teeny tiny micro mini

We're building right? (Not really, an Option C was discovered (options A and B)but let's pretend that we're still planning to build for the sake of this post and I'll update at a later date what Option C is - the current plan.)
I stumbled across Tiny House Blog which lead to Tumbleweed houses and ideas started flowing.
At first I was convinced we could live in a house less than 100 square feet. The secret?
The loft!



Eureka!
The kids could share the loft and we could....well, we can add a bedroom onto that little house. So maybe we could do it for 150 square feet. It's doable, right? Right?

Okay... so three rooms would really be better.
What about less than 1,000 square feet... Say 800-900 square feet?



I'm in love with the cuteness, the eco-friendliness (really? do we need 2000+ square feet? No, no we do not!), the potential for expansion if necessary, AND we know it's short term. Yes, short term could mean 10 years but as I said, there's room for expansion if needed but also a great challenge to live within a smaller space. Besides, as it is now, the kids are always in the room, preferably on top of us literally (their preference, not ours) so why would we need more than one 5 rooms?

reality check

Many people are curious about our thoughts on buying vs. building after I posted asking for opinions on facebook. While we were in Vermont (seriously need to upload garden-in-process pics!) we got sucked into thinking about buying again. The housing prices are low low and mortgage rates are also low low. If we were ever going to buy now seems like a sensible time to do so. This would also give us space from the farm and some in-town presence for potential farm store in the future.
It also came out that we will likely be the family moving in to the farm house at some point in the future... we just don't know at what point. So we need something temporarily.
So buy? 200k.
rent? 1k/mos
build? 100k
trailer to replace trailer that is falling apart? 20-70k

Buy
... We can't afford 200k, we can't. And what if we couldn't sell it? And we're really home bodies so if we had a house off the farm we'd slowly move our projects to our house which we don't want to do.

rent
... we could do this but this has the same issues of having the off-farm house that buying does. Plus, rent at 1k/mos means in less than two years we'd have paid off a trailer. If we knew it was a 6mos wait until the farm house was available, sure. But it could be 2 days, it could be 10 years.

build
...hmmm, maybe we can't even afford 100k especially because we'd like to get a cheese make room up and running as well as a cheese cave. That should take precedence. And part of the build included a photo studio... do we really need that? Should we consider that in another building at a later date if we're missing it? And the 100k house also included space for future fostering of children. But we don't have those children now and if we can't afford a room for them maybe wait until we can add on or until we're in the farm house?

trailer
... I've been very anti this from the beginning. Would you invite someone over to your trailer for dinner? No? I don't really want to either. But we could do it... 10 years would blow but it could be doable.

So we look at trailers... well it looks like:
option a) 1977 model
option b) 50k-75k
If we could find a trailer that falls into an option c then trailers will be discussed again, I'm sure.


hmmm- couldn't we make a house for less than 50k?
Okay so maybe not a 2k square foot house but do we need that much space?
We're constantly in the same room - all of us. I'm sure that will change as the kids age but as they age we anticipate having money to expand small house and/or have the farm house. Plus we're anticipating being outside a. l.o.t! Farming=outside. How much space do we need to eat and sleep? And if a small house gets cramped -all the more reason to go outside to work, play and maybe even eat and sleep.

So I think that's what we'll do... same building materials, probably not octagon, much smaller (like half the size or less).

ps we have considered a yurt and it's not totally off the table but it's definitely near the edge.

All about shape

Originally we were looking in to a dome kit. We read that round homes use 30%fewer materials. The price of building may end up similar to a conventionally shaped house because a round house is less familiar to builders/contractors/etc. We felt this made sense even if it didn't save us cash it saved using resources. We also learned that the more round the structure the more efficient heating/cooling is due to the structure's airflow.
We were debating between Timberline and Natural Spaces. Both options had their appeal.
We stumbled across icf (more on that in a future post, promise!) and decided that building the house completely out of ICF made sense for us for several reasons.
ICF comes with 90degree or 45degree corners. The 45degree lends itself to a octagonal shape. When comparing efficiency and material use with a circular house vs. octagonal the difference is minimal.
So after spending hours of designing a floor plan the second floor was still giving us trouble. Our aim was to incorporate passive solar strategies. One of the elements of passive solar is an east-west orienation with a long side of a presumably rectangular house facing the south and north. We wondered if we could elongate our octagon making the central area smaller and space on exterior walls (ie more windows) more available... but that would lessen even more the benefits we were seeking through building a round-turned-octagon-shaped-house.
Back to the octagon with an emphasis on the second floor design before figuring out the first floor while recognizing that it's all interconnected so you can't design one floor without considering the others.
So new floor plan that we're feeling confident with... but feedback is very appreciated. This whole house design thing is a lot of pressure. We don't want regrets!

