Relocation time - Austin, TX

We've moved our house from the flat-lands of the DFW area to the lovely hill-country west of Austin. The difference is astounding. I will have to take some pictures the next time we go out biking... the views from the hills are just amazing at times. Doesn't even feel like Texas anymore.

We were lucky enough to find the rare sort of RV park that actually has some trees and privacy, instead of just a big row of RVs lined up. It's a semi-permanent environment with a lot of permanent residents. Took some pictures of our immediate surroundings... and here they are!

First, let me just say, this is February. Woo! Felt like a tropical island in the sun. (A lot cooler in the shade though.)



We have a tiny little shade nook under some cedar trees in one corner:



And a sweet little storage shed, which is VEEEERRRRRRY important right now, because it will give me a place to move stuff so that I can build some furniture:



Took this shot the first night we arrived:



When we pulled up I noticed a three-set of stairs off to the side of our lot... shrugged it off, figuring they belonged to someone. However, shortly after, the manager asked if we had any stairs for our place. We told him we had our little one-step platform, and he mentioned that someone had left these stairs here and that we could feel free to use them. They are a perfect fit:



We're lucky enough to be in a spot that is on the edge of the park, so one whole side of our lot is bordered by woods:



And this.. this little fellow... :) is our lawn:



I am glad to be in an area that has some trees and some hills, instead of endless flat fields. It's a nice change of pace. We are also very close to a lot of stores, which is very nice for the convenience factor.

I've also devised a ridiculously simple solution for how to add a urine diverter to our loveable loo. If there's anyone out there in need of this info, let me know and I will provide.

Moving to Austin

Looks like we are packing up next week and heading down to Austin, where we found a sweet campground RV park with lots of trees. The air is fresh, the rolling hills of the area offer magnificient views, and the people are supposed to be a lot friendlier in Austin. Overall, I believe this will be a good change for us.

We even got the biggest lot on the site (presumably they mean other than the manager's, since he had a pretty sweet setup) and it has a storage shed included on our lot. This will give us space to move most of our junk out of the house and finally get some work done. I may have to stick to hand saws to avoid disturbing the neighbors, and I may have to do my cutting inside, so the cats might be spending extra time locked in the bathroom, but I think I can finally build some rudimentary furniture.

I can't wait to get away from the cement plants in this town. If there is one thing wrong with Midlothian, TX, it is the cement plants polluting the air.

I also believe that the change in atmosphere should make it easier for us to stick to our preferred diets of raw foods. The warm weather should also help a lot, as I need to stay pretty active when eating raw. It sounds like we might even have some 'lawn space' of some sort, so maybe we can set up a little fire pit or at least a place for some outdoor chairs and a yoga mat or two.

Now now, don't want to get too optimistic yet... cross your fingers for us.

Seating Continued

Hey all-

I wanted to say thank you to everyone who has made wonderful suggestions for seating. I have had a handful of responses here, a handful on facebook, and a handful via the Small House Society.

Out of the responses I've gotten, most have still seemed too big to apply now, in the limited space we have due to our lack of furniture otherwise... but I think the best suggestion I've heard has been Grant's idea of using office chairs. Originally I shied away from this idea because I was picturing office chairs without head support... but upon further consideration, there are some decent "executive" style chairs that have head support, though they are a bit more expensive. I suppose this might be the best solution though.

This just in...

Ho ho, every time you think things can't get worse, the cold water flow to the kitchen sink cuts out for no apparent reason... ;)

Comfortable Seating in a Tiny House?

I've been wrestling with how to get comfortable seating into our tiny house for a while now. The original plan was to have a monitor arm mounted in such a way that would allow us to move the monitor up into the loft with ease and just watch DVDs while lying in bed.

What I've realized is that this was a limited solution... it doesn't really address the need for casual-yet-comfortable seating, and it didn't work out anyway because the monitor arm I bought ended up not really having the span we needed. :(

So I was thinking about papasan chairs, how comfy they are... obviously way too big... but they have these folding papasan chairs I've seen, so I was looking into those.

While I was looking, I discoverd "mamasan chairs" or double-papasan chairs as they are sometimes called. This is basically a loveseat papasan chair. LOVED it, except, again... too big!

So I've been searching, fruitlessly, for a FOLDING mamasan chair or folding double-papasan, but I cannot come up with anything!


The ONLY other solution I've come up with is to put in a "fold down couch" like they use in toy haulers. The problems with these are, a) the only model I can find is 7 feet long, b) they are 500 dollars :O, and c) (biggest problem) they are only so big and still won't allow for comfortable resting unless one lies down on it. Otherwise, they are about as effective as any other chair solution, leaving you only limited padding on the butt and back, no where to rest the head, etc. etc.


Do I have to just give up on my dream of having a relaxing chair in my house? :(

I am getting discouraged here. A lot of things have gone wrong with our project, and I have grown pretty frustrated. Most of the other problems I can handle, but I just want a comfy seat in my house without having to crawl into the tight-roofed loft and lie down.


Open to any and all suggestions...

-James

Tiny House Design

I also want to just say, much thanks goes out to Michael Janzen of Tiny House Design for giving us some serious "post-support" on this project.

He has been following along with our project, and has been posting regular updates on his site about us. I greatly appreciate his support, even if he doesn't get the site name right. ;) We should probably switch it up, as our current name seems to confuse people... (it's an escape from density... the density being the weight of responsibility created by owning many things.)

