Unloading the Trailer

Today we finally got around to unloading the SIPs from the trailer! We were super fortunate to have two great friends from school come by and help us: those SIPs are heavy! We were able to get them all stacked neatly on blocking on the barn floor, even if it did take all four of us and my dad to carry the largest panel (the back shear wall) into place.

Next up we'll have to level the trailer, insulate the subfloor, and attach the sill plates- after that, it'll be time to erect the SIPs!!

Windows have arrived!

Picking Up Our SIPs

The third day of our trip was SIP day. We started off bright and early from Culpepper and drove 3 hours across the state of Virginia to the SIPs of America manufacturing facility. I was convinced we'd have trouble loading the SIPs onto the trailer- and had even gone so far as to map out a route from the facility to the nearest Home Depot so that we could go and pick up blocking material if we needed to once we arrived. Fortunately, my concerns were completely unfounded. 

When we arrived at the plant, Jimmy, the owner, came out to greet us. He gave us a tour of the facility, including the incredible machine that's used to cut all the panels to the correct dimensions.  Then we moved into the warehouse where, amidst other projects, there sat our SIP panels!

Jimmy and the guys were more than helpful when it came to loading the SIPs onto our trailer. We thought we were in for a day of heavy lifting, but it turns out that all we had to do was give one of Jimmy's guys the keys to the U-haul. He drove it right into the warehouse (which was nice since it was raining out- the whole way down I thought we were going to have to load up the SIPs in the rain), and they used a fork lift to pick up the SIPs and load them onto the trailer. 

Because we've chosen to build on a drop-axle trailer instead of a deck-over trailer (read more about the difference between the two types of trailers and the implications each one has for Tiny House construction on the Tumbleweed Website) our wheel wells bumped up above the level of the trailer bed. For this reason, the guys loaded the narrower roof panels on first, which served as blocking to get the wider wall panels up above the level of the wheel wells. This gave our load something of an upside down pyramid effect. We had brought a few ratchet straps which had been lent to us by a friend, and the SIP guys augmented our collection with one of their own. 

All told, it took just shy of an hour to get the SIPs loaded up onto the trailer, strapped down tight, and ready to leave- they even wrapped it up in some type of house wrap to keep it dry on the way home for us. Sam and I tried to be useful, but the truth was that these guys were way more experienced at this sort of thing, and all we had to do was stand there and watch. It was really amazing. We kept thinking to ourselves how fortunate we had been to have come across such wonderful people on our trip- every time a challenge presented itself, the help we needed to overcome it was there for us. Before too long, we were ready to be on our way.

We were ready to take off, thinking that we had imposed enough of the kind souls at SIPs for America. But we had forgotten that our trip had taken us out of New England all the way south to Virginia, and- as Jimmy reminded us-

"Virginia is the birth place of freedom, and Southern Virginia is the birthplace of Southern Hospitality".

It turns out that Jimmy's family owns the oldest restaurant in Danville, and he was kind enough to invite us over for a bite of lunch before we hit the road. We were so glad that we took him up on his kind offer! Mary's Diner is a simple place, which serves amazing southern home cooking in an inviting cafeteria-style restaurant. The candied yams were to die for.

"You see," Jimmy confided to us, "I don't think I'm smarter than my grandmother was, so we make everything they way she used to".

It was a delicious meal, and we couldn't have asked for a nicer lunch. We  got to relax, eat some great food, and talk more with Jimmy, who is a fascinating character and just and all around nice guy. All too quickly we were finished and it was time to get on the road. We thanked Jimmy one last time for all the help, and set off North. We would stay in Culpepper again that night, and in the morning we would start driving back to New England.

Not in the Planning Stages Anymore!

So, it's official: We are no longer in the planning stages of our Tiny House Build! The first part of our actual build is complete: We've picked up our Trailer and SIPs and drove them back home! It's a long story, so I'll tell it in a few parts. First up is The Story of How We Got Our Trailer.

Sam signs the sales document, and the trailer is officially ours! 

Tuesday morning we woke up early to get our U-haul pickup truck from the rental location and drive it all the way our to Chambersburg, PA, where we would pick up our Tumbleweed Trailer. We arrived in Chambersburg late in the evening, checked into the hotel we had booked (about a mild away from the trailer dealership), and settled down for the night.