 

 

The trailer is on a 14'wide slab and sticks out about where the random bathtub is... I really want the screened in area (which is probably going to be more a screened in patio) to be on the north side of the house because I envision us escaping out there during the summer and the north side would be cooler. The slab is in perfect position to be the outdoor patio... but in an awkward spot floor design/driveway-wise... I'm sure there will be an updated first floor (at least) plan at some point because of the sill slab factor. I asked if we could move it to where we want the patio (unfortunately not on the north side, but better floor plan-wise) but Ren Man doesn't know if we'd be able to level the ground enough to put it in place rather than pouring new cement/using slate.

1st floor House Plan

I can't believe I haven't posted since we were in Vermont back in early June!!
We've spent every possible moment hammering out house plans. I've recently started pouring over blogs of those who have gone before us (200khouse, building green in vermont, Robert Swinburne... and open to more suggestions! Reading these blogs (and not finding more!) has inspired me to update and share our progress more regularly.
I'm finding lots of great ideas and inspirations and questions that I wasn't even considering (countertop, flooring, windows, bath/shower options, etc.).
So many decisions to make! The shape is a challenge but is so compelling because of the decrease in material use needed for the same square footage in a square house. We're also worried (more for the second floor) that we'll need more space. We've designed a 2k square foot house - not including a finished basement. Crazy to think this isn't big enough. So we'll keep tweaking the second floor.
For now, here's the first floor as we see it now. Anything we're not thinking of? Anything not clear?

 

We're using this really great free program called sketchup by google to draw out our designs.
I'll go in to details about flooring and countertops in another post, as well as details about the masonary oven and why we chose it. There was a comment on the previous entry asking about icf and why we're going with that option... so that's another upcoming post.
Keep asking questions! We have a little less than a year and we're feeling like there are a lot of layers to this project and we don't want to miss something (like, if you put a door there you'll block access to this hallway... or whatever).

Vermont house site

We went up the road to take pictures of our future house building site.
It's good to get the site more clear in our heads. I'm a little sad that there is little to no backyard to speak of but when all the land you can see in these pictures is part of the farm... who needs a backyard?

This is the view from the road.

 

We're planning on using icf to build the whole house. We'll dig in to the hill to bury half of the basement and have half exposed. The two additional floors. The basement floor will be half studio, 1/4 utilities, and 1/4 guest room... at least that's the plan now. We spoke with the building permit granters and were informed that no architect approved plans are needed. That's nice. But the bank may not feel the same. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

 

We bought 11 fruit trees yesterday to put along the border of the front yard (that butts up to pasture). We brought 2 apples and 1 pear home. The rest we'll get in mid-August... the rest include 1apple, 2 pears, 1 cherry, and 3 plums.
Dreaming about spring pictures among the fruit blossoms, summer pictures in whatever hayfield needs mowing, fall pictures in a shaded grove behind the house that will be full of fall colors, and winter pictures along rustic fence lines. The ideas for awesome locations right on the farm... never mind the quaint store fronts in town... keep coming. And that's only talking about photography... saying nothing of the big farming plans!

 

We spoke with Ren Man's parents and presented a tentative 5 year plan. We made accommodations before presenting the plan to make the plan most palatable to Ren Man's dad - current farmer extraordinaire. We held off on lessening the herd size or changing up the breed until year three. We know there are several things to do before we really need to change the herd. His dad's response: why wait for three years?!?!
Very exciting!

 

Confusing to think that we aren't starting now when I feel we're chomping at the bit! This slow and steady pace will be beneficial, I'm sure. For now our brains are full of plans and we're thankful to at least have some things we can do this year (namely, plant the fruit trees).