Remodel

Had an impromptu meeting on-site today as they had electricians and plumbing folks there and ran into a few problems.

So our tiny kitchen got it's first remodel. We drew it out on the floor. I'm sure it'll be fine. Today, it felt challenging though. It felt as if the little storage we had already was going right out the window. It felt like they still don't understand our vision.

However, progress is being made. Siding has been ordered (the cedar has already been delivered, which is crazy). We picked out exterior doors and exterior lights, shower and kitchen faucets, and house numbers (yay!) last Thursday. Next up is the bathroom vanity and sink, I suspect.

An Upstairs with a View!

Well, we officially have an upstairs! That was a fun to actually get to walk up the stairs and look out where the windows will be during our meeting with our contractor yesterday.

Let me tell you. I thought this was going to be the fun part. I knew there would be a lot of decisions. Decisions I didn’t even realize I would need to think about it, but this is so much more than that.

I feel like so many of the ideas we had for this house were lost when working with Dunwoody fell through, and that’s disappointing.

Living in a tiny house, as we keep saying, is all about having multi-functional, smartly-built spaces. Yet yesterday, we were so excited to see the upstairs that, until I was laying in bed trying not to stress, I didn’t even realize that there was no space under the stairs for the drawers we had reminded them about so recently.

I take part of the blame. We let our architect draw up fake interior plans (sort of) because we wanted the students to be able to have so much freedom to create ideas that we couldn’t find on google. We didn’t want their brains to automatically go in a certain direction. Yet when things fell apart, it didn’t occur to us that we needed to lock everything down on paper. That was our mistake. 

So now I am focusing on letting go on what might have been, and instead focusing on getting the house done so we can move in by the end of the year. It won’t be perfect. There might very well be a remodel in our future, but at this moment, I have to be okay with that, because we’re out of time (due to how long everything took) and money (because of how much we’ve already paid out of pocket) and patience (I just can’t repeat myself any more).

It’ll be a good house. It’ll be unique. One of a kind. The first of the tiny houses in Minneapolis’ tiniest neighborhood. But it won’t really be our dream house, but it’s as close as we're going to get right now.

 

Decisions, Decisions

The thing about building your own house is that you get to decide every last thing.

The thing about building your own house is that you have to decide every last thing.

It's a lot of decisions. Things that should be inconsequential. But as a result, we decided to get ahead of the curve. Start making decisions before they start piling up and there's a time crunch.

Brent's dad has a tile store in Ft. Myers, Alpha Tile & Stone, and they have a sister company, Kate-Lo Tile & Stone in Plymouth. So we stopped out a couple weekends ago to have a look around. We had a pretty good idea what we wanted: natural. I don't think we were aware of how many options would fall under that umbrella.

Here's a sampling of what we liked. (A lot of the pictures were just of labels, so that does you zero good).