Tiny House Treasure Hunt

 

My Tiny House Started with a Window, and A Beautiful Arched Door, and A Sink for Good Measure. So I ordered my brand new Custom Vardo Trailer from Iron Eagle, too. Then a few days ago I found My Kitchen Windows, just in the nick of time!

Now that I'm preparing for my tiny house build this spring my tiny house treasure hunt begins in earnest. I know that the next important steps are refinishing my door and building my arched rafters. The materials I should be keeping an eye out for at this point are things like cedar siding, metal roofing, and half-used rolls of house wrap.

But I couldn't help but get a little distracted by shiny things when I popped into an antique store that was moving locations and found these copper canisters. I've always had a soft spot for these countertop containers and I'd never found a set that seemed quite right for me. I found myself melting a little when I realized these little copper canisters were labeled: Cookies, Flour, Sugar, Coffee, and Tea. So it's a good thing for me they were also on sale half-off! I think they'll be a charming addition to my gypsy wagon kitchen, right there near my hand-hammered copper sink.

Apparently Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Groundhog's Day, which is probably just as well since we need more rain this winter. Looks like I have six more months to boneyard materials and work out the construction details. I'll be requesting building help later on, so you can be looking forward to that. (Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!)

In the meantime, if you see great deals on small batches of building materials or if you happen upon something wee and beautiful, please let me know. It has to be just right, of course. It has to sing to me. But I'm open to the possibilities now. I'm on a tiny house treasure hunt!

My Beautiful Arched Door

The summer before last I had My Summer Dream Job: Tiny House Design-Building. It was brilliant, lucky, backwards, or some combination of all three that I had the chance to build a tiny house for someone else before I built my own.

While I was finishing out Tandem (which is now located at Caravan - The Tiny House Hotel and available for nightly rental), I soaked up as much information and muscle memory as I could so that someday I would be ready to build my tiny dream house. And I started scouting Craigslist for materials, just to get a sense of what was out there.

I wasn't going to actually buy anything since I knew I wouldn't be building that summer. I definitely wasn't going to buy anything large!

But a friend invited me to visit the ReBuilding Center on a Saturday afternoon in August and I saw it.

My door.

An arched door with an arched leaded glass window and an arched frame, too. The fella I asked about it said it had been there a couple weeks. The price was more than I'd been wanting to pay for a door, but it was just what I wanted.

I decided to sleep on it.

And I didn't sleep well because I was nervous about making the commitment... but even more nervous someone else would get MY door. So I reserved a truck through Getaround and was at the ReBuilding Center before it opened on Sunday morning. When I walked in and told the guy I was going to buy that arched door he grinned and gave me a discount. The man who helped me load it into the truck said arched doors are rare but arched doors with frames in good shape are one in a thousand. I feel lucky that we found each other despite the odds, my door and me. So My Tiny House Started with a Window and then, all of the sudden I had a beautiful door, too. With an arched door and an arched window, my house was definitely taking on a life of it's own. And a shape of its own. When I found my arched window I was already pretty sure my house would be a vardo, but finding my arched door sealed the deal.

Then I started getting a little nervous because I didn't have A Sink for Good Measure, so my scouting began again...