Wednesday morning we got up, helped ourselves to the complimentary hotel breakfast, and drove over to B-wise Trailers around 9 o'clock. It was my hope to  be on the road to Danville, VA (the place where our SIPs were made) with our trailer by 10, but that wasn't to be. When we got to B-wise trailers, we found to our dismay that the 4 Pin to 7 Blade adapter we had purchased to connect the U-haul's electrical system to the trailer's didn't work! This electrical system controlled the brake lights, turn signals and running lights on the trailer: without them, there was no way to to the trailer safely through traffic. (We also discovered that the truck we had rented wasn't wired to connect a trailer brake system- but our sales rep from B-wise said that there wasn't much we could do about it, and that if we drove slowly and carefully we'd be okay without them). So we had to get the lights fixed: even if by some miracle we didn't get into an accident, there's no way we could get to Virginia and back to New England without getting pulled over for not having working tail and brake lights.

Fortunately, a quick Google Maps search showed a nearby U-haul dealership, and so a few minutes later we were pulling into it's parking lot with defunct electrical adapter in hand. There was a middle aged man sitting behind the desk, with a well worn name badge identifying him as Lenard*. He had black and grey hair down to his shoulders and a rough southwestern drawl. He looked at me while I explained the problem we were having.

"Oh- I know what's wrong, alright," he said, reaching out to take hold of the wires protruding from our adapter. "You got to connect the ground to the frame of your truck, or else you don't get a complete circuit", he waved a white wire in the air in front of me. I signed with relief: that sounded like an easy fix.

"Can you help us do that, then?" I asked. Lenard looked at me seriously.

"So, are you askin' me to modify one of our vee-hickles which I am not s'posed to do?" Something about the way he spoke made the statement not quite a question.

"Oh- no, I don't want-" I started to backpedal. Lenard signed.

"Well let's go see what we can do," he interrupted, standing up from behind the desk and heading for the door.

It took Lenard about 15 minutes to get the ground wire secured to the frame of the truck.

"Now," he cautioned us, "be sure to take this out before you return the vee-hickle." Adding "and just between you, me, and the wall, even though you can tow your load without trailer brakes, if your trailer is rated to have 'em, and you get into an accident without 'em- you are lie-a-ble. Their lawyer will own you." And, with that ominous advice in our ears, we set out back to the trailer dealership.

Back at B-wise Trailers we found that Lenard had been right, and that with the ground wire in place the adapter did function. We had brake lights and turn signals on the trailer. We did not, however, have running lights and a quick investigation showed us it was in fact a problem with the U-haul's 4-Pin socket, not our adapter. This was both a relief and a worry: On the one hand, since it was a problem with the truck's electrical system, it was U-haul's responsibility to fix it and we wouldn't have to brake any rules to get it done. On the other hand, who knew how long it was going to take for U-haul to get the problem solved?

It was already 10:30, and Danville was a good 5 hours from Chambersburg. Even if we got on the road within the hour, we would still only get to Danville 30 minutes before the SIPs manufacturer closed at 5, and that just wouldn't be enough time to get the SIPs loaded onto the trailer. We would need to make some adjustments to our plans. While Sam called U-haul's Roadside Assistance number to find out what we should do, I called Jimmy, my contact at the SIP manufacturer, and told him that we wouldn't be able to make it today. Jimmy was extraordinarily nice, and said it would be no problem to meet us tomorrow instead.

It took Sam 30 minutes of navigating U-haul's automated Customer Service line to get on the phone with a real person, who told him to go to the nearest U-haul center, so at 11 o'clock we drove away from B-wise trailers for a second time, head back to Lenard and the U-haul center.

Lenard was as helpful with this problem as he was with the last. As we started to describe our trouble with the running lights, he broke into our story saying, "Oh- that's just a blown fuse. Lemme change it out for you. I'll charge it to the truck." It took him less time to change the fuse than it had to attach the ground wire, and in almost no time we were back on the road to B-wise trailers.

I smiled sheepishly at the woman behind the reception desk at the trailer dealership. "Third time's the charm," I said. She told me that Sean would be out with us momentarily. He was, and this time when we hooked up the trailer, all the lights worked. We firmly duct taped the adapter in place just beneath the truck's bumper and Sean went through the basics of how to hitch up a trailer, how to perform safety checks, and gave Sam lots of good driving advice.

