Relocation Complete....for this event

Well, I have been absent for a while living life. Part of that was finding a new location for the Cottage. This was the first real move since "completing" the cottage as much as it is. It was quite a event, stressful to say the least. While I love living in my 24ft cottage, it would be a bit easier to manage if it were 20ft long with no decks. Glad I don't plan on moving it every 90 days! While I have no time table on my new digs, I am hopeful that it can live here through the rains and if it needs to be moved it would again happen during sunshine. So here are my new neighbors, at least for a while. Too funny, they had to come down and check out the new guy on the block.

My goal was to reduce my commute and I have gone from 35 minutes to 8, that is sweet in a lot of ways. I also have access to well water and it takes about 40 minute to fill my tank that can easily last me a month when I have no rain to fill the tank. I used a U-haul to get the cottage in place and that worked well. We had to modify the gate opening a bit, as you can see below it was a bit tight.

But once we got her in place she looks like she always belonged there. I have an awesome view of the eastern sky for sunsets and full sun for the solar panels. I will be doing another post on the additions to the solar aspect of the cottage, good stuff thanks to the two companies I use to get my solar gear, both have come through very well for this project. So here is the new home to the Mini Mobile Cottage.

Home Sweet Home, guarding the chickens (they live in the tiny house behind me). I should get the new solar panels up this weekend be able to tell that interesting story. I will also go a bit more into detail on the move, positives and negatives for us all to learn from.

Well It Happened

I am not sure whether it was my subconscious trying to delay the inevitable or just a case of burn out, more to my liking is just the simple fact I am not a finish carpenter and that I was not ready to tackle a project that I thought I just was completely unskilled to do. Not that I could not do it, it was just I wanted it done right and I knew that I would have a challenge getting the end product that I wanted.

I started on My Mini Mobile Cottage journey in earnest on the 15th of January 2011. Being the optimist I am, I   figured I would be living in the cottage by the end of summer. That is the summer of 2011. What an awesome learning experience this has been but I had no idea that I would be doing a blog post on the 11th of March 2012 stating that I had just finished the last major project on the Cottage.

I had this picture I pulled off  the Tiny House Blog. It was a gal who had modified her Teardrop Trailer and I just really liked the look. Framed in forest green and with pine doors. I have carried that vision for most of the build that I was hopeful to end up with something close. Here is her kitchen. I finally found her site and it is Tiny Home Teardrop

My first real modification on the vision was drawers. I have never build a drawer and very quickly realized that drawers were not in my skill set. So I wondered down the path of shelves and just simple cabinets. Now that I am done, I feel it would have broken up the four sections if I had put in drawers but I really don't need them, I would have filled them with junk anyway. So here is the unfinished kitchen look.

I have run out of the Beetle Kill Pine so I was only able to do one set of doors with what I had left, the rest is just regular pine. I tried a couple of different routing patterns with the doors, as usual I finally settled on what I like...by the last set of door. Oh well.

Well here is my kitchen in its full glory.

While I could easily come up with of 20 little things I would like to do. None of them are pressing and I am very hopeful as the weather starts to turn to be able to get into my Kayak and enjoy some of the Pacific NW that have not seen for a year and a half. Hope you have enjoyed the ride if you have been following along on my building journey. I will continue to document the small additions I plan on making during the next year, trim on the out side, bathroom shelves, another shelf in the loft. But for the most part, I am done. I have enjoyed the journey and am eager and able to answer questions if you find a particular post interesting and want to comment, those immediately come to my email and I generally address them promptly.

While I have built a "tiny house" I don't feel compelled to start a "tiny house" company or tour the country side telling people about all my opinions. I do have them though and really would enjoy talking about the tiny house community over a beer with anyone who wants to hunt me up and have that discussion.

If I have any encouragement for those who stumble across my ramblings. Believe it, you too can do this. It took a community to build this cottage. This is not my project but a project that I drove and as I got committed to it, people came forth and joined the effort as they wanted to share the vision. Thank You to anyone of you who helped along the way. There are far more people out there who have no idea what their blogs inspired me to do, or some hurdle their video on Youtube help me over come. I had no idea prior to this project how many people recorded video's of how to install a shower? Go figure.

