Beginnings...

Let me start by telling you what has always been The Plan:

It has always been The Plan that Sam and I would get married and buy a vacant piece of property on which to build our homestead. To start out, we would build a Tumbleweed Tiny House ourselves, in which we would live while we built The Barn, and then we would live in that while we built our dream home: The House That Has Everything. After we had finished The House That Has Everything, we would build a natural pool in some remote piece of the property, and move the Tumbleweed Tiny House to site by the natural pool and become The Lake House. After all of this was accomplished (or perhaps before the natural pool and Lake House, but certainly after The Barn and The House That Has Everything) we would build The Village- a series of small cottages for our parents when they retire or need to live less independently.

I may be overstating things slightly when I say that this has always been the exact plan, but only very slightly, and for the purposes of this discussion, we can say that not only has this exact plan always been The Plan, but also that it was also always The Plan that we would do all of this after we came back from volunteering with the Peace Corps (except the getting married part, we've already taken care of that) .

At least, that had always been The Plan until about a week ago. Now our timeline has moved up a bit.

Three months ago Sam found a listing for a property for sale that he simply had to investigate. We met with a Realtor and walked the land, and it turned out that the listing that had seemed too-good-to-be-true was just that- there were a lot of problems with the property, and it'll make a great home for someone, just not us. Now our problem was that once we had that taste, we couldn't help ourselves. We knew what we wanted, and we didn't want to wait another 3 years (which, if everything went according to plan, is when we would be finished with Peace Corps service) to get it. We wanted to buy property now.

"Large parcels of undeveloped land are only getting harder to find in Southern New England," we told ourselves. "The housing market is recovering- if we're going to buy, we're better off doing it now than in 3 years" we said. Now, while I believe that both of these things, and many of the other reasons we listed ("It'll save us so much time when we get back- think of all the rent we'll save by not having to spend months and months searching for a place and then buying it.") to justify our pre-PC interest in real estate are true- but they're not the reasons we decided to buy property now. The real reason we decided to buy was plain and simple: we want this homestead so much it hurts, and taking this one step in that process goes so far to relieve that unbearable ache in our chests that once we realized that it was both the source of our pain and its cure, we couldn't not make that leap.

And so we started looking in earnest.

In early October we found a promising listing: it was 60 acres of undeveloped land in a town called North Stonington. It was minutes from the highway and only one town removed from Connecticut's densely populated coastline, but it was nestled in a small agricultural community amongst dairy farms and nature reserves. This, we decided, was a property to move on. It was close enough to urban areas that we probably wouldn't be too hard pressed to find jobs locally when the time came to move onto the property, but rural enough to feel remote and isolated.  We booked an appointment to see the property with the Realtor.

Our first visit was on October 19th. We saw only a small piece of the land, but fell in love with it. We spent the next two weeks doing copious research, looking at zoning regulations, topographical and USGS maps of the property, researching the town of North Stonington and the history of the property itself. With every new piece of information clicking into place, this property began to look more and more like our dream home. We were contacted by the Realtor in early November to let us know that the owner had cleared walking paths into the wooded areas of the property, and if we were still interested, we could come back to take a closer look.

Our second visit was on November 9th. This time we were able to see the back portion of the property, which confirmed what we already suspected from our research: the majority of the property consisted of well-drained woodland, with little undergrowth, lots of rocks, and a small stream. There were no existing buildings or debris that we could see, no swamp, none of the things that we had told ourselves would be deal breakers. In fact, it was just what we had been looking for.

Finally, on November 22nd, we met with the Realtor, and made an offer on the property. We left the meeting with the Realtor to go and explore the property for the first time on our own. We spent the remainder of the day walking the property line and exploring the eccentricities that the land had to offer. I couldn't believe the number of different ecosystems contained within the land- which we had already come to think of as our land- I could imagine the joys of getting to know each one of them through the seasons. And even though I have never wanted to be a mother, I couldn't help but think of what this place would look like through children's eyes, what a rich environment it would offer them in which to grow up.

The next day the Realtor called. The sellers hadn't accepted our offer. There was a moment of sadness for me when I heard this. I don't know if I had realized just how much I had decided that I wanted to live on this property in North Stonington. But, then that moment passed when the Realtor told us that the sellers had given her a counter offer that was within our budget! We immediately agreed, and within the hour had a new offer written up, electronically signed, and sent off to the sellers. We had just bought ourselves a home.

That is to say, we had bought ourselves a home, but not a house. The Plan remained unchanged for the most part: we were still planning on going to serve with the Peace Corps, and afterward come home to construct first a Tiny House, and then The Barn, and then The House That Has Everything. (Moving from simplest construction project to progressively more complicated seems to be the best way to go about things to us). Slowly, subtly, during the week leading up to Thanksgiving, I began to wonder: why should we wait until after we came home from the Peace Corps to build a Tiny House? We might not even get to be volunteers with the Peace Corps- why should we wait on something that might not happen? The final thought that pushed me over the edge was that even if everything worked out perfectly with our Peace Corps service, we program we were being considered for wasn't scheduled to leave until the end of June. Wouldn't it be much nicer to spend our last few months in the States living in a Tiny House (even a partially finished one) in North Stonington next to Napatree Beach than in an apartment in Providence?

I brought my idea to Sam: Why not build our Tiny House now? We could work weekends for the months of February and March, quit our jobs at the end of March, and work full time in April to get the Tiny House exterior finished by May. With the exterior done, we could move to North Stonington. I was surprised and thrilled when Sam thought it was a good idea. Serendipitously, Tumbleweed Tiny House Company is scheduled to have a workshop in Boston at the end of January 2015, and tickets were on sale for 30% off. We bought two yesterday, and I am in full-on research mode.

Most Tiny House builds take significantly longer than our time frame. That means that if we are going to pull this off, I'm going to have to make myself an expert on all things Tiny House Build-related in the next 2 months, get any remaining questions and concerns nailed down at the workshop in January, so we can hit the ground running in February. It'll be an exciting ride.

-Molly