Money

My Paintings

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Laura

As many of you know, I very much need a shed at Tiny House Ontario.  In order to build this, I need to raise some funds.  I decided in the winter that I would try to up my income, by bringing prints of my work to the historic Springer Market Square in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.  BUT in oder to do this I had to buy a car… a 1999 Golf… and is in the shop now getting a $400 repair done.  So much for earning.  So far, I pay rent at the market and I am not quite breaking even… but with the car repair and gas… tragic (for me)!

Laura's Market Stall with rental car Painting at the Market

I was speaking about my concerns to fellow artist friend (another Laura) and she made a few suggestions.  In short, I have followed her advice.  I opened an account with Fine Art America to sell some of my pieces, originals as well as prints.

I decided to keep the prices minimal – marking them up just a dollar or two on each print and the originals are marked to pay for my materials as well as my time.  I wanted to keep the prices as low as I can so that everyone in the tiny house community can afford to support me.  Too, I think it would be cool to see my work up in other tiny houses!  I am really hoping that this will happen!

 

 

Categories: Art, Kingston, Laura Moreland, Money, Ontario, Original Art work of Laura Moreland, Tiny House Ontario | Tags: | 10 Comments

Owning Black Friday

Posted on November 23, 2012 by Laura

Here is an idea…

 

If you have to buy:

Today, I am not shopping, but I am going to also take some advice from Johnny Cash… I am going to dress in black, in my case to mourn all the wasted resources that the planet gave up because of this crazy consumerism!

 

Categories: Environmentalism, Money, Open your eyes, Re-Use, Tiny House Ontario, View | Tags: , | 11 Comments

Les and Sue Stroud

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Laura

Here is a one hour documentary from Les Stroud about the life that he and Sue chose for themselves.

Enjoy!

 

Thanks Les!  xo L

 

Categories: Family, Materialism, Money, Off Grid, Ontario, Simple living, View | 7 Comments

Decisions & Heated Rant

Posted on October 30, 2012 by Laura

Susan B. Anthony once said that “cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputations… can never effect a reform.”

Recently, I have been distracted by some changes happening both within me and also with regard to the decisions that I have made.  Some of the things that I am thinking about are personal while others are directly to do with Tiny House Ontario.

A couple of days ago I posted about my regret for not putting in a fruit cellar.  Now I have to confess that my mind might be changing regarding the type of furnace that I want to put into THO.  I have always, since the beginning of the project thought I would go with a Dickinson Marine Stove.  About $1,200 US +++

A couple of days ago, while checking around on the internet for other Tiny House stories, I noticed a stove that appeals to me visually a lot more.  The Mini Franklin Woodstock Soapstone.  About $1,200 US +++

I like this one visually a lot better because the vent pipe goes STRAIGHT out the back to the chimney.  No silly, wobbly, silver, tube climbing up the wall to find the exit.  The chimney too, if that is what they are called on propane stoves.  It also looks to me as though they offer a different sort of tidy looking chimney which sits flat against the exterior wall.  Both of these look so much tidier in my opinion.

The cost is about the same for the two stoves I am not sure that the cost of shipping is similar, nor am I sure if the cost additional things, such as: wall mount, vent, pipes, chimney and so on, is similar.  I am also not sure if the Mini needs a 12v electric hookup or even if it requires any electric at all.  I can’t find this on their website.

AAAAUUUURRRRGGGHHHH!  Rant…

I found it easy to navigate the Dickinson site and they have the manual right there for you to print and read.  Which I have done and but truthfully, I feel as though, with this Dickinson I know what I am getting because so many Tiny Housers use them.  Their website, though, is not ideal.  I don’t know what beyond the stove I need to order; nor what it costs for these things I need to hook one up.  I would like a nice neat package.  I get that they are somewhat unique for every home BUT there are no images provided there either.  In short they don’t make things nearly as clear as I want them to be.

