A Makeover For The Pod

Weathered gray...not for long!

We've been just as busy as we have been silent! Sorry!

Dan and I have been working like mad on a variety of things- mainly items related to my new business and getting the outdoor area into shape. One of the big undertakings of this spring/summer was to sand and stain the siding. I still pout as I think back to that beautiful blonde smattering of colors. Alas, unprotected wood does not stay so bright. Over the last year, as it sat in the beating sun, the Pod has taken on a gray weathered look. Don't get me wrong, there is a certain charm to weathered gray, but to me, it belongs at the beach- and it certainly isn't the color for us. 

As daunting and tedious as it seemed, this particular project isn't taking nearly as long as we expected. I credit that to having a lot more free time. I can only imagine how long this would have taken, on top of everything else we have accomplished since March, if I was still working 40+ hours a week. Makes me cringe actually. 

Anyways! My arms are getting quite defined and the house is looking fine! Over a few different days we have managed to complete the end wall, utility closet, and about 85% of the front wall. The new stained color looks AMAZING, especially after looking at the ratty old gray for so long. 

We have also been working away at making the space around the Pod more "human putter" friendly. I am not a fan of lots of clothes and footwear. Every summer as a kid- I wore as little as possible. If only I could run around naked like I once did- too bad it's only acceptable until about age 5. Ha!  I prefer to let my skin and feet breathe. So as soon as it gets warm enough, I move to shorts, tanks, and flip flops. That has not been working to my favor here. I already have dealt with poison ivy this year. My butt of all places. I think it happened while I was resting on my heels and my shoes must have had some of the oil. Needless to say I was very aggravated and after a couple days of dealing with an itchy fess, I clothed myself from head to toe, put on rubber gloves and went hunting and yanking. 

I have learned that we do not have "a patch here and a patch over there"...we have poison ivy EVERYWHERE within our area. ALL OF IT. Some places are more dense than others, but I was not happy to discover this fun little fact. Once I had ripped up as much as I could, I started laying cardboard. I want to be able to have a space to walk around and wear my sandals without checking every little step I take. 

I had to lay on the roof to stain the top 2
feet of siding. SO MUCH POLLEN. 

This past weekend, we took advantage of that nice low 60s weather we got and did a bunch of shoveling, hauling, and spreading of chips. Hard work on hots days is the worst! Cooler weather made is somewhat enjoyable! I also weed-wacked. Things are looking much cleaner and sandal friendly now. 

What a contrast eh?!?

The roof containers are exploding, the trellis plants are starting their first little grasps up the vertical surface, and the straw bales....well they are doing alright. They actually require the most attention from me as they need watering and weeding most often. 


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Gardening with Self Watering Containers- 100% recycled, 100% FREE

We have been juggling about fourteen different little gardening or yard related projects over the last couple of weeks.


Rather than try to report progress as it happens on a daily basis (which can be quite chaotic) I will focus on reviewing one project at a time. Today- our self watering containers. As I mentioned in earlier posts, we are experimenting with a few different gardening techniques this season. I will be gardening out of containers, using the vertical gardening concept, and straw bale gardening.

The allure of container gardens (especially when vertical too)- to me- and I think to many tiny house people or renters for that matter-- is that space is completely maximized. I see so many tiny houses tucked neatly into a backyard space with little room for much else. I have also lived in an apartment and experienced the woes of not having a yard of my own at all. But! With container gardens, all you need is space enough for a 5 gallon bucket in a sunny spot, and some simple fencing or lattice for the plant to grow upward. A small balcony, a bay window, or a little walkway area can be turned into a lush and fruitful space. 

Self watering containers are very simple, requiring a couple of five gallon buckets, some pvc piping, rocks, soil, and then a few plants of your choice. Here is an article explaining in more detail. I snagged the image right here from that article as well. 

Once again, I was able to complete this project at no cost to me. We have family and friends in the food prep business (hospital kitchen, a market, a sub shop) and many food items come in 5 gallon buckets before they are further prepped at the location, so they have plenty on a regular basis. 

We collected buckets for free, and also perused behind Dan's Dad's store, where we found several lengths of used PVC pipe that would be perfect. Once the materials were collected it was straightforward work.

We paired up buckets and, using a jig saw, cut holes in the top buckets for the PVC piping. One for the soil "wick" and one for adding more water. We used a drill to add plenty of holes to the bucket and perforate the PVC piping to ensure good water flow. 

