A Whirlwind Week

Phew! This week has felt like a whirlwind of a week.

Last Sunday my parents and I oiled all my floor boards with an all natural tung oil/linseed oil finish called Land Ark:

It was such a pleasure to have them come visit and leave their mark on my tiny house. These floor boards will be the first thing I have done thus far that will be visible in the finished home! This, and a suggestion from my grandma got me thinking that I want a mural that somehow shows all the hands that went into making this tiny house possible. I am thinking a wood burned tree in one of my gable ends with each person who contributed time or money having their name on a leaf…

On Tuesday John and I started nailing the first of these floor boards down!  This was cause for some celebration:

And some careful cutting:

Notice that I chose to lay them on a diagonal. Who says everything has to be square? (There are also some practical reason as to why I chose to do this that I will talk about in my tiny house workshop)

The weather turned a bit temperamental after Tuesday and so we weren’t able to finish laying the floor. But we did figure out a clever way to get a roof over our heads and protect my trailer from the weather while we work:

This afternoon we got my tarp all rigged up over this hoop house structure, just in time for my leaving tomorrow for a week long cabinet making course at Heartwood. I forgot to take a picture of the end result with the tarp, but it is pretty snazzy if you ask me!

As I move ahead with this dream it’s been fun to see many inspirational tiny house projects come out of the woodwork around me. One is a project call Second Wind that is building tiny homes for men, many of whom were homeless or in recovery and trying to get their lives back on track. This guy’s vision has some interesting similarities to the ecovillage I am currently living in: A cluster of these tiny homes with a central larger house that serves as a community center/common house. I have envisioned something very similar but, perhaps fittingly, have thought more about targeting a female population of women from battered homes or who are looking for a way out of prostitution or homelessness. And for me I see much of the healing coming not only from giving these women a home but from also empowering them to take part in the building of their own home and making it a home that reflects their personal identity and style.

Well, that is the update for this week! Stay tuned for more.

And if you haven’t yet checked it out please take a look at my indiegogo campaign page and consider donating and sharing it in your networks: igg.me/at/tinygogo

Thanks!