The Soapstone Mini makers are not even as clear at the Dickinson people.  Right down to the image they provide being so tiny that it is hard to see. I know… I know, you think I like tiny things, but this is really, really TINY.  No manual either.  You have to write them to find out more.  I am not too wild about that idea, I hate it when companies are vague.  Basically, if they just put the stuff on the site then I could do my own homework.  I don’t want to talk on the phone or spend weeks chatting back and forth via email.  The most frustrating thing is, I don’t know what questions to ask because the product information is basically just size and colours and the shipping method.  I mean, I want to know about size… all we ladies do… I might also like to choose a different colour… but seriously who cares how they ship it?  I don’t want to bash them totally, in fact, they had some things better on their site.  They do provide a few (albeit TINY) images of the types of hook ups and this was most appreciated.  Like Dickinson no packages with the extra stuff in it.  They give a nice 360* (TINY) option I can see a tiny wire coming out of tiny bottom of the tiny back — unless this is a tail.  In truth it is such a small image that I can’t see.

Before I have some knowledge I am silenced by not feeling I know even enough to ask a simple question.

So what do I want?  I am going to assume that these businesses are both dealing with a lot of DIY people.  I heard that Dickinson sells far more stoves to Tiny Housers than they do boat owners, so I would like to see them cater to our DIY philosophy!

Key stuff for me is I want user friendly, diagrams, images and explanation options in click out bubbles.

Examples would be more and larger images.  Diagrams of the various packages that are needed to hook one of them up based on the sort of place that they are going into.

They know better than I what I need!  In my naivety I think I will require a:

A wall mount thingy: $x

A going through the wall tube: $x

A turning up elbow: $x

A chimney of length x: $x

A bunch of other thingamabobs that only they know about: $x

Screws/nuts/bolts/any unusual drill bits etc: $x

Why do they not have a package that looks like this that has a nice little diagram showing you what you are going to have to do with the stuff when it arrives?

Ideally too, they could also provide VARIATION to those packages based on different roof heights, wall thicknesses and slopes.

Then and only then would I want to be told to contact them personally if I have questions… once I understand what I need.

I can’t be the only one who is like this?

______________________________________

If you are a Tiny Houser, I would appreciate a ball park on the costs of the other stuff and shipping.  Also if you have a Soapstone Mini… what electric system do you need for her?

Please comment on this one…

Thanks for listening to me rant!  xo L

Categories: Building code, Money, Off Grid, Simple living, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario | Tags: , , | 9 Comments

Vegan Trapper

Posted on October 22, 2012 by Laura

RIP Mama young feral lived to October 19 2012

I am sorry to let my readers know, Mama the feral cat that I wrote about in early August was hit on the road in front of my Hamilton house on Friday at ~ 6:00 am.  We brought her to the Burgess Emergency Vet, got her some good pain medication and had x-rays done.  She was totally broken up so we had her euthanized.  The problem was not the cost of recovery but with her being totally feral.  Even if she were to be operated on, and repaired, the vet explained that she would need daily pain medication and care for the next eight months because among other things including internal injuries, her crushed pelvis would need to repair itself.  Due to the fact that Mama would just as soon bite you as look at you, this would be an impossible task.

The next issue is her three kittens.  They are about 10 or 11 weeks old and thus weened but two calicos mean that there are two more females who can add to the feral population and because we live downtown there are vehicles everywhere, including ambulances rushing to the hospital.  I hate to see them suffer a fate like this.  ”A stitch in time saves nine” are words that my grandma often used.  In other words try to deal with things before they become a problem.  So, I put out word to my community here, got a trap and a carrier and tried to catch the kittens.   I know that there are some programs here.  A barn buddies program, a feral rehab and homing program, a feral colony on private land up north of here also takes cats after they are fixed if there is specific danger for them.  Too there is a catch/fix/release for feral cats.

I caught the first kitten on Friday night in minutes.

An hour later I caught the next one.

The last kitten was not too keen on being trapped.  But finally on Saturday night when I went to the cage I saw the little grey…

… well large… grey opossum looking back at me.  They are not native species here, but recent immigrants.  A lot of people here have never seen them, including me.  So it was sort of an ordeal.  Contrary to what I read about them, this one at least seemed pretty happy to see me and accepted my opening the trap and letting her/him out with no aggression at all.  Just squeezed out of the opening and waved its tail bye-bye as it disappeared into the former inlet.  Still, the last kitten seemed to understand that I was trying to take its freedom and would not go into the trap to get the food I left for her.

