What Does Our Tiny House Look Like?

We know we want to move into something much smaller, but what does it look like?  Is it on wheels or permanent?  Do we build it ourselves or buy it finished?  There are so many options out there, I didn't even know which way I wanted to direct my energy.

So we spent a lot of time looking at different options over Labor Day weekend.  First we started out looking at RV's.  We discovered that there are a lot of cool RV's out there, some are really nice and don't cost a ton.  But do I want to live in an RV with two kids?  None of them were suited to our needs exactly.  We were drawn to the fifth wheeler toy haulers.  They all had a room at the back for "toys", but also had beds and couches that lifted up into the ceiling.  They also often had a powder room back there as well.  With some carpet and maybe paint on the walls, it would make a cute bedroom for one kid.  But not for our two.

While out looking at RV's we came across a place that was selling Park Homes.  Homes that looked more like tiny homes, but classified as RV's.  They had two on the lot, both were awesome, but had one bedroom and a loft.  Again, not enough rooms for our two kids.  But we got some information there and found out there were more homes to be toured about an hour away.

 

I think this home is super cute, I love the front porch.  And the other home had a big back porch that was screened in.  And it was affordable, just didn't have enough bedrooms.  These are Athens Park Homes.

The next day we decided to head out to look at the other homes we could walk through.  They were Leland Cabins and instead of being built on wheels and classified as RV's they were built on skids.  I don't know what they were classified as.  We toured a bunch of them and just did not like them.  But they had some super cute playhouses.  I would have loved one of these as a kid.  They had cute little dutch doors and lofts inside. I could just hug it, it is so cute!!

We left there disappointed, but I got back on the web and as I was looking around I discovered a place that had a bunch of the Athen's Park Homes on display.  And they had some with two bedrooms and a loft.  I could make that work, give my youngest the loft until my teenager leaves for college.  Then she could have bedroom and the loft could become our tv/hang out room.

We toured these homes the next day and I found my new home.  It's 399 square feet plus the loft.  I would want to make some small changes to it, but it will work.

Now all I have to do is find a place to park it.  Oh and convince a bank to give me a loan for it.  No problem right?  Anyone have any ideas?

Road Blocks

When my dream was a giant house in the shape of a J, I understood my main roadblock was money.  Now that my dream is to have a tiny house, money is a much smaller road block.  Unfortunately there are many other road blocks such as finding a legal place to put a tiny house, how to get someone to finance the house and minimum house size codes.

For us we have a few requirements:

Our house has to have three separate sleeping areas:  There are four of us going to live in this tiny house.  Two adults and two kids (plus two cats, two frogs and a fish, but the animals won't affect house size).  Our son is a teenager and our daughter is a tween so they cannot share a room.

We want to stay in our current school district:  The kids have been through many changes in their lives and the one thing our daughter has requested is to please let her stay in this school district.  I understand how important this is to her and so for the next 7 years this is a non-negotiable.

We want to live legally:  Because we have kids enrolled in school, I don't want to live hidden in the woods, I want my home to be legal.  I'm not the type of person who would be comfortable with the fact that someone might report my home and we would have to move it or worse vacate.

The first requirement is pretty easy to accommodate.  We won't go super tiny, maybe just 400 square feet or so tiny.  I'm not sure if this classifies the house as tiny or just small, either way it's what will work for us.

The second and third requirements are what is keeping us from doing this today.  Land in our school district is expensive and the minimum requirement for a home is 1800 square feet.  This is a frustrating road block because I do not know how to overcome it right now.  I don't understand the codes and I don't have connections with someone who would let me buy or rent some land from them.  And even if I could get a small piece of land, would I be living illegally due to the small house size?  

The more research I do, the more questions I have.  Should we try to build a small house on a foundation or on wheels?  The houseboats look really cool maybe we could live on a lake?  How about container houses?  Should we just use an RV for now until we can figure things out?  So many questions right now.

Where the Journey Begins

When I was a kid I often drew my dream houses on graph paper.  They were large, had many different rooms, several pools, usually a creek ran throughout the house and almost always were in the shape of a J. 

Fast forward 30 years (give or take) and I have slowly moved towards that big house.  Sadly no pools or creeks and the J shape has eluded me, but there is plenty of square footage.  The house we live in now is about 2700 square feet, a little over average for the U.S. and way under average for the school district we live in.  Even with using two rooms for my counseling office we have plenty of room to store all our stuff.  Seriously...this picture is just my crafting stuff and we have lots of other rooms full of stuff...who needs all this?

I

Several things have happened this year to change my outlook on how big my house needs to be and how much stuff I need to accumulate.  First I made a New Year's Resolution to downsize my stuff.  I was tired of cleaning it, tired of losing it, tired of it always being in my way.  Next, a friend announced that she would be selling her house and moving her family to an RV for a year or two to save money.  That got my wheels turning.  As I started looking into the possibility of moving into something smaller I discovered the Tiny House movement. 

I have a new dream house, a teeny, tiny, super cute dream house. 

You get the idea.

I invite you to follow our family as we attempt to make this dream a reality.   We know it will be a process and it may take several years, but even if I have to invent a shrinking ray gun, this will happen!