with a solar array or an RV hookup?  Or…

Categories: Little House

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The BIG Tiny House Festival

Posted on September 22, 2014

Some of the kind folks in Somerville put together a tiny house festival for the Boston area: The BIG Tiny, organized by Miranda’s Hearth.  And thank goodness.  As excited as we are to live in a tiny house, we’d never actually stood inside of one.  I mean, if you’re going to live in a 160 square foot dwelling with your partner-in-crime, you’d better figure out if the proximity makes you want to pie each other in the face, you know? We went later in the day.  I was dizzy on my feet thanks to the migraine meds I’d taken earlier, but Seth looked at home among the beards and flannel shirts of Somerville. We stood in line for an hour before we stepped into…

Categories: Little House

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Downsizing and current events

Posted on August 15, 2014

It would be untrue to say that we’re downsizing because we’re affected by the news lately: Robin Williams committed suicide.  Lauren Bacall died.  The people of Ferguson, MO are protesting the police murdering a young man, and the police are reacting with a disproportionate, terrifying, unsurprising amount of force. And yet. Somehow, these things are related in my brain.  Somehow, living smaller seems to me a way of being kind to our neighbors, caring more for other people than ourselves.  I know that’s not the panacea to depression, death, racism and violence. But it feels like a start to me.  It feels like we’re saying, “I notice I’m not the only one here. I notice you.” We’ve spent the last two weeks downsizing.  Seth, that wonderful man, has…

Categories: Little House

Tiny House Build List

Posted on August 1, 2014

It’s a lot of work building a house, and I say this while still in the design stage.  I think I know what we’re getting ourselves into.  That doesn’t make it any less intimidating. Meanwhile, as we’re planning we’re coming across products we like and think we want to use.  I figured I’d store this information on a blog in case it helps anyone else building a tiny house.  I’ll keep things updated as our wants and needs shift. Architectural Refrigerator (looking at these two) Induction cooktop (something like this) Oven Marvin aluminum-clad or fiberglass windows Interior wall finish Exterior siding Structural Tumbleweed Tiny House Trailer lumber and plywood – phone a friend Mechanical Kimberly wood stove exhaust vent air purifying system Electrical solar…

Categories: Little House

Why tiny?

Posted on July 13, 2014

I put up an About Us page this week, and it goes into our goals a little bit — one of which is a tiny house. So why do we want to go tiny? Well, I’ll tell you. Way back in August 2009, we moved to an apartment in a house in Dover, New Hampshire. It wasn’t a nice house by any stretch of the imagination. It was poorly kept up, though the owner assured us that its flaws were cosmetic and he’d fix them right away. We dismissed a lot of the issues as the quirks of an old house. We were young, flush with excitement over being newlyweds and new dog owners. We looked at it on a beautiful bright day. With…

Categories: Little House