I asked all those who feed the feral colony to please not do so on Sunday, and so, in the evening when I went out the kitten was waiting in the spot where we feed them, I set down the cage and took a few steps away and she walked right in.  I gave her back to her siblings and then brought food out to the colony as well as to the skunk an opossum who we also apparently feed.

All three of Mama’s babies are safely housed in a 4x4x4 cage in my shed with two carriers made up as beds.  They have food and water and we now wait for the agencies that are involved in helping them to get back to us.

I heard that about 3000 cats met their death last year just in our local SPCA.

I urge you to please fix your pet and also to take a proactive stance on your local feral cats.  Find out if you have any catch and release programs in your area and have the wild cats fixed.  After all human beings have caused this problem.

_______________

Letter back from Hamilton Burlington SPCA this morning – pasted below… now what?

HI Laura

Unfortunately our Trap Neuter Release program is closed to new applications for this year.  With the Winter approaching we have closed the program and will start accepting new applications in the early Spring.  You may be able to find a Vet that will be able to do them at a reduced cost, I would suggest calling around to a few different ones and see if anyone is willing to help.  At this point we are also not accepting anyone new into our Barn Buddies program as we have a number of cats that need to still be placed and not enough people with barns who are looking for a buddy.

                You may want to try contacting some local rescue groups in the area to see if they would be able to get the kittens spayed/neutered through vets that they use.

Sorry we could not be more help at this time.

Take Care

Michelle

________

Update 9:30 pm Monday

Just went out to check on the kittens – the cage is empty. I guess my crappy eye sight it was latched but not in the catch. Three little feral siblings are at large again… Sigh.

Categories: Food, Money, Open your eyes, Tiny House Ontario, View | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

Closed Eyes & Warm Heart

Posted on September 25, 2012 by Laura

I had a significantly worse time at the dentist yesterday than I had anticipated.  My eyes were swollen nearly shut and my lips are double big, like that movie star with all the kids.  Sexy, I suppose, if they did not hurt so badly.  They found that the tooth which they intended to crown had to go… and it did not go well.  They had to keep me under for five hours while they yanked and pulled.  I am sore, groggy, dizzy, forgetful and irritable today.  Not a good time to get on the train to Toronto, then to Kingston, then get back to THO.  The trip from door to door takes about 6 hours which is more than driving (if the traffic flow is good) due to the always long and silly stop over in Toronto, wait times and so on.

This said, I am happy to say that the day before my surgery, my cousin Sandy was by to visit me and brought me this wonderful old photo of my Great Grandmother “Ma” Violet Henderson Compton.  I never saw a photo of her from her youth.  I honestly never imagined her to be so lovely because I never saw her before she was old, or before all the hardship she faced.  She was such a good person: sweet, kind, patient and I loved her dearly.  Still, if you will forgive me for saying this, she always looked sort of worn out even when she was dressed up.  I knew her history, that she married young and that she and my great grandfather “Dad” lost their barn to a fire just as the country headed forcefully into the Great Depression. I know that financially they did not recover until the end of the Depression from that single significant loss.  They moved from home in Kingston Mills when the barn burned, to another in Tweed, then to another in Glenvale, and then finally to another in Sydenham during those hard, hard years.  In those years the kids kept coming too, 11 in all, there was no good way to prevent pregnancy in those years.  Too, adding to her hardship, Dad, her husband was more of a poet who loved horses, then he was a farmer who loved to toil.  He snuck away into his room and spent hours reading himself blind, like me.  She was hand washing and bringing in water from the pump, cooking meals and suckling the rejected lambs.  I don’t recall ever seeing her sit down, even when she became sick.  She went from running, to laying down; a woman with no moderation.  I expect she never had time to reflect.

My grandma, also named Violet, spoke often of those times.  She spoke with particular sadness about the Glenvale house.