It was around noon when we pulled out of B-Wise trailers for the final time, waving a goodbye to Sean as we left. It was too late to get to Danville, but fortunately, that wasn't going to be too much of a problem. We had planed to leave Danville around 5 that afternoon, and so had booked at room at a hotel Culpepper, VA which was about 3 hours north of Danville. As it turns out, Culpepper is about 2.5 hours southeast of Chambersburg, so we decided to just drive there from B-wise, extend our stay to include a second night, and we would drive from Culpepper to Danville and back the next day. With that plan in place, we drove to Culpepper, checked into our hotel room, and enjoyed a comfortable afternoon and evening there. The next morning, we would hit the road to Danvillle.



*This gentleman's name has been changed, however no other aspect of this story has been falsified.

The Great Barn Clean Up of 2015 is (Almost) Finished!

Okay, so it may still look like a mess to you, but to us, this looks like incredible progress. The barn is still disorganized, but all of the literal crap has been removed, and a lot of the junk & trash has been tossed out as well. This is the space in which we'll be building our Tiny House. We'll be working on getting more stuff cleared out of the the large pile you see to the left of Sam, but at least now we have room to back the trailer and our SIPs into the barn and have them under cover when we bring them home.

SIPs Officially Ordered!

It's official: we've ordered the SIP Kit! Today we sent our first of two wire transfers to SIPs of America, the SIP manufacturers in Virginia. The total SIP Kit price was $6,550. We could have gotten blank SIPs for a lot less ($3,800) , but it seemed totally worth it to us to have the SIP manufacturer cut out all our windows & skylights and to cut & install all the 2x4s. This will safe us a lot of time and work during the build process. As if using SIPs to begin with wasn't already saving us months of hard work to frame the thing. Honestly, I don't know why anyone would want to use any other construction method- this is just so fast and simple, and the end product will be better insulated than a traditionally framed house would be.

SIP plans are drawn up...

Joe just sent me the SIP plans for the Tiny House! This is really exciting! Now all I have to do is go through each measurement called out on the plans and make sure that it's what I actually want, using the Google SketchUp model as a reference... That's a lot of tedious work, but it's really important because the SIPs will be made exactly to the measurements specified on the plans. If I make sure that they're all correct, then this house will fit together like Legos, but if I get it wrong, it'll mean a world of headache to correct later on. Ok- I'm off to print out some plans and start an Excel spreadsheet to double check each measurement from the SketchUp file and the SIPs plans. Wish me luck!

Toilet and woodstove are on their way

I ordered our Toilet and Woodstove today from Vanessa at Tiny House,{Big Life}.

The Nature's Head Composting Toilet will let us life in the Tiny house without a septic system or blackwater tank (excellent videos on what living with a composting toilet is like are available from the excellent RVers blog, Gone with the Wynns)

The Kimberly Woodstove is one of the most efficient small space woodstoves on the market. Truthfully, this woodstove is incredibly expensive, costing as much as our trailer, but I think that it's a good investment. We'll be living off-grid through cold New England winters in a 120 square foot house that's got 13 windows and two skylights. If we were to get a smaller BTU propane unit and the temperature dropped or we ran out of propane, we couldn't just plug in an electric space heater to keep our pipes from freezing. I'd much rather spend more on a reliable woodstove than have to worry about how well we'll be able to heat the house during the winter.

The woodstove costs about $4,000 and the toilet just under $1,000, bringing the total cost of this particular purchase to about $5,000. I'll have to spend another $500 or so (guestimate) on the chimney for the woodstove in a week or so.

That's our Tiny House update for the week.

Planning a Road Trip

So, looking into the costs of shipping both our Trailer and the SIPs to our build site in Rhode Island, it's looking like it will be cheaper to drive down and pick them up ourselves... here's how the situation breaks down:

Geography: 1400 miles round trip
The trailer pick up is in a town called Chambersburg, PA. This SIPs are in a town called Danville, VA. Driving through Chambersburg on the way to Danville is about a 15 minute detour, so it's really feasible to drive to Chambersburg, pick up the trailer, and continue onto Danville to pick up the SIPs, load them onto the trailer, and then drive back to Rhode Island. Round trip, it's about 1400 miles and 24 hours of driving time. It's a lot of driving, but (if broken up over several days) possible.

