Between goodbye trips to visit my family members, we have been cranking full steam on the tiny house design. We locked in the layout after a bunch of futzing around, and moved right along to the details. And whoa, are there details. As expected, building a house is far more complex than I realized. Which is precisely why I started re-reading the book below, "The Builder's Secret." In 2013, my brother-in-law picked this off the shelves of a used bookstore for me as a gift. His inscription in the front was such a good reminder back then to keep this dream alive that I held onto it – I usually donate books when I'm done with them and only have a dozen on my shelf.
It's a series of stories about regular people who built their own homes, from single mothers to retirees to the author himself, who was a school teacher that picked up a hammer on weekends. It's already reminding me that we can do this. After all, we're just as capable as other people who've built their own homes, we'll figure it out.
Despite being exhausted after getting the kids in bed, our evenings have been spent researching siding materials (or "cladding" as they call it in New Zealand) and figuring out what we can buy here in the States ahead of time. Packing some supplies in our container when we ship it is a cheaper way to get things to the island than shipping from Auckland. Without further ado, here is a rendering of the main floor plan below (not including lofts). The shower room is a work in progress, and some windows need to be pushed a few centimeters one way or the other, but overall this is pretty much it. In some ways, I think this design will serve us better than the 800-square-foot apartment we are currently living in (and which was not designed for a family of four).
Speaking of which, we have outgrown our apartment SO MUCH that I had surprisingly no problem showing potential tenants around last week. I thought that process would be too emotional for me – this being the place Isaac and I picked out together, and both our boys' first home. But we found a delightful tenant and I can't wait to hand her the keys end of July. I keep reminding the boys that home isn't a place, it's wherever we are all together. I'm such a nester and a "house person" that it took me nearly 38 years to really learn that myself. Hopefully my kids can grasp that lesson sooner than I did.
