Building
6

We have been hard at work on the cordwood house for a couple a months now.  Although it appears to me as though we have hardly been working.  Everything is moving painfully slowly and outside situations keep putting a hold on the the build for one annoying reason or another.  I sat looking at the still empty house site and decided that unless we were able to put in 10 hour days, every single day, for the rest of the summer and autumn, we were never going to finish.  We were going to have to kill ourselves trying, but we might still not get it finish before the frost.  I really did not want this project to turn into something that we hated, but it was headed in that direction.  Note: It was 106 degrees here yesterday.  NOT ideal digging weather.

But we REALLY need the space.  Our tiny cabin is filling up with books, tools, supplies, kids growing, etc. and there is just not enough room.  It was also thrown together hastily, so it was poorly set up.  We cannot comfortably continue living in this house the way it is.

We thought long and hard and had many conversations, spewing ideas, calculating funds, etc. and have come up with a new plan that won’t kill us, will get us the space we need, and we can still keep working on the cordwood house as we go.  So here is the plan:

1. Purge.  Duh. Get rid of all the junk we don’t need any longer.  Mainly clothes that don’t fit and outgrown kid stuff. We have ended up with lots of random clothes of different sizes as we have gone through this process.  Going from a sedentary lifestyle to hauling your own heat and water, changes your shape, sometimes drastically, so different clothes sizes can pile up.  I first lost all my baby weight and got down quite small and then started building muscle and then got bigger again.  The Man lost quite a bit of weight and has plenty of random things still lying around.

2. Storage Building.  All of the tools, books, clothes, toys, etc. that is not junk, but we don’t need right now, can get taken out of the house and put somewhere safe where it is all still accessible.  Plastic bins don not work if you leave them outside!  We lost plenty of things because they were in bins outside, there just isn’t room in a tiny house, but we do need tools.

3. Gut the Tiny House.  Now that everything we don’t need inside is gone, we can rearrange the interior so that we have the space, and furniture that we want to be comfortable.  Stairs to the loft, organized shelving or maybe even cabinets with doors, and an entire extra room in the loft that is now empty because we purged.

4. All Seasons Room.  An addition to the house that is semi outdoors will make it a thousand times more comfortable.  No cooking outside in the rain.  A place to take your wet, snowy clothes off so the house doesn’t fill mud.  Covered wood storage.  Rain barrel access right outside the door.  It would give us a way to be outside in the winter and be comfortable and it will be able to keep the bugs off us in the summer.  We were given some steel roofing and I can used cordwood techniques for some practice.   The only thing we would likely need to buy for this project will be nails/screw and possibly cement for the posts.

None of this is what i had in mind for this summer, or at all.  I am trying to learn that plans are going to change like this the rest of my life, especially off the grid, and I should just go with it.  I am excited for the new project, and also the cordwood house, but this just seems so much more feasible right now.  We are getting the things we need to be more comfortable, if we build the cordwood or if we fix up the tiny house, so that is all that really matters.  Maybe we’ll even get some rabbits….

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We talked about that, but trying to get one on our steep, rocky land would be very costly and risky.

That is such a massive project to take on, I’m sorry about the disheartening delays! A storage building really would be a great idea. Once you’re finished with building, it could serve so many other purposes for your family and homestead. I wish you all the best of luck!

Thanks so much. It is a massive project, but I really can’t wait to build. I’m happy with our current plans, but am anxious to get to work on a house too. We’ll get there!

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