Healing, and the Path Ahead

Hey, what's up friends?

I haven't posted much here lately, because I have been utterly stressed from traveling 1800 miles while fighting a nasty head cold. Last night I managed to turn over a leaf or two in the healing process, and I thought it would be only fair that I make my presence known to you internet folk. ;)

I can't help but wonder who reads this thing... if you're out there reading, feel free to comment just to say hi to us... I do wonder who is following along with us on this journey.

I've been sick since the second day of traveling. It is my own fault, granted... for the week or two before we left, I had allowed my diet to deviate severely. I had also stopped exercising almost completely, save for the physical labor involved in moving and arranging things in the house. My immune system was inevitaby suppressed by the time we left. The rest is history.

Now that I am feeling better, I am starting to take a look at the road ahead. We're trying to figure out what our next move is. Kevin's grandparents, Kenneth and Helen, were kind enough to offer to allow us to stay in their back pasture for as long as is needed. For this I am quite grateful. They are very kind people, and have gone out of their way to try to make us feel as welcomed as possible.

However, despite their kindness, I still feel myself drawn towards Austin. I am going to speak with the owner at Covenant Canyon RV Park about our situation, and see whether or not there might be an opportunity for us to do some interior work on the house while staying there. Wherever we do it, we will need a storage area (like a temp. shed or something) to move most of our boxes into until the furniture is done... and we will need the owner of whichever property we end up on to be okay with a little sawing and hammering. (Luckily, the hammering will be inside, and we have good insulation.)

So, there are two distinct branches that need to be fleshed out in order for us to progress reasonably from this point. One is the physical labor of the construction of bookshelves, desks, flip up tables, and more shelves.

The other branch is more administrative... there are several appliances and accessories that I purchased in a rushed state, and I am sorry to say have turned out to be inappropriate for our application. Unfortunately, I have been so caught up in the chaos of making the move (and fighting my illness) that I am not entirely sure anyone is going to give me my money back at this point. However, I still have to try my best, and that is the second branch... calling up various vendors and attempting to return items after their return period has ended. I have an inverter to exchange, a hot water heater to exchange, a monitor arm to return, and a missing refrigerator to confirm that I have not been charged for. Whew.

I have to admit, I have been downright disappointed with all these mishaps, and I will certainly spend more time considering and laying out my plans in the future. We have also learned a valuable lesson on the subject of using LOCAL vendors.

I cannot stress enough that I recommend anyone interested in such a project to use LOCAL vendors for everything that you can, despite the inevitable draw for the uniquity of unusual internet purchases. In the event that any sort of exchange or return is needed, the convenience is critical in the face of all the chaotic aspects of organizing such a project.

In addition, as I said... it is important to really consider your plans thoroughly. Make sure you are buying the right thing. It is really all too disappointing to find out that your 700 dollar purchase is not the right item, two or three months after the purchase. Much less to have this happen over and over again with different utilities and appliances. It's disheartening to say the least. Down right depressing and confidence-smashing, to say a bit more.

Anyway. I hope it is a lesson to those of you out there who might rush such a project. This is a custom job, and there are a lot of quirks that must be considered.

But I digress.

We are moving into our next phase, which will most likely be painting the exterior. This will be paralleled with my attempt to tackle the "mis-purchases" issue.

From there, we start looking into RV parks in the Austin area that will allow us to build some furniture while on their land. Should we fail to make any progress towards this possibility, I will have to ask Kenneth and Helen how they would feel about us staying a bit longer, and possibly using their barn to store some of our stuff while we build furniture inside.

While they have been most gracious in letting us stay here on an unexpected whim, I would not want to impose upon them by asking so much of them. So, we will pursue the possibility of finding an RV park that would be comfortable with such a project first.


This is a wild and new reality for me, and it feels so open-ended. I don't really know how things will turn out, and that is half the fun. I feel so grateful to have a wonderful girlfriend, family, and friends who understand me and support me no matter what I do.

Thank you all for showing me that it is okay to follow my dreams. I will do my best to make something beautiful out of this opportunity, as I am sure Sam will. And I hope that we can share it with all of you through this vehicle.

Tourniquet Journey

Not sure if I spelled that word right. Anyway.

We've been doing our best to make do living in rather crowded conditions in our half-finished house in a self-storage facility. It has been very difficult to get much of anything done, due to the limitations on storage space. Not to mention the overwhelming amount of anxiety that set down upon me in light of the idea of moving into the house so unfinished... or the compounding of that feeling that was created by the idea of actually moving the house in an equally unfinished state.

However, I have pretty much decided to bite the bullet and do the best I can to make it happen. We're just going to eliminate everything we can, and basically lay what's left across the floors of the house so they can't crash around much.

I'm at the library, taking advantage of the sporatic option of internet access. I'm trying to tie up loose ends... still don't know WHERE my fridge is (the replacement one.) and I'm hoping the vendor who sold me the hot water heater might do an exchange for an actual on-demand tankless heater. (This one turned out to be the wrong choice.)

Anyway. It looks like we are going to attempt a launch on wednesday. We'll see if we have our truck and everything else lined up by then. Hopefully we can manage to get everything taken care of in time. If not, we might have to camp out in someone's driveway for a day or two.

That's your update. Sorry they are not more in depth or often, but it is hard to work with the limitation of having no net access. That's one of the great things about post-move... we should have internet access at Kevin's mother's for the next month, which will allow me the information access I need to get things done at a decent clip.