I will soon post a video walk through of the Mobile Cottage. Enjoy.

Getting Close To A Fully Working Kitchen

I had a request for some outside shots of the Cottage so I will post two, one from each end. Okay I had to throw in one of the front door.

I have several little projects that I am trying to get wrapped up before I relocate. I won't have quick access to my tools so I want to make sure I have all the little things done, before more little things pop up. This is just an awesome living space and been very happy with all the equipment choices I made in building this cottage. I am working on a slow sand filter system for my discharge from the sink to use for watering a garden. Since I am really focused on 100% biodegradable soaps/cleaners, I feel I am good in that area. I am really working on a zero discharge system for aspects of the cottage. From living on a sailboat, I don't put hardly any organics down the sink (on a sailboat they just clog things up) so that is a habit I learned long ago.  That really helps keep my discharge clean and easy to filter. I will get some shots of it posted once I get further along. It should look pretty cool, I am building it out of half cut wine barrels.

Alright on to the little projects. The first two are lights in the loft. Since I am rigged for 12volt up there and I like to keep my Droid phone charged by my bed I not only wanted a good LED light but a charger station. It works great with my car charger. I used the same strategy I did on the fireplace hose cover and I like the way it came out.

While those lights were a little spendy as they are "full marine grade" if you get my drift. They are LED so use a minuscule amount of power and will outlast the cottage, I think they are rated for 50 years or some crazy thing. After climbing up the ladder a couple of hundred times, I realized it would add some additional security so I put up a handle, again thanks to sailboat experience they have these readily available. May I never have a challenge going up or down the ladder. It would not be  pretty to fall from the loft.

As you can tell I have not oiled the handle yet, It should look a little better once I do that. The other aspect of the ladder is it flipping off the loft for some crazy reason. I have added a ladder lock as I don't move the ladder around from side to side and if I take if off it gets stored in the loft. But when it is just me around the cottage, I leave the ladder down as there is plenty of room to get around it without touching it. So to lock it I just slide the dowl through the hole and to unlock, slide it the other way and then up to the loft it goes! But when it is down the stairs also make handy temporary shelves.

So back to the Kitchen cabinets. I have put in the shelves that I wanted and am comfortable with the layout. I have the faceboards in the garage painted and drying. They will get another coat and then this weekend I will mount them.

 Then I will build the doors and by then all the major work on the cottage will be done. I have about 100 little items I would "like" to get done but none are pressing. I will start working on a video of the finished product. Should be fun.

New Pantry/Bathroom Door

It is becoming home. I really love this place, what an enjoyable place to hang your hat. I can't wait till it is located in a more permanent spot, that is a whole blog post of it's own. But the bottom line is this is a great space to live in and I am very happy with how it is turning out. Still more to do but it is coming together. I have gotten to a point where I can visualize what I want and make it happen.

I still believe it takes a community to make it happen. Sometimes that is a helping hand, or someone with a talent you don't have to come along side and work with you. Other times it is just the wealth of knowledge on the net. I saw this picture on the Tiny House Blog of a little barn looking building and I really liked the pattern on the door. I had a traditional "X" look the closet door so I decided to change it up on the pantry and then do a reverse pattern on the back side. It came out awesome.

I used traditional farm hardware for the hinges and the lock. This is the exterior of the door and the side that is inside the bathroom. Here is the other side.

 While it really does not matter for the purpose of this photo but yes it up side down Okay I could not stand it any more, I rotated it and got it right side up.

This faces inside the cottage if I want to hold the door shut. I can also swing all the open against the shower door if I want access to the pantry/refer and still collect light from the window in the bathroom. The best of all worlds. I found this great picture on "barn door latches" search on bing that I copied for my latch.

Other little things I did was all the wiring on the underside of the loft is all boxed in.

I had to add four inches to the wall to make the door work right. Little tricky but came out just fine. Some time in the next couple of weekends I am going to have to suck it up and address the kitchen cabinets. I have put it off long enough and I may be moving soon so I have to get this stuff done.