As for rocks, I simply walked around the yard and picked up whatever looked good. When it came to soil for the plant, I happened to have a large bin full of the richest soil around. Last fall when we decided to clean up around the cement foundation, we scraped an area clean that used to be an indoor floor. Everything we shoveled off was years and years of leaves, branches, animal droppings, and a lot of other plant matter that had turned to a rich black soil. As we were shoveling it away, I thought to myself, this is nice stuff, let's throw it in that empty bin over there. At the time, I had no idea what I would use it for, but figured it would come in handy for the next season. It sure did!! The only thing I had to buy were my seeds. 

Now, we have four containers that we placed up on the roof to take advantage of a perfectly good growing space and provide organic matter and shade to the roof area, further helping to keep us cool inside. In each bucket I have planted a strawberry (thanks, Adam!) a leek, and a cucumber plant. We will be building some basic lattice for the cucumber to crawl across, that way it won't be laying right on the black rubber of the roof. 

Vining plants work especially great with this container concept. The root system of the plant is the only part that needs soil, and that uses fairly little in comparison to the sprawling greens is produces. If those vines are guided up a lattice or other vertical route, you can pull it quite a bit of produce for very few square feet of your ground space. 

I'm excited to watch our roof get overtaken with the big bright green leaves of cucumber plants! 
Next up, I will be talking about our 100% recycled trellis and garden bed, and also the straw bale gardening.

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Batteries = RECHARGED!

Dan and I can't thank each and every one of you enough!

After my last post, the out-pouring of advice, encouragement, and support was truly amazing. Dan and I are both touched and rejuvenated. One of the first responses was simply a link to an article written by a fellow tiny houser, breaking down all the things that go through your mind, how you feel, how you may re-act, and by the end of that article I was already feeling a whole lot better. If you are feeling a little nutty or on the edge about your build- I highly recommend this article.

Throughout the first half of our build, we worked mostly alone, and felt mostly alone in our interests, goals, and enthusiasm for tiny houses. In 2012, the tiny house scene was beginning to bloom, but there still weren't a whole loft of networks out there. We are so grateful to have such an awesome community with us today. I'm feeling spunky and ready to do work, so I'll keep this post short.

Last weekend was the first time in a while that there were no family or other social engagements slated. We took that opportunity to dive back in again. We finally created an outdoor area for our composte, using once again, lovely pallets. That went together quickly, and aside from tip-toeing through a whole lot of poison ivy, it was a smooth process. We moved our compost from the temporary plastic bin to it's new place. Even as we dumped the organic matter and shuffled it all around, there was no smell, which means we are doing things right! 

Building that first was probably the best move of the day, and lucky for us, it was our first move of the day! Feeling quite chipper and at ease now that our pooh had somewhere to go become earth again, we set our sights on the next job. Can you guess? Yep- more pallet siding!

The Sunday before last, as you may recall, we spent prepping more pallets to go up on the walls. I'm not sure if I mentioned that the special saw we used at Dan's Dad's store up and quit on us. That was the only saw that would fit the particular blade we need to use for ship lapping. We didn't put up much of a fuss since that was the last step and we only had a handful of boards left. So we packed up and headed home. Dan's dad said the saw probably just over-heated and to give it some time.

So we some siding that was ready to go up. We spent the remainder of Saturday putting up siding. We didn't get the third wall done, but it's pretty close! On Sunday, we worked on the utility closet. We were both getting tired of staring at that house wrap every time we came home. Over the last couple weeks, when feeling especially overwhelmed, seeing that was like salt in the wound. So we decided to tackle what we could of that. We headed out and got supplies for the trim. 

After putting up the strapping, then cutting, painting, and applying the trim, we stood back to admire the improvements. Even the trim being in place was a substantial improvement!

On Tuesday, we both put in work after work. Dan went to his Dad's to try out the saw. It's officially dead. Boo. So the pallet siding is on hold yet again. While he was there, I did a little work on our center-pieces at my Dad's.

