Timeline breakthrough: SIPs

Once people understand that Sam and I are serious bout this and are actually going to build and live in a Tiny House, the next question is usually about our timeline, and the fact that it's remarkably short. We want to go all the way from planning to move-in day in about 5 months. Most people think that's crazy, and I have to admit that up until this week I was a little bit in agreement with them- especially when you consider the fact that we want to get most of our actual build done in just about one month, and included in our 5 month timeline is a 2 week international vacation. Realistically, I had no idea how we were going to make this happen, and so I was hoping to just get the exterior watertight before potentially heading off to Cambodia for two years- any thing after that would be icing on the cake. But this week I stumbled across two blogs written by individuals who built their tiny houses using a building method called SIP paneling, and suddenly our timeline became a lot more reasonable.

SIPs, or Structural Insulated Panels are best described as large plywood-insulation sandwiches (technically SIPs use oriented strand board- OSB- rather than plywood, but the idea is the same) which take the place of traditional dimensional lumber framing in a build. You order the SIP panels in exactly the dimensions you want from the SIP manufacturer, and they come to you ready to assemble like some giant ginger-bread house kit. Building the tiny house with these panels will take framing, sheathing and insulating the walls and roof from a weeks-long job (at best) and turn it into something that can be done in a weekend!

The best part of this is that using SIPs will not only save us time, but will also result in a better finished product than we could produce on our own. When amateurs like Sam and I build using SIPs, it's practically guaranteed that the final house will be more square, tight and structurally sound than it would have been if we built using traditional stick framing methods, and on top of that it will be better insulated because the SIPs are a class II vapor barrier, and thermal bridging is minimized by avoiding the use of studs and rafters. 

Sam and I are over the moon in love with this building method, and are looking into ways that we can get our very own Tiny SIP House. Stay tuned for more updates on that process. In the mean time, if you're interested in hearing from other people who have built Tiny Houses using SIPs, check out these two blogs: Tiny SIP House by Art Cormier and Long Story Short House by Joe Coover.

My Top 5 Tiny House General Research Resources

The first step in our Tiny House Build was for me to do copious amounts of research. Like, research that has taken over my life for the past several weeks. I dream about Tiny House construction techniques. And while my research quickly delved into the specifics of choosing materials and designing systems, the initial research phase was probably very similar to that of other Tiny House self-builders. So I thought I'd compile a list of the information sources I found helpful during this portion of my own research. The criteria I used to select these sources were very simple: first, I had to have found them helpful in determining the size, scope, and general components of a Tiny House Build, and second they had to be free. Without further ado, here are my Top 5 General Research Resources.

Tiny House Giant Journey: The Time lapse videos of this build gave me my first solid understanding of what it takes to build a tiny house- it gave me good insight into how much time it takes and how much effort is involved. Most importantly, it made me think, "yeah- we could do that!"

Tiny Home Builders: A very helpful technically oriented blog. Reading through his blog from the beginning gave me a good sense of each step along the way of a tiny house build. I found this blog so helpful, I later purchased the author's, Dan Louche's, e-book on tiny home construction and subscribed to the how-to videos offered on the website.

Tiny Refuge: Not the most helpful in terms of construction details, but one of the only Tiny House blogs that specifically addresses the questions of cold-climate adaptations to house systems. (Unlike many Tiny House Stories which take place in California, the Pacific Northwest or Southeastern states like Georgia or the Carolinas, this build is happening in Canada, so you can bet that when the author says cold, she means *cold*)

Gone With The Wynns: Not actually a Tiny House blog, but this couple live and work full time from their RV, and they have some fantastic videos about RV plumbing and electrical systems that can be easily applied to Tiny Houses. It also has the most reassuring videos about composting toilets available on the internet. Seriously. These videos are why I'm okay with the idea of pooping into a bucket.

And finally,

Tiny House Chat: In my opinion, this is the best Tiny House Podcast out there. Or at least, the best one I found. I challenge any one to come up with a more informative program. Seriously, if you find one, I want to know about it.

Why a Tiny House?

The second of two main questions that Sam and I are asked when people hear about our plans is "Why a Tiny House?" (For a discussion of the first question, see my previous post Homesteads and Tiny Houses: Why Now?) With people who haven't already heard of the Tiny House Movement, the questions mostly center around why on Earth we would choose to lie in a space so small. With people who have hears of Tiny Housers, the questions become more personal. Sam and I are hardly the Earthy-crunchy granola filled minimalists that are perceived to be the stereotypical Tiny House people. So, when people who know both us and the Tiny House movement hear about our plans to build a Tiny House, the question is less about the physical space restriction and more a question of whether or not the Tiny House community is a good fit for us.

It's true, Sam and I come to the Tiny House movement with a slightly different motivation and plan than most Tiny House People. Most Tiny House People are attracted to the idea of Tiny Houses because it allows them to embrace minimalism, lead a more authentic lifestyle (although what that means varies depending on who you ask), have increased flexibility, and live debt-free: or some combination thereof. For these people, their Tiny Houses are an end-goal: they are permanent homes which support a very specific lifestyle. For us, a Tiny House is more of a stepping stone to get us into a larger space faster than otherwise possible.

The thing is, we've lived in a city for the past 5 years, and we're done with that now. We want to live on a our own homestead and we want to live there as soon as possible. We also really want to build our own home. Sam has an incredible vision of the aesthetics that I absolutely love, and I'm entirely taken with the notion of having a ecologically sustainable Passivhaus, which is cool in summer and warm in winter without need any energy input for heating or cooling the structure. Achieving this house will take planning, time, and money: three things that we won't have enough of for quite a while. But we still want to live on our homestead as soon as possible, and a Tiny House is a way for us to accomplish that. For us, it's not really so much about getting rid of all of our stuff and committing to a life in 120 square feet. In fact, one of our first priorities after building the Tiny House will be to construct a large barn that we can use to store our things and expand our living space to accommodate our hobbies.