Fireplace Beautification

For the last couple of months everyone who stops by to see how the project is going and there is inevitable question about my fireplace. They look at the hose and go, "Hey what are you going to do about that?" I would think to myself, I have no idea. One of the great things about this project is it has allowed me to tap into an unknown creativity that did not existed.

I am not a sketcher when it comes to this type of stuff, I am at a point that I just look at the problem and let a couple of "thought sessions" happen and it comes together in my mind and bang, I got it. The project usually evolves as I start putting piece together and I really have no clue what the final product is going to look like but I have a direction and just start building and see what come out. The ladder project was that way and so here is  my fireplace beautification project.

A open slot to that I can shut off the propane if need be.

I have found some of the spare flooring is kinda fun to work with. Dang hard stuff though.

I also put in a pull down shade for the electrical room closet. There was no room for a door, I did not like the idea of a bi-fold on this door (didn't know how to build one without taking a bunch of time) and wanted a plan clean look as the other two doors are pretty busy. this should work out excellent.

Before

Top Plate for mounting the "select blind"

Nice clean look

The End Of The Aluminum Ladder!

Okay on the progress scale things have slowed down. I have several things on the "Want To Do" list, this is a long way from the "ToDo" List I have had for the last year. ToDo means that these things must get done! My "want to do list" is far more relaxed and generally take more then one weekend to accomplish. That is both true from a time perspective as a logistic one, paint one weekend, assemble the next. The ladder was one of those projects that took several weekends this was because I had other smaller quicker projects and that I really had an open plan on the ladder as I have never built from scratch anything close to this.

So here is what I wanted, a ladder that had the hand made look, had some pieces and parts made from what I made the cottage with, Beetle Kill Pine, Acacia Flooring, Cedar, Same Fasteners. I wanted really good sturdy hand grips at the top and the bottom so I put large doweling as part of the stability/hand rail. I needed something that would carry my weight and be very stable. Here is what I came up with

Because this lives on my bed in the loft and I muscle it down when I need it, I have these bobsled handles, they work great. Lot's to grab onto when moving up to the loft or down to the floor. So here it is in the cottage.

I notched in the ladder and will put in a lock block and be able to slide the ladder over to the lock block and will be hooked to the cross beam until I slide it off the lock.

I thought the flooring for steps worked out real well. That wood is strong, really strong. Overall I am pleased with the functionality of the ladder and it certainly has a funky look to it.

A couple other projects that I worked on were a picture frame, I used some extra flooring that I have for that, I will wrap it in cedar and post a key picture of the build in it. I also adjusted my rain gauge to be level, pretty hokey but it is accurate. For every inch of rain I get one hundred and fifty one gallons in my catchment tank. Since it is only 205 gallons, I am loosing a lot of water no matter how many showers I take. It has rained 10.57 inches over the last month. Welcome to Portland in the winter. Oh yea...winter just started.

This weekend is painting the bathroom/pantry door and it's various parts. Three weeks from now I will have a real cool post about what it looks like.

Wow, Getting Closer Every Weekend

Don't laugh but this is snow in Dundee

A view out the window of the cottage

Looking for Hot Spots to see if I was leaking heat. Nope!

Okay it was a little cool in the work shop this morning. I was focused on putting together my door and working on some other little projects. The other little projects came together and then I focused on the door.

Kitchen Shelf

Coat Rack

Okay I had the door all cut and laid out. I had painted all the slats and here are all the pieces.

I know it is a little more robust for a door then I had expected but I wanted this look and it really came out looking like I wanted. I was looking for the barn door experience and it meant that expectation. I am eventually going to do the kitchen cabinets the same color scheme, this door will fit in well.

This is the door open, I can use it as a shower door if I have people over and want to have both a shower and access to my closet with a little privacy. It came out like I had hoped and will now work on a similar door to cover the refer and pantry. I will then work on a bi-fold door for the electrical room and dual purpose bathroom door for guests.  

The hasp that I can use on the kitchen counter to keep the door closed while I shower  with plenty of room and access to both the bathroom and my closet

This upcoming weekend is all about the ladder, THE LADDER.