Tiny house

House and Home

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Laura

It has been a couple of days since I last posted. Basically, I have been at the Hamilton house working on my family tree stuff and fretting about the dental surgery that I will leave for shortly. If all goes well I leave to go back to my beloved Tiny House Ontario tomorrow morning.

I think that this is what she will look like when I arrive only perhaps a little more fall like?

It is a funny thing because THO feels like home to me more than any other place I have ever lived, yet she is still so far from being finished. Still, there are a lot of small jobs like eve troughs to the water barrels, covering the cloth porch, flooring, stone patio needs laying, drive needs 5/8 stone on the drive and so on and so on. This list of small but time consuming jobs will never end. This is part of what I like so much about it. I love projects. Still there is HUGE/EXPENSIVE stuff too, that has to be done. THO has no heat, no kitchen appliances and only partially finished cabinets, no water running or otherwise, these take more time because of the cost.

I am nearing the second year of work on THO and bit by bit she becomes more complete, to be sure. This year she got a lot of time and attention from me because I did not produce much in my creative life after my computer accident. Still truthfully I did not spend as much time there as I wanted to. Baby being broken twice, as well as visitors here in Hamilton, and a trip home for medical and another now for dental turned the 30 potential weeks of THO stay, into about 25 weeks there. Missing 5 weeks of the year is a lot! Next year I hope to do better.

Categories: Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Stuff, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario, View | 2 Comments

The Disappearing House

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Laura

One thing is for sure, I am always writing about the forest at the THO blog. Too, there are a lot of tree photos posted. Still, when I take photos of THO, I always try to find the clearest image of the Tiny House and I post these. Seeing this image which Colleen Murphy took, makes me realize that I have not done a very good job of explaining why the woods are so significant in my day to day life.

I think until you see this image, you might not have realized how totally integrated into these woods THO is.

Really, THO is just a tiny dot built into a tiny clearing. Indeed, two weeks ago when I had the car, I picked up my neighbour and during the drive she told me there is a clearing because lightning struck there a few years ago. Where this small fire cleared things is just where I built the house. Lets hope lightning never strikes the same place twice.

There is only one more clearing in this forest. It was created because there was a really massive maple there and she was dead, thus I had her cut so I could use the place that she had been holding for herself for hundreds of years. This maple’s clearing is where my driveway ends, where stone is now dumped, and where both my solar panels and my garden sit. I am thankful she made it and kept it so well.

The thing is, that if I did not have a driveway, then THO would just melt back into the forest. She would disappear in the shadows. And while the structure is strong and built to last, I am sure that without a driveway the forest would moss over THO and turn her into a hollow tree.

Without a driveway, I am convinced that THO would exist only virtually here in the readers dream. She would simply be an electronic fairy tale.

Categories: Cloth Porch, Environmentalism, Erazim Kohák, Forest, Magical, Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Tiny House Ontario, View, Writing | Leave a comment

A Week Away

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Laura

Heading back to Hamilton. Dental surgery on Monday. Tiny House Ontario looks good and you know how I hate to leave her. See you again next Wednesday THO.

Categories: Ontario, Tiny House Ontario | 2 Comments

The Piles

Posted on September 19, 2012 by Laura

I have another confession. I don’t want to be one of “those families”… you know who I mean… every neighbourhood has them. Their places are run down, and half put together, they have stuff all over their yards that never seems to be used, just sits there rotting and taking up space. If anyone was doing a project at their house, my neat-freak Mom used to say, “they need to clean that mess up because it is starting to look like the ____ ‘s place”. You can fill in the blank for your particularly messy family. My mom kept a very clean home and she did not like mess. Mom, she would hate my piles!

These days they have a name for people who keep too much junk. They even have a TV show about them, Hoarders.

The thing is, that there is a fine line between people who hoard and people who keep stuff because it is useful. Artists often keep a lot of bits. So too do people who tinker. Me, I have a few left over building supplies which I am still using for projects. It is not out of hand but takes up about a 12x 9 space… just as big a footprint as THO, so this, in my opinion is what makes it look so bad.

I put it all on the far side of the house, so that you can’t see it when you drive up, but from the cloth porch, there it is, a little hoard of stuff. It would be nice to have a shed with some upper beams to slide all that stuff in. A shed feels a bit like a slippery slope for allowing me to collect more stuff – but admittedly it would be handy for the rotation of seasonal gear, such as boots and sandals, snow shoes and flippers.

Fortunately, I live far enough away from others that the mess is not seen by anyone but me and my visitors. Still, I wonder, would my remnants piles drive you crazy if you lived next door? Be honest.

Categories: Cloth Porch, Off Grid, Ontario, Re-Use, Stuff, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario | 4 Comments

Again with the Dusting

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Laura

Since Hj was down on the weekend to help with a couple of things that I could not do on my own we decided to fill in the area which will next year become the stone patio with some of the stone dust that I had delivered a few weeks ago.

We put in quite a few wheel barrels full, raked it down and then stomped on it to press it down It will further compress in the rain too as soon as a good one comes. We did not put a board to it and level it down this time, because this job is dusty, dirty, rotten and frankly either of us felt like getting that filthy on a sticky day. Levelling is a job that takes two hands (at least for non-professionals like me) and will take a couple of hours. I want to do it one day when I know that I can easily jump into someone’s shower afterward, or at least when I expect a long warm rain that I can stand out in and wash up.

I also decided to place a few stones across the dust from the driveway to the front door. Frankly the stone dust is a bit of a nightmare because it sticks to the shoes and comes into the Tiny House, particularly if it is raining. The big issue with this is not so much that you have to sweep the Tiny Floor over and over; seriously, this is a one minute job. Rather the problem is that Rudigrrr Wolf seems to suffer with Pica. He eats all kids of stuff that he should not, including rocks and I worry that this might block his little tummy up and get very costly, very fast. Plus, he chews them… chewing rocks is not a nice sound. I hope the little stone path helps.