Dan had a great suggestion- we had some extra pallet wood that we had processed early on, but then as we got better at what we were doing, we realized these pieces were a little too thin for our liking, so they go tossed aside. The discrepancy in thickness wasn't a big deal for most pieces, but these were simply too thin in comparison to the rest of the lot. So we didn't put them up. I am SUPER GLAD, and I would go back in time and kiss the former me or former Dan- whoever said, let's just keep these for a while. Turns out the miscellaneous thin pieces added up to the perfect amount of wood to do the front of our utility closet! Since it was just two small areas of siding, the difference in thickness didn't matter. 

Once I finished putting up the last piece of siding on the front of the utility closet, I stood back and smiled from ear to ear. MAN is it great to look at this side of our house and not see house wrap anymore! Wooh! 

Next weekend, we plan to start getting that solar power system put together- that is, if the changing of angles on the wooden mounts goes well!

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Time Keeps On Slippin'...Slippin'...Slippin'

During one of the several interviews we have done so far, I was asked- "You seem so on top of things, especially for a project this size. Do you ever get overwhelmed or are you always this cool and collected?"

WELL. The short answer to that is yes, we DEFINITELY get overwhelmed. A great example of that? RIGHT NOW. I'm stepping away from the usual tone of my posts because I'm not feeling my usual self. The last few weeks have been a whirl wind. I have moments where it's all I can do to just breathe calmly. The crisp cool air of the evenings and mornings has always been one of my most favorite things. A sign that my favorite season is on it's way....but this year, there is so much going on that I wish summer could last another 5 months. 

Dan recently found employment (HOORAY!), which we are both very happy about. He did such a bang up job his first week and a half that they asked him to come on full time. Considering he has been looking for quite some time, and our financial situation was getting a bit tight, we were happy for this opportunity. What I wasn't expecting however, was the inevitable backlash to our progress on the house. 

In fact, it was never made clearer to me than now. One of the biggest balancing acts of life is time versus money. This is a scale I have had trouble with for many years- always trying to make time the more valuable item, but somehow someway, money always had more heft. I can't just walk away from my bills and my debt, and I will not put them off any longer either. I am determined to reach a point in my life where time out ranks money- sooner rather than later. We are positioning ourselves with the tiny life we have chosen, but it seems, much like everything else, there is always one more major stressful squeeze before you burst out the other side. 

I have been traveling quite a bit over the last month, and when I am home, our schedule has been filled with family gatherings, weddings, showers, and other related parties. I get this feeling like all my waking hours from now until some point in the unforeseen future has already been scheduled for me. It's quite frustrating at times. 

We need to finish the dang siding on this place. We need to put our solar power system together. We need to water proof and seal the siding. We need to create gutters and some form of water shed for our roof line. We need to purchase and install a wood stove. We need to do all this before November.

Now- add getting married out of state in October to that list. Catching my drift?  

This past weekend we attended a beautiful garden wedding on Dan's side of the family. We wanted to save money and time so we drove home that night instead of staying over. We spent part of Sunday morning in recovery, then dragged ourselves out to Dan's dad's store to do more work. We needed to process more pallets. Our tools have been scattered to three different places now...and I don't like it. Some things are here at the Pod, some things are at my Dad's, and some things at the store. More than once we have gone one place only to realize the tool we need is at another. I don't recommend this. haha We wanted to give my Dad a break from seeing us constantly working in his yard, and we needed to use the table saw at the store. His dad's saw is the only one that will hold the special blade we use for ship-lapping. 

So, the only free day we had was spent sweating in the beating sun of a paved parking lot. I know I'm probably being a total whiner right now, but DAMN! It's been almost 2 years of working constantly on this place. I want it to be over! I want to return to having time to relax, be social (not just attend major family events), visit my hobbies again- I'm pretty sure I will have to learn guitar all over again. Blurg.

Oh, and the solar power system saga continues. We ordered what we needed and now have another 6 boxes of stuff waiting for us to open. We also realized that our solar panels are at the wrong angle. Joy. The semi-good news is that we did do our math right, we just flip flopped how it should have applied to the racking. We don't have to build them all over, since the angle we need is sharper. We plan to take the panels down and make the angled cuts to the posts right where they stand. That should be fun. 

Some nights I lie in bed feeling like I have the actual weight of our tiny house on my chest. I try to keep my mind on the positives. We have accomplished so much and we are making our dream a reality, but I feel I have mustered all I can muster- even from my reserve tank at this point. It's hard to be the spearhead day in and day out.  My brain begins to skip and scramble as I think about all the loose ends we still have and all that MUST get done before the cold sets in. 

