Jay Austin’s Illegal Tiny House is, a new 10 minute video which is very much worth the watch.
I am sure you will all agree.
View
Another Illegal Tiny House
Categories: Building code, Community, Open your eyes, Tiny house, View
Tags: Building code, Illegal, Planning, Tiny House
12 Comments
Changing Times: Need vs Want
My great Grandmother’s kitchen
I have been working on my family tree and going through old albums. I came across this photo of my great grandmother “Ma” in her kitchen. This is a room she spent a lot of time in.
The reason that I am sharing the photo is because I wanted to show the readers what a real kitchen of a real person looked like in 1958. This is the kitchen were she canned all the food that she, her husband and their ELEVEN children would need. As a matter of fact, she has so many children that her own children has some children of their own before her last little ones were born. Some, like my grandmother, moved her family in with Ma’s.
Every single thing that they ate came from their farm and the garden. Every vegetable that they would eat in the winter was prepared right there in that kitchen. She had to can everything that would not keep. Green beans, beets, tomatoes, asparagus, leeks, cucumbers, peaches, pears, apples, plums… everything from veg to preserves was all canned.
I am not sure if you see what I am driving at? Did you notice in the photo that there was not a little bit of counter top in that kitchen? No storage either? The food was kept in the cellar and that little shelf above the stove was for every day dishes and cutlery. It was also for keeping things warm, for those who were late. All food prep and eating were done on the same table, covered in oil cloth, all the cooking was done there on the stove unless in the middle of summer when the stove was moved out into the back kitchen. All the food prep would have to be put away and everything wiped before the table could be set and people could eat. It was not unusual for there to be 30 people eating in this kitchen.
I will think about this photo the next time I start thinking the 6 feet of counter at THO is small. Clearly this tiny houser has things pretty good.
I don’t mean to glorify those days. I know that times were hard and that there was so much work to be done. Poor Ma never stopped working! Her hands were like leather on bones. Truthfully, I think Ma must have been pretty happy by the time 1958 came around and they were sufficiently recovered from the great depression that times were easier and she could buy a jar of pickles instead of making everything.
The question is, do you think you could go without cupboards and countertops in your house?
Categories: Family, Laura Moreland, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Sustainable living, View
Tags: family, food, garden, Old days, Work
11 Comments
Art and Angels
I just finished updating the waterproofing on our beautiful Steven Kenzora carvings. I was just about to photograph them when I looked up. The sun was shining through the canopy and I thought it looked like there were angels dancing on my roof.
If a thousand angels fit on the head of a pin, then the tiny roof of my tiny house makes a very magnificent dance floor!
Angels on my roof
Kenzora’s work is out again for the year.
THO warrior
The guardian of the forest
Categories: Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario, View
Tags: Steven Kenzora
4 Comments
Spring 2014 Update
Categories: Forest, Health, Laura Moreland, Nature, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario, View
5 Comments
Ontario Tiny House Legalization…
Update: Monday May 16, 2016
I am sorry to say that the tip that came to me about the Municipality of Highlands East was not correct. I don’t think that the tipper meant any malice but they were simply misinformed and I passed on this misinformation to you. I am very sorry about this.
I know it must have been a sad disappointment for at least one of the people who read it, because Dan wrote to the the Municipality of Highlands East and here is the note that he got back.
“Our zoning by-law has not changed and the minimum size of a dwelling is 65 square meters or 700 square feet.”
I am sorry Dan and others who hoped to make this community their home.
_____________________________________________
There are two bits of news that I find promising when it comes to the legality of tiny houses in Ontario.
1. Garden Suites
2. UPDATE: the Municipality of Highlands East has lowered its footprint size to 500 feet. Which is a perfectly reasonable house size and right sized for a lot of people. (News of this came to me on November 19, 2015) One tiny step forward!
Tiny house hopeful Anthony shared a bunch of research that he has been doing in his area. He discovered that Garden Suites are allowed to be built in the area outlined in black in the below map of Ontario.
Each of these areas has rules unique to its own area. But essentially what holds true to all of them is that if you can get someone to agree to allow you on their land, if you hook up your services to the main house and if you pay a nice hefty fee, you can park a tiny house in these areas. Yes I said PARK! These buildings must be supplementary and they must be mobile.
With this said, please before you jump check the specific area, there are a lot of restrictions and you will need to know these. You can’t fill too much of the green space in a lot for example and wouldn’t it be a pity to build a house 1 square foot too big after paying for all the hookups.
Also doing this will NOT be cheap. These houses MUST be hooked in on the existing infrastructure. No off grid toilets, there must be running water and electricity. In other words, if you are considering building you have to add all of these infrastructural costs to your build. Further to this, you better have a LONG term lease with the land owner, even if this is someone you trust. Once you spend the money for hooking your house to sewage, water and electricity you want to be sure that a fight over a cup of sugar won’t find you and your house without a place to live.
I want to note that while I am excited about the potential of this, there is a lot of leg work and money to make this happen.
If you decide to go ahead with doing this, please do so with your building inspector as well as a lawyer to draw up a lease agreement. Remember I know something about tiny houses, but I am not willing to take any responsibility if you fail to do your own homework for your own house. I can’t possibly know all the individual codes for every township.
The second point, and this is REALLY great news, just last night I heard from a counsellor from a very nice area in Ontario. This person said that they are considering removing the minimum house size in the area that they are representing. I sent back SO much information that they will have to spend quite some time reading the information I sent. This said, it is totally worth my time to donate my time to this cause, because I want to ensure that tiny and small sustainable homes are available to anyone who wants to live this lifestyle.
When I know more, I will certainly share more.
We are getting closer every single day folks!
Tiny House Ontario 