This small house was just as old then as it is now according to my grandma.  She admonished me for taking a photo of it, she said she only wanted to forget those times.  There were ten children and two grown ups in the house at that time because the youngest would be born later, and the land was such that Dad was not able to pull a living out of it.  It was all rocks.  The boys slept in one small room upstairs and the girls in the other small room.  Ma and Dad slept downstairs in the corner.  She said the wind blew through the house like it had no walls at all.  They cooked all summer and froze all winter.  It was a standard log house with clap boards nailed outside.  The house is a centre hall plan of about 600 square feet 30×20 feet with a sloped ceiling divided loft.  This was a very standard way of building a house about 200 years ago when those who built it settled here.

The joy that they had when Father Carey set them up on the Carey farm was clear.  Finally they had the space they needed and a very comfortable home.

Nice to see the new owners are restoring the Carey Farm to its original magnificence!  Imagine what it would have been like for them to move from that horrible little house to this beautiful well built stone one!  Goes to show you that Tiny is not always best.  Quality matters a whole lot too.

Categories: Family, Materialism, Money, Off Grid, Ontario, Time, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario, View | Tags: , , , | 9 Comments

The Gift

Posted on September 13, 2012 by Laura

My Aunt Marion and Uncle Bob gave me $25 in a card for my birthday!  It made me feel like a little girl but this was totally welcome and wonderful!  I sometimes miss being little… I guess, because I live in house that is the size of a fort (in the woods) you all might have already guessed that!

I am also a very sentimental person… and I thought it would be nice to do something with the $25 that was permanent.   I figured, I could do a little something at Tiny House Ontario which could stay, and I had, what I think is a pretty good idea.

So, I went to Rona, I purchased a peice of wood, I had the good men there cut it to size.  I also picked up two knobs and two sets of hinges.  Then I just drilled them on.

It looks seriously nice, I think… you agree?

I am grateful to have this little something… and will always think of them when I look there.  They are important people as far as I am concerned and it is nice to have a reminder of them so close to me.

Categories: Money, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario, View | 1 Comment

Money, Money, Money

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Laura

I always put off doing the figures for the 1/2 year because this makes me crazy!  Financial stuff is so darn boring and always so bleak!

Last night when I was doing the figures for this year Hj exclaimed “that is a lot of money” and of course he is right.  THO has cost $92,703 for the lot.  There is a hidden cost too which is not included in here.  This is the land debt.  We have been doing projects on a pay as we go with the income that Hj and I live within, but we do owe money on the land still.  $38,000 of the original $67,000 is still outstanding.  With the payment of $250/month that is made on this but at this rate we are likely never ever going to pay this debt off.  As a matter of fact when we got the loan in fall of 2010 it was about the same amount as it is today.  Not too sharp!  We simply must stop the financially costly improvements on THO and start paying down the debt.  When you start adding interest to the figures it becomes NUTS to have debt!

Saying that we are not nearly as bad off as some people does not make this debt excusable or explainable.

The fact is that we are pretty privileged!  We have two properties, one that is required in Southern Ontario as well as THO and together we pretty near have both land and space though not exactly a McMansion.  Kent Griswold’s Tiny House Blog hosts an article by Andrew Morrison, which suggests that a Tiny Straw Bale home is the answer could be right.  The interesting idea in this article is that he has taken some time to gather some very frightening unconsidered figures on what the McMansion cost their owners/ hour to live in.

I am not sure of his figures but I have done some of my own (to the best of my ability).

The Hamilton house value about $150,000 it is 1000 square feet.   When I include all expenses including food, recreation, mortgage, upkeep, vets, dog care, car, home and debt insurance, … living in this small house costs ~$48,940 a year

As a purely recreational property without any improvements THO adds an additional ~$4,580 to this budget a year, plus extra transportation costs for back and forth between the two places.  This makes THO a ~$400/month recreational property but as I mention we need to increase our payments on the land, perhaps $300/month which ups this to $700!  Brutal!