I WILL come back to you all with a more chipper voice again soon. But until then, do any of you folks that have already "made it to the other side" have any advice? Maybe part of your story you can share? I could really use something to recharge my batteries. 

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A Streak of Heightened Appreciation

Such an epic time!

My grand plan is finally beginning to work! MUAHAHA!

What grand plan, you say? The plan to live in such a way that we find ourselves reveling and rejoicing in the smallest of things. I believe life is about finding happiness and finding connection. So far, the tiny house living has brought us both in excess! We have become a part of a bigger community of people with the same dreams and goals, we have gained a lot of new friends and support, and we have seen the subtle shift in our perspectives bringing us small joys on a daily basis.

Saco River!

Dan's birthday was on the 19^th, and we went on a camping weekend in New Hampshire. The main activity of the weekend was canoe-ing the Saco river along with a big group of friends. We certainly had more than one hiccup that weekend, thanks to the poor planning/communication skills of excited young men. HA! BUT, those bumps in the road aside, it was a pretty good time. The river was a blast and absolutely beautiful. I have to admit I had a hard time adjusting to seeing flocks of people every two minutes on the river, and then camping in tiny little lots -practically on top of the next set of campers. I grew up in rural areas where you seldom saw a car driving down the road let alone people milling about. So when we camped, we went even deeper into the woods. If you heard a noise, it wasn't human. Needless to say, I will be involved in the planning of the next camping trip- and we won't be returning to the place we went.

We joked all weekend about how the way we live daily didn't seem much different than camping. In fact, at this place we had electrical hook up AND running water at our disposal! What happened to roughin' it?! The lack of sleeping bags or proper padding is what sealed the deal for me. Yep, this was still a step down from the Pod. And when we got home- OH GLORIOUS DAY! The Pod seemed brighter and more lovely than usual, our bed twice as wonderful and soft and cozy.

After returning home from New Hampshire on Sunday, I headed right back out the door Monday to spend the week in Atlanta for work. I'm usually not a big fan of traveling that long -being away from home. After three years of traveling like this, the excitement has mostly worn off, and I find myself going a little nutty with my free time on the road. All I can think about is “if I were home I could be working on this right now, or I could start that...” but, unless I can fit it in a suitcase and take it with me, most projects get placed on hold. This week however, I made a conscious decision to practice some deliberate appreciation. Rather than whine internally about what I couldn't be working on- I decided to look around me and enjoy. It worked quite well! The week flew by, and the evenings in my hotel went quickly too. Air conditioning! A huge bed with room to run all around it! Plumbing! Showers in my own space, at any time! Unlimited running water! Unlimited electricity! Unlimited internet and data! AMAZINGNESS!

While I was gone, Dan kept the work coming on the house. He processed a bunch more pallets for siding and then put up that batch. The third wall is almost complete! And he started work on the last wall! I don't even know what I will do when this siding is finally complete. Laugh, cry, jump around. Probably all three! 

When I returned home this weekend, we decided to dive into the solar power system once again. On Sunday, we hunkered down and brought every last box and bag of pieces inside. We were determined to figure this out. Long story short, we learned A LOT, from reading through the different manuals as well as checking out video after video on youtube. We have primarily MidNite Solar products and they have some videos up. There are also a whole lot of DIY solar power people out there using MidNite solar products- so we were able to glean quite a bit from various sources.

We turned the computer on and started reading, reviewing, and watching. We discussed our thoughts and how we interpreted directions. We put small pieces together here and there. We grouped other pieces according to how they would be used. We compiled a list of questions. Haha. By the time we looked at the clock, we were shocked to realize that 4.5 hours had gone by! We both felt like we had put in maybe an hour!

What we concluded that afternoon is that we had too many unknowns, and we weren't sure, but we thought some components were missing. We decided to wait and call up our rep, Greg, at the AltE Store, to get definite answers. We weren't about to guess with $6000 on the line.

Eeh?!

Come to find out, we were missing a few different pieces and needed to get some more wiring. In discussions with our rep, we also discovered one of our breakers was not the right size! So I am feeling pretty damn glad we waited and made the call. We will be ordering the additional parts needed this week and hopefully will have this system up and running before the end of August!