Costs of Shipping: $3,300 to $1,600
The cost of shipping the trailer and the SIPs varies depending on the way in which we would do it. The simplest way (also the most expensive and inefficient way) is the ship the SIPs and Trailer separately. Tumbleweed changes $1,800 to ship to RI, and the UShip estimate to deliver the SIPs is about $1500. Total cost: $3,300 Option B requires more coordination on our end, and involves having the trailer shipped to the SIP manufacturing plant in VA and then having the SIPs loaded onto the trailer and hiring a guy on UShip to tow our loaded trailer to RI. It only costs $800 to ship the trailer to VA, and hiring a guy to tow your trailer is much cheaper than hiring a guy with a trailer to ship your materials. UShip estimates the cost of towing your trailer from VA to RI at about $800. Total Cost: $1600

Costs of Roadtrip: $1000
Rental Truck: ~$600 (priced from Uhaul's website)
Hotel Rooms: $200 (priced from priceline.com)
Gas:  $325 (Calculations shown below)
Misc Items: $75 (mostly done to make the numbers even)
Total Cost: $1,000

Gas costs calculated in the following way: Assuming a conservative  average of 15 mpg on the way down (no load) and 10 mgp on the way back (with a tow load), and an average price of $2.54/gallon (the average given for last month by eia.gov) the price of gasoline for the trip would be

700 miles/15mgp = ~47 gallons on the way down
700 miles/10mpg = 70 gallons on the way back.

47 gallons * 2.54 $/g = $ 150 on the way down
70 gallons * 2.54 /g = ~$175 on the way back.


Final Reckoning:
So, by picking up the trailer and SIPs ourselves, we can save anywhere from $600 to $2,300. We're still looking into the details, but I think that we're going to go for it.

Delays and Extensions.

So, it looks like the original schedule of having the Tiny House dryed in by June is a pipe dream. We had hoped to get all of our ducks in a row by the end of January, and maybe start working in February. But there's no way that's going to happen: there's just too much snow here. There's snow everywhere. Like, seriously, everywhere, and it's super deep. We can barely drive around the city of Providence because the roads are so narrow and poorly treated. So we'll have to wait for it to clear up before we can access my family's barn (our work space) at all (right now, it's filled with snow drifts).

But, on the bright side of things: we also have an extension of our June deadline. Sam and I were officially offered positions with the Peace Corps last week, but not for the program we were nominated to. Instead of the Cambodia program, Sam and I will be serving as TEFL (Teach English as a Foreign Language) volunteers in Armenia. The best part about this change is that the Armenia volunteers don't leave until the end of August, so we've got some extra time to finish up the Tiny House.

I think that the process of delaying and extending construction projects is universal. I'm glad that it looks like it will all work out for us.

Progress Update

So, things are (finally) in the works: A week ago at the Tumbleweed workshop we put a $500 deposit down on our trailer, and this weekend we sent our drawings to our awesome SIP kit coordinator, Joe Coover. He's an amazing resource for us, as neither Sam nor I are Google Sketchup users, and the next step is to make a 3d model of the SIPs, approve it, and send it off to the SIP manufacturers. All of which is very exciting.

We're going to get quotes for our roofing, windows and siding this week, and hopefully I'll talk to Joe more about potentially coordinating the Tumbleweed Trailer delivery to the SIP manufacturers in Virginia, where we'll be able to have the SIPs loaded onto our trailer and hire a driver from UShip to tow it up to New England. This way we'll save on trailer shipping (it's cheaper to ship to VA than to RI) and on SIP shipping (it's cheaper to hire a tow vehicle than to hire a tow vehicle and trailer).

Floorplan

We've pretty much settled on a floor plan. There maybe some minor adjustments made, but for the most part we'll have a rear-wall bathroom with a central door, against that we'll have a split kitchen with central aisle that opens into the great room. On one side of the great room will be the couch, on the other will be the wood stove and what we're calling an "armchair" (really just a built in storage compartment for the battery bank with sofa cushions on top), There will be two closets: one positions next to the door for outerwear (coats, shoes etc), the other positioned next to the bathroom to store our clothes.   We'll have an 8' sleeping loft and a 2' storage loft opposite. I've also blocked out space for the fridge, stove, sink, on-board water tank, water heater and water pump, but their exact locations might change as I get a better idea of their installation requirements.

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