# 3 Ah, Homeless? I don't think so...

Peek-a-boo. Just a cute picture of my husband as we put on the first part of the ceiling in the Huge Tiny House

Of course we were barely into the process of starting the Huge Tiny House when my girlfriend passed away. We had been sharing business space for a couple of years. We lived in the same building in a tiny little space half the size we planned for the Huge Tiny House. Even though it was separate from the business itself, it was emotionally tied to the lease and when my friend passed on a family member of hers expected us to get out. En toto. 

I write about this in its entirety in Diamonds In The Dirt for it was an intricate part of how we ended up on our property building a Huge Tiny House around us--literally. 

In short, we were expected to close the business and move out of the business part of the building as well as our personal space; the apartment, to sever any professional connection between us and our friends remaining family.  Without going into the details it was such short notice there were no retail places available on such short notice, nor was there any apartments in our price range. 

Our choices were shut the business temporarily and go homeless or make a home. Since we were already in the process of starting the Huge Tiny House, it just made sense to continue. It just had to be done at speed without all the necessary materials or money. We packed it up and went. What a grand journey even though it jump started with sadness. 

 We had several people who offered us several possible very short term solutions. 

Friend one: Move into our unfinished garage...really? Ummm, no. Thank you though it was kind of you to offer. 

Friend two: Move into my basement. We really considered this one, we love these people but they have a dog, we have a terror of a cat. Not a good mix. Plus, being short term it was better to be onsite and force us into working day in and day out. It was going to get cold mighty fast. The shell had to go up as quick as possible. 

We had many other offers but those two stood out. 

I think the day I first began to see the box to be house as a house was the day I added this front trim in the picture. But it was six weeks before this happened. Remember, we went from being on a budget to having no budget. I had to hunt down every stick and every piece of wood for a reduced price. Even the paint was not new I hunted in second hand shops and such to find leftovers to mix and blend. Thank goodness, I am an artist. Just a few months later, we tore it all off to expand the Huge Tiny House. Seems, i'm a bit claustrophobic as well as needing just a bit more space to produce art. But, I am getting ahead of myself and this picture is already on the blog. Stay tuned. There will be more in a day or two.