I know there are plenty of you who are curious about solar power and I promise you I will be putting together a big juicy post of how ours goes together and works. I have also been compiling the most helpful videos we have found. I just might make a set of my own videos, because the one thing that frustrated me, was all the folks putting up videos and calling it “how to” when really they just flashed a couple photos of their set up and gave some extremely vague descriptions. I don't know about you, but I like videos that talk to me like I'm a first grader and break every little bit down into comprehend-able pieces. That's what you can expect from me. The other challenging aspect is that there is no cookie cutter set up for solar power systems. The size of your system, the voltage, the distance between parts, etc all lead to very unique set ups. Not to mention, you can purchase one piece from one company, and then another piece from a different company, and so on, and of course, all these pieces look slightly different too. We watched a very comprehensive video on putting together a combiner box, only to open ours up and see that it looks nothing like the one in the video. The general concepts are the same, but a standardization in the actual pieces would be nice.

Oh! And something to look forward to! We had a really cool videographer named Danny come do a shoot of the Pod and interview us. This video and blog post are for a super awesome company called Custom Made. Check them out! It's kind of like a step up from Etsy. There are thousands of top notch artists and craftsmen who make use of this site. You have an idea or project you want to see created? You post what you want on Custom Made and then various artists or craftsmen will contact you if they are willing to create it for you!

We feel a little silly with our simple house being showcased on a site with such incredible work being displayed- but as Danny said- it's not just about fine craftsmanship, it's about creating. No matter what level you are at. They support and commend those who want to dig in and do it themselves too. We can't wait to see the finished video and blog post! Stay tuned!

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What A Weekend!

We aren't done yet, but we feel light as feathers!

It was a big pain and an even bigger relief to get the solar panel racking built and in the ground. Over the last week we have been steadily tying up loose ends. I sanded down all the areas of siding that I applied wood filler to, and then went out and got a stainable kind- which should make things way easier. We also finished building the rest of the posts needed for the panels, continued siding work, and then this weekend, mounted the posts in the ground. 

Talk about work! It took us almost two full days and some extra help to get those posts in the ground, level, plumb, and ready to rock. Luckily it was flat out amazing weather. Mostly sunny, low 70s, and breezy. When you are digging holes, the weather can play a big part in your experience. We definitely got frustrated and threw shovels (ahem, DAN) more than once, but I can only imagine how it would have gone down if it were say....98 degrees, 99% humidity and zero breeze.

The soil at the farm has a LOT of rocks in varying sizes from baseball to "Why don't we just put a koi pond here by the time we get this freakin' thing out!".  On day one, we did most everything ass backwards. Maybe it was the added stress of possibly moving the next day (which didn't pan out) but we both were approaching the task in a not so efficient way. We dug holes first and expected the rest to fit flawlessly. Never again! Thankfully, most of our holes were not too far off, but we did end up digging more than the 6 you see in these pictures. 

Dan's Dad came by later in the day and helped us get the first row secure, level, even, and pretty much any other direction descriptor you can think of. Man, can it be hard to get things lined up when they can go wrong in about 8 different directions! We put in about 9 hours on Saturday.

On Sunday, we came back and finished the second row. We had the holes dug, and things looked relatively straight. That was until we started measuring with tools. HA! Long story short, we had to dig our holes deeper, and of course we ran into a very large rock right where the pole needed to go. Deb and Michael were home Sunday, so Michael came to the rescue with his tractor and dug a great big hole before that stupid boulder was out. The second hole seemed fine, so Michael went off to tend to his own chores. When we got to the third hole, we realized that the poles were not in a neat row, and the hole had to be moved about 6 inches over and be about 6 inches deeper. We found another rock. We battled with that thing for about an hour, using every technique we could come up with including using an 8 ft 2x4 as a lever. 

Layla knows just where to lay down and relax...

After enough grunting, screaming, swearing, sweating, tripping, shoveling, filling, packing, twisting and tweaking, we had our second row in order. We thought it would only take an hour or two, but ended up taking the better part of 4 hours. We plan to add some more supports to help brace against wind. We will put a small leg under the front low arm and another 2x4 bracing against the back of the pole too. 

Our site supervisors. If only they were as helpful as they were attentive! :)

Pointing directly south? Check! 

Needless to say we are two pooped, sore, but very happy people. Sure the job sucked, but the land, the weather, the view, and all the wildlife made it worth it. The farm is SO beautiful and we cannot wait to get there! 

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Solar racking: MOUNTED!