Does this somehow make our Tiny House endeavor less authentic (There's that word again. I think some real thought needs to be put into what we mean when we use "authentic" to describe an experience or a lifestyle. It's generally thrown about to mean that some ways of living or doing things are inherently more worthy or valuable than others, but I don't think that most of the people bandying it about have really stopped to examine what they mean when they say they quest for authenticity in their actions... but that's a whole different post right there- let's get back on topic) than a true Tiny House Person's? I imagine that there are some people who would say "yes", but I'm inclined to disagree. Early on in my Tiny House research I watched a YouTube video which really stuck with me. In it, Jay Shafer, the founder of the Modern American Tiny House Movement, was asked: What makes a Tiny House? Rather than giving a maximum size or any other specific building element, Jay replied that a Tiny House was a home which minimized wasted space. This really stuck with me.

For Jay, minimizing wasted space meant living in 120 square feet. For us, it means living in closer to 60 acres. Just because a home, or a homestead, has lots of space doesn't make it wasted. It's my hope that our homestead will be space that is used well, used sustainably, and used responsibly, and a Tiny House is a step in that process. If that's not in keeping with the Tiny House Movement, I'm not sure what is.

Homesteading and Tiny Houses: Why Now?

One of the questions that Sam and I have encountered since we decided to buy property and build a Tiny House before (hopefully) leaving for Peace Corps service is "why now?" The line of questioning generally goes something like this:

Why don't you wait until you get back from working and living internationally before making a huge investment like property or a house? Surely it bothers you that you'll be away from your land for two years? That's two years of taxes you'll be paying on land that you won't even be around to use- that's money you could save if you just waited until you get back to buy. What will you do with your Tiny House? Won't it cost a lot of money to store it while you're gone? Why not wait until you can build your real house to move onto your property? Why not just buy property with a real house already on it when you get back?

I hope to answer all but the last two concerns here today. The last two questions aren't so much about why we're doing all this now, but rather why we're building a tiny house at all, and I'll answer those questions in a separate post. Today I'm just focusing on why we've decided to do all of this when we have. 

To start with, I don't feel that Sam and I need to justify our decisions to anyone except each other- and to Sam's father who is our financial backer in the purchase of the N. Stonington property. (Although, I should probably note that even though I feel like we should be able to justify our reasoning to Sam's dad, that's not how Sam's dad feels about the situation. His extraordinary no-strings-attached generosity is what makes this whole thing possible, and for that I'm extremely grateful.) So the purpose of this post isn't so much to defend our choices as it is to explain them to anyone who is confused, curious, or who maybe finds themselves in a similar situation. 

The timing of our Tiny House Build was really made feasible by the purchase of our property (which, actually, is still in the works, but as soon as we close we're pulling the trigger on Operation Tiny House Build), so a good place to start is why we decided to buy property. We decided to buy now rather than in two years for several reasons. The first is that we knew we wanted a sizable piece of undeveloped land, as far south in New England as we could get it, and we wanted to be in a rural location while still within commuting range of several metropolitan areas for job security. This is not an easy order to fill, and large amounts of vacant land is becoming harder and harder to find (especially in Southern New England) as more and more of it gets developed. So when we saw a 65 acre parcel priced to sell that fit all of our requirements, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. The second reason, I'm told, is that the housing market is still somewhat depressed from the  economic collapse of 2008, but it's getting stronger, and so as buyers we're in a better position now than we're likely to be in 2 years. Or something like that. Full disclaimer: I'm not an economist, I have no earthly idea what the housing market is doing now, and even less of an idea of what it will be doing in 2 years time. 

So that's why we decided to make an offer on the N. Stonington property. Now, why did we decide to build our Tiny House before we left for the Peace Corps? I suppose the simple answer is because we wanted to. We were already planning on leaving our jobs in March to prepare for a late June Peace Corps departure. When we thought about where we would like to live during our last April, May and June in New England for 2 years, Providence or N. Stonington, the answer was clearly N. Stonington. Fortunately, the math supported us in this decision: 2 months of our Providence rent costs us just about the same amount of money that it would cost to store our Tiny House for 2 years in an RV & Boat storage lot. This means that if we can get out of our apartment 2 months sooner than we were planning (we don't have a lease on the place, so we can leave whenever, really), building now as opposed to 2 years from now is a cost neutral decision. It might even end up saving us money if you count whatever we would pay in rent while researching/planning/building a tiny house after we got back from Peace Corps service in 2 years. 

There is one other very significant benefit to buying/building now that only became apparent to me after we had already started down this road. All of our preparations are for a plan which includes us going to serve with the Peace Corps mid-summer. But, if it turns out we don't get invited (and we may not), it's really good for us to have this other big project in our lives to fall back on. I think that if we didn't start these things, and then didn't get invited to serve with the Peace Corps, our lives would feel very stagnant. But as it is, even if we don't get to go serve in a 3rd world country, we'll still have an adventure in front of us, and we'll be able to pour all that energy into making our homestead. 

So I think that really sums up why we've chosen to build/buy when we have. If you'd like to read about other people who have made a similar choice, in my Tiny House research I did stumble upon one other couple who decided to build their Tiny House immediately before departing on a multi-year international adventure. To read more about their experience, check out their blog at www.2cycle2gether.com.

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