Remembering Switchbacks

Switchback #4:  The New Job Didn't Work Out

So there I was in the middle of relocating: holding down the fort while my husband worked out of town, researching how to rent our home to single moms, selling things, packing things, still working part time and carrying on all the regular life things of homeschooling, sports, etc.

And I get the call from my husband: the new job didn't work out.

I about had a mental breakdown.  My husband was calm as a cucumber and fully trusting God had a plan.  My husband doesn't have a job.  We have bills, a mortgage and life to pay for.

I feel like there were two choices: take complete control back or move forward and trust God.

I chose to move forward and trust.

I'm very glad I did.


Switchback #5: Our Housing Plan Changes

It's kind of hard to use a house as a ministry if you can't cover the mortgage.

We decided to sell our home.

We had already talked to Edd Laville about buying the other home and possibly selling or renting ours.  We called him again and asked what to do to get our house on the market.

Because my husband wasn't working he was able to put all his time into getting our house ready to sell.  This meant the spot on our ceiling in the entry way, that had been void of sheet rock and covered with a black tarp since the year we moved in, was now fixed!  I had ceiling! :)

My husband worked from early morning till long past dark every day trying to get the house ready.  We had agreed it would be best for him not to look for another job until the house was ready.  It made sense due to the amount of work the house needed done.

I had already been downsizing slowly as I packed and selling things I didn't want to move.

This all led into a more gradual switchback....

Switchback #6: TINY HOUSE

Somehow during the process of getting our house up for sale and the downsizing and watching Tiny House shows (thanks to my friend for encouraging me to watch them!), I agreed to try to live my husbands dream of living in a tiny house.

Very gradually living in a tiny house became my dream as well.

I like to see things before I go for them.  Watching "Tiny House Nation" made a huge impact on my decision to try Tiny Living.  I saw how it could work and I loved the idea.

My husband spied a 24' trailer for a great deal and we bought it.  After that purchase there was no turning back.

The plan was then to sell the house and my husband would build the tiny house with the money.  Because we were already headed to the town where my parents lived AND it happened to be the best place to build a tiny house, we continued forward with our plans to relocate to our new city.




As usual, plans change, and from this point they continue less shocking and disruptive and more exciting and fun :)

"Quick" Update

An electrician friend of ours came out last Saturday and helped C. finish up the wiring and breakers.  We had a great visit with him and his wife over some Thai food; we were thankful for the help and also the fun time catching up.  C. just wants to double check the connections (or something like that) before we screw in the outlets and head on to insulation.

Another friend of ours is a plumber and has been trying to make it over for the last couple weeks.  We needed to have the water hooked up to the hot water heater and the washer/dryer unit connected to the water lines.  Our plumber friend was able to make it over last Tuesday and get those two things hooked up.  

Moving forward...but slowly...it seems...like our....big plans....are.....taking.....a......really.......long.......time........

Meanwhile in other news:  I got locked out of our tiny house...with my purse inside.

I had my keys but see, well, the door knob on the back door broke so that wasn't going to work.  Our front door has been out of commission since the first rain because the trim swelled up with the water. I was kind of out of options at this point.

We were planning on sanding down the trim on the front door and repainting it with an oil based paint it anyway: I guess there's no time like the present.  

I sent my son in search of a tool to scrape with and he came up with a tool from his toolbox for fixing brick work?  Whatever it is, it is metal and thin and worked great.  I scrapped away at the trim on the front door and my wonderful husband came over on his lunch to help me muscle the door open.

Unfortunately once it was open, I couldn't close it to lock it until I worked on it.  I headed to Lowe's and purchased a new handle for the back door and figured, "Why not pick up a tester color for the door" (we want to repaint them).  Thankfully, I also remembered while I was at Lowes that we have a oil-based white paint already so I didn't pick that up.

Back at the tiny house I sanded the trim down and painted it with the oil based white paint.  Then I painted the whole front door with the tester color I bought.  

THEN I realized, "wait I can't shut the door if the trim is still wet"  and "I never did check to see if the door would shut BEFORE I painted it".  BIG mistake.  Even if the paint wasn't wet (which it still was 5 hours after I painted it), we realized that the door would not shut. 

The trim had swollen to much.

It was dark by the time I used paint thinner to remove the paint; sand down the trim; sand down the edge of the door that had gummy trim residue on it; carve out more space for metal door lock plate thing; sand down the trim again - it took awhile; and finally shut and lock my door.

Don't mess with a woman carving her house with a knife.

The area we live in is not incorporated by the city and we're pretty sure that is because the city police do not want to be called multiple times a night.  I was switching from sanding to carving when some stranger guy from the road asks me when our house is going to be finished.  

As I attacked my house with a large knife I replied, "It'll be done a lot sooner if this knife would cut better."

The stranger didn't stay around.

Oh and the new door color??  Not good.  I may or may not post a picture its that bad.  

In Lieu of posting pictures of more electrical wires (we're almost done but they get boring to look at), I decided to share a few more pictures of the beautiful flowers that I purchased to brighten my corner.

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Flowers and Legos

I really missed my Dahlia's so I was pretty happy when I found a nicely blooming one at Fred Meyer on clearance. 

I have lots of "big plans" for where I'm going to plant Dahlia tubers next year but for now this will do :)

I picked up a couple other smaller plants and added my Rosemary plant that moved with us.

My house feels so much better with the color around it!






















As for Legos...I found this really cool "Swoops" bag on CL: it is essentially a play mat with a ledge that is also a drawstring bag.  

Little man can store his lego's in the bag and take it anywhere without the legos leaving the play mat.  It's great for tiny house/outdoor living!

I don't want to see tiny houses

I realized we are at a point in our build where I really don't want to see any more tiny houses.  Make no mistake, I LOVE my tiny house.  I think being content and trusting God right now means I have to not look at all the cool things my house could or will have.  I have a great tiny house and we have some big plans for it, but right now I just need to be in the moment.

Not-So-Tiny Washer/Dryer Combo

A washer/dryer combo machine was/is my first choice for doing laundry while living in a tiny house. These machines wash the clothes and then dry the clothes in the same machine: put them in dirty and they come out clean and dry!  These machines tend to run about $1500 brand new for a good quality one.  This is a lot of money in our books.  

I tried looking on craigslist but only saw a cheap brand in a city about 3 hours away.  Every couple weeks I would look again and finally I found one not far away for only $500.  I didn't stop to ask dimensions.  We just drove down, picked it up and brought it "home".  I didn't have our tiny house yet so we put it in the storage shed.  I started looking at it more closely and thinking, "hmmm...it's kind of big" then, "uh oh, I think its going to be to big" and, "what on earth did I do by buying this without measuring first??".  

Then we got the tiny house and I really thought, "What did I do?!".  

I started looking for smaller units on CL but they just aren't there.  This means in order to get a smaller machine we would be forking out over $1000.  My husband convinced me that "a bird in hand is better than 2 in the bush" and since we have it we might as well use it.  We figured and figured about where to place it and I think we've come up with a spot. One of the young men at church helped Chris move the washer/dryer into the tiny house and it's actually not so bad.  It's going to double as kitchen counter but I think its going to work. 

Then there's this amazing space under the hot water heater and next to the shower.  So much space!! :)

And then there's this complicated mess of wires that I have no clue about and yet we are waiting on the completion of the electrical to move forward with insulation, walls, and living in the tiny house!  

I am thankful for my hard working husband who is at the end of a 40 hour week, still facing a day of work and coaching tomorrow, but still working on electrical wiring at 8:30pm on a Friday.

Back to Chaos

In order to have the propane lines installed where we wanted them we needed to move the kitchen cabinets.  This meant we needed to move all of the things in my kitchen NOT in cabinets, all of the things that were in the "living room", take off the counter top and in general just create a big mess!  With all that done our propane lines are installed.  We were very thankful the men at Twin City Service who installed the propane lines also turned our shower stall.  The shower stall needed to be rotated because originally we had wanted it facing the back of the house.  Unfortunately my not-very-tiny on-demand hot water heater blocked the shower entrance so we had to have it rotated to the position you see it in the pictures below.

C. is currently working on electrical wiring.  He's only working about 40 hours this week at his job (different than the 60-70 he worked per week for 2 of the weeks in September). This means he's been able to work in the afternoons, evenings and weekends (pretty much anytime he's not coaching soccer, in church or sleeping).  He just told me he has one more big wire. That's good!  Next will be the wiring of plug-ins and light switches, which my dad started upstairs already. My awesome dad did some research on how to install the three-way light switch that didn't have good directions included.  This is very good, that switch is a bit of a puzzle.  With this news maybe we'll have the electrical done by this weekend??? I never have claimed I have accurately timed plans, just "big plans" ;).

Tonight we had a great dinner of avocado, tomato, pepper salad, sardines, seaweed paper and trail mix.  We're making it work and actually having a good time! :)

The chaos created from moving everything around to install propane lines.

It's really hard to get a good picture in the bathroom...it's kind of small :)

Our dinner "table" although we didn't have jam with our seaweed paper and sardines...we're crazy but not THAT crazy yet.
And yes, that is my toilet between my cabinets in the kitchen, yes, it's clean right now, no, we didn't put food on it!!
OH, and on the far left is my not-so-tiny washer/dryer combo.  It fits but we'll need to hire a plumber to figure out how to hook it up.  I'll try to post more pictures of that later.

Repurposing Pallet Wood

A friend of ours at church blessed us with this pallet of pallet wood to repurpose for our house.

Thankfully most of the nails have been ground off but I have been checking each board and removing the nails that are poking out or pounding them in better.

James was pretty proud of his shadow in this one :)

After pounding, pulling and pounding some more, I am sanding the boards down to hopefully use on our walls.  I couldn't believe the difference when I started sanding!  What a difference!

Sanding each board is like looking for and finding different treasures.  The boards are so unique and the patterns are so cool!  

Pile of un-sanded boards on the left, one of the sanded boards on the right with a "tiger" pattern,  according to James :)