My background is varied and sundry.
Twenty years ago, while an undergrad, I knew I wasn’t going to settle in where I went to college, so I thought that a mobile living situation would be ideal. I could pick up and move wherever I was going after school with little effort. But the only real options at the time were vans and RVs, which aren’t terrible options, but they just didn’t fit what I knew I needed in a living situation—namely, good insulation, lots of natural light, and plenty of clean airflow. So, I didn’t do it, but I kept an eye on the industry and options that developed over the next couple of decades.
So, what happened?
There were two catalysts to making the leap: realizing I’d become a hermit in my 30s and getting my heart/mind straightened up around what I really wanted—or rather, how I wanted to feel.
I lived in a nearly 3,000 square foot house with my cat, and I loved it. I lived in every square inch of that house. I had a large kitchen, party deck, sunroom full of a container garden, home office, living room with bay windows and a fireplace, a workout room, art room, guest room, and a master suite that took up a quarter of the house. I had a jetted tub, separate shower, hardwood floors, and all the goodies. I didn’t need to leave the house for anything, if I didn’t want to. I even had my groceries delivered.
I had people over, sure, but I hardly ever left. I was a hermit. And at some point, I may want to hermit-it-up again, but my 30s was a little early for that.
Then, I discovered Danielle LaPorte. She’s a lovely big-hearted author who put a framework around something I’d felt for a long time: we have goal-setting completely backwards. I bought a copy of her Desire Map workbook and settled in for about a week. When I came up for air, I was crystal-clear on how I wanted to feel in every area of my life, what wasn’t serving me to those ends, and the intentional directions I wanted to move in from that point on. It was a swift kick in the ass, and exactly what I needed to change my trajectory and momentum. I started sleeping four or five times better immediately.
Then the downsizing began.
It took about six years to get rid of my stuff, but I kept moving in that direction. Doing large purges, moving every two years into a smaller place, until I was couchsurfing with a small batch of things in a friend’s basement, waiting for me to build a house to put them in.
How did it all get started?
I don’t specifically have a background in construction of any type.
I have a background in asking-more-questions-than-anyone-wants-to-answer, re-designing systems, fixing just about anything that’s not working, figuring it out, not using level-of-difficulty or we’ve-not-done-that-before as deterrents, and (one of the most important ingredients) parents that always believed I could learn how to do just about anything. I seriously have the BEST support system.
I know that I’m incredibly fortunate in this regard, so I also support any and all efforts I see that endeavor to support those who may
not have the kind of support system that I am blessed to have. (Have I mentioned that I love power tools? That certainly helps.)
I probably built 98 percent of the house by myself. I only hired two sets of folks for a couple of specific parts: the roofers who put the metal roof on for me, and a team of carpenters to help me with the really large, heavy pieces of sheathing and siding. The roof is the one thing that if it’s not perfect will ruin everything (or come off while driving down the road), and I just couldn’t afford to mess that up as a novice. The sheathing and siding were just physically too much for me to wrestle on my own, so I hired some help. Other than that? I put every board and bracket in my house. Including the plumbing and electrical! I have licensed pros that swing by and check out what I’m doing, just to make sure it’s safe, but they’re very supportive of letting me do it myself.
I work full-time, so only got to work on my house on the weekends. Then I wasted a good bit of time getting the trailer ready to build on, so counting all of that, it took almost 1.5 years before I started sleeping in the house. I say I was “camping” in my house, because I didn’t have a shower yet, or a toilet, but that stuff slowly made its way into the house, and I was full-time living in it after about two years. “Moving in” is not always a cut and dry event. Sometimes it happens slowly, and over many months. (Which, funny enough, is kind of how she got the name “Tomato Box” too.)
**This post is an excerpt from an article in Tiny House Magazine, November 2019, Issue #83, based on an upcoming book that compiles the stories of women who built their own tiny dwellings (including mine): Building Passion The Tiny House Edition, being put together by Shorty Robbins, who is also one of the Wonder Women™.
