Where did this idea come from? How did this all start? There are a few things that started our infatuation with tiny houses and tiny living. We had just moved into a new home – a large home, with lots of bedrooms, a pool, an amazing deck, a basketball hoop and awesome schools. The dream neighborhood. In our back yard was a shed. But this wasn’t just any shed. This was a shed the previous home dwellers intended on making a man cave! This baby was built like a house – literally. Insulation, electricity, wooded walls, a small refrigerator and funky lights around the doorway. It was truly on it’s way to being somebody’s cool space. But we took it to another level. We added a 55″ tv and mounted it overhead. We added a super cool powerful heater. We padded and carpeted the floor. We added a dart board, video games & bar stools, then stocked the fridge with our favorite beverages. As we spent more and more time out there (we called it our retreat away from the kids), the more we made up verbal floor plans and talked about the fact that we could really live in that shed! Where we would put the sink, where we would put a toilet, the loft would need safety bars… and so on. We really had it all figured out! At that point, I started to dabble in tiny houses on the internet. Pinterest was my biggest source of research at first. Much to our chagrin, the “super cool powerful heater” wasn’t so powerful, so we weren’t able to spend time in the shed during the winter months. Pretty soon, we found ourselves taking things out of the shed and relocating them to other areas of the house.
Then we started to plan our vacation and Bobby suggested visiting a campground he grew up going to. He hadn’t been back in over 30 years and had wonderful memories with his dad there. So we looked it up online and found the place – still owned by the same people! He was super excited! We booked the week-long vacation in a park model home they had for rent with the intention of taking everyone for a great family vacation. As the vacation date grew closer, the number of kids joining us for the week was dwindling. It seemed everyone had other things to do. By the time our vacation started, we ended up taking our two 15-year-old boys for a week in what turned out to be the most wonderful campground & resort ever. We had our boat and spent the week on the river; boating, tubing, swimming and loving every inch of that place! Bobby re-connected with the owners, found they were still fast friends and had a great experience. Some time during the week, I started pointing out the seasonal sites that were for sale. Some were fancy, some were simple, some were nestled in the trees, some were out in the open. But the one we fell in love with was a TINY park model that was WAY too small for our family on a lot that needed a huge amount of TLC. The park model was in good shape. It had a normal bathroom in it (huge bonus) and a normal refrigerator (another huge bonus) and the river was just through the trees. If you stood at the right angle, you could see the sun rise and set on the river and it was beautiful! When we went into the back yard, we knew we had to have it. It was late one night during our vacation. The boys were back in the park model “chilling out”. Bobby and I went for a walk to check out this little property we had kept our eye on all week. As we looked up to the sky, there was an umbrella of trees with a hole in the middle where the moon poked it’s head through. It was pitch black and silent. We stood there with our flashlights (turned off at this point), held hands and we both knew this was more home than that big old house in the big city. Bobby kissed me and said “This is going to be ours.” Being the sappy romantic that I am, I shed a few happy tears and for the first time in many many years, I felt like I was at home. The next morning, we talked to the owners and we placed a bid on the park model. They accepted it!! I was over the moon with the thought of having this vacation home of my own. Little did I know, this was leading up to something really exciting.
We stayed a couple extra days (thankfully, we didn’t have to move to another park model as the one we were staying in was available) and we finished up the details for the purchase of our new vacation home. We came back a few days later, closed on the sale of the park model and started to move in. Something magical happened while we were there. We worked harder than we had worked in a long time, removing old pallets, pieces of metal, chunks of wood, bushes that were out of control, trees that had fallen down… Truly hard work in the yard! Inside the trailer just needed a good cleaning and some new linens and we were good to go. Saying it was “magical” probably sounds silly, but we worked together flawlessly. Bobby hurt his back pretty bad and he would just push along and work harder. I would rub his back every night, administer the ibuprofen, ice packs, heating pads, Icy Hot… you name it! He was like the energizer bunny; he just kept going and going, so I kept up with him and I pushed myself harder to get the yard done and we ROCKED IT!!! It was an amazing experience. The hard work happened and the magic happened and we decided we wanted to live like this all year long, not just in the summer.
During our evening fires, golf cart rides and multiple midnight walks, we would plan and talk about what we needed to do to to tiny on a permanent basis. Of course the kids are our first priority, so we started with the simple things. I’ll talk about all of that tomorrow.
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