Assuming we would still use two vehicles and the same amount of gasoline: if we moved to THO, full time, today and lived a similar lifestyle our living costs would drop to ~$26,180 a year, but we cannot.  It is like that silly children’s round… there is a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza!  For him there is a hole – for us there is a different kind of hole.  THO’s hole is the nearly $40K in land debt.  Either I have to get a job or win the lottery if I want to move ahead… unless anyone wants to give me $40K… which I think is mighty unlikely.

Categories: Money, Ontario, Open your eyes, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario | 3 Comments

Exact Cost: Phase 3, Year 2, 2012

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Laura

So far in 2012 I have (with help) built the in-house with composting toilet, added some (not great) LED battery lighting, put steel on the exterior, added gravel dust for the patio (to allow this to settle for next year’s project), updated (not completed) the kitchen and purchased the items for the off grid solar installation including fixtures.  Below is what I spent on this phase.

2012

Home Hardware  building supplies=$1018.56

Northway building supplies=$159.84

Glen Supply building supplies1434.33

Canadian Tire solar system and building supplies= $570.33

Battery Expert for solar system=$91.41

Gravel 197.75

Brewers Marine LED lights and wiring= $449.16

Woolsley Plumbing part for in-house $59.66

Rona =$190.39

Habitat Restore sink 20.00

Guillivan wire 93.17

Labour  (42 hours – Frame in-house, put on roof, cut and put up the steel siding) =$840.00

TOTAL = $5,124.60

_______________________________________

I have also prepared what I believe to be a reasonably accurate breakdown of the costs of this project from 2010 to now.

This includes: the costs of THO, land, structures, aspects of homesteading, driveway and mistakes along the way.

This does not include: meals, insurance, legal fee, nor cost of living such as fuel, taxes, phone, books, paper, art supplies, clothing, gifts, vehicles…

2012 Phase 3 $5,124

2011 Phase 2 $8,839

2010-11 Phase 1 $11,740

Total, To Date (on building, driveway, homesteading) – $25,703

 Land - $67,000

Investment in THO and Property $92,703  —–

$15,963 is the value of materials and paid labour for the THO and the cloth porch structures the remainder of the $92,703 is land, drive homesteading cost.

THO has (with the detachable in-house) 110 square feet of space; therefore, $145.12 is the cost of the structure per square foot.  (The cloth porch is a bonus.  The loft is a bonus due to the technical fact that it is not high enough to be considered in the square footage.)

If you include the loft space as 81.75 square feet then THO is 191.75 square feet; $83.25 is the cost of the structure per square foot.  (The cloth porch is a bonus)

Categories: Money, Off Grid, Ontario | 5 Comments

Little Pink Houses

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Laura

I really like this little pink house and not just because it reminds me of John Cougar (before he went back to Mellancamp) and my youth.  The way that this central pink house is similar to THO and has has grown organically into a small house makes me wistful and wishful.  I don’t mean for this house but for my own Tiny House and what is in its future.  This one is for sale in Illinois for $38,700 and on the water and you can see a lot more photos at the link.  I really like it, even though the additions are not exactly the way that I would do them if I am ever able to add on at Tiny House Ontario, but then how we do things is very individual!

I have mentioned before on here that I would like to have had a 300 square foot house but the under 108 square foot (foot print) was defined by building codes.  You can’t always get what you want… but even so, what I am really strongly hoping is that before I make my move to THO that these size restrictive codes will have changed.  I would love a 200 foot addition on the front from the roof line out, with a bathroom, laundry room and kitchen.  I would want this addition to be made from Timber frame from our own logs, straw-bale and glass with proper stairs to the loft because I am not getting any younger!

I am a long way away from this – still have to hook up the solar and come to understand how it works year around.  Too with the lack of heat, water, the indoor functional kitchenette and a husband that is a long way from wanting to retire I am stuck between two lives.  THO has a life that I want but can’t quite attain, and one that I want rid of that has things in it that are required.  I guess I have to keep on banging away and working on more things than one.

Categories: Money, Open your eyes, Stuff, Tiny House Ontario | 2 Comments

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