Several of you have asked to see more photos of the tiny house, so for your viewing pleasure, here is a Tiny House Slideshow. Please click on an image to see the captions and higher quality images. [mj-google-slideshow feed_url="https://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/base/user/113106675420027749099/albumid/5705178479888915265?alt=rss&kind=photo&hl=en_US" width="500" height="500" link_target="google.feeds.LINK_TARGET_BLANK" /]
Tiny House Sleeps Five Comfortably
My friends Sarah and Jesse from Walla Walla visited yesterday, bringing their pup Dodge along. It was fun showing them the Alberta Arts District and it was chilly enough that our cocoas were a perfect warm up treat. Jesse cooked us a fantastic squash soup in my tiny kitchen and he served it with homemade bread. Delish!
In order to accommodate everyone for the night I moved the camping gear that I usually store in my loft over to the host house where I stashed it in a corner of my neighbor's room since she was out of town. I set up a bed for myself in the storage loft above the door with a foam pad and plenty of blankets and pillows. Raffi slept with me, Jesse and Sarah had my sleeping loft, and Dodge claimed my giant pillow chair as his bed. We all slept really well and they only tricky part is that I only have one ladder. I'd crawled into bed last so the ladder was on my side. In the middle of the night Jesse, not wanting to wake me, managed to climb down from the sleeping loft using my kitchen counter! Did I mention he's resourceful? And tall!
I'm glad my tiny house was Sarah and Jesse's first stop on their road trip down to California. They live at West End Farm in Walla Walla and they left me with farm treats: pumpkin bread and apricot jam. It was a delight having my friends here even if the visit was too short. And it's nice to know that as long as everyone likes each other a lot my tiny house can comfortably sleep five!
Tiny Home Improvement
Classes started on Monday so I've been busy the past few days, but today I didn't have classes so my host and her friend helped me with a couple of little house projects.
First, I understand that they don't sell 12 gauge green extension cords because they don't want you to run over them with the lawn mower, but I think they should make them anyhow and figure some of us do know what we're doing. My host ended up coming up with a great solution when she picked up a bright yellow extension cord and a can of green spray paint. We think it will blend in with the grass really nicely!
Another project was adding flat rungs to the ladder Brittany had built. She did a great job creating a safe ladder: the angle is nice and it hooks over a little lip at the bottom edge of the loft so that it won't slip out from under you. But it had round rungs which are a little uncomfortable for my feet and impossible for my cat Raffi to use. He's pretty savvy with ladders, but the round rungs were unmanageable, so I decided to add flat rungs to make it more workable for both of us. The result is a Raffi-approved ladder that will allow both of us to climb up to the sleeping loft safely and easily.
A friend also helped me set up a greywater system for the tiny house. We got some corrugated pipe with holes and some without at our local hardware store. Then we ran the non-perforated pipe from the drainage pipe underneath the house across the path and connected it up with the perforated pipe which we placed in a ditch where my host has been planning to plant bushes. I'll have to be really careful about not letting anything down the drain, but this system should work well because every time I run water from my kitchen sink it will water the plants!
Now that I have some place for water to go I have hooked up a garden hose so I'll have running water! I may replace it with a drinking quality hose soon, but this will do for now. Even on backpacking trips I've had pretty good access to water so I don't think I've ever appreciated running water as much as I have today!
I really enjoyed using candles the past few days so I have to remind myself I can still have an evening by candlelight whenever I want. It is awfully nice to have electricity! Now I can charge my laptop and cell phone, use the task lighting, and microwave leftovers.
I bought water and electric meters, too, so that I can see how much energy and water I'm using. I've always been pretty stingy with my water and electricity use (former housemates will vouch for that!), but I think living in the tiny house will give me an even better understanding of my resource consumption. They haven't arrived in the mail yet, but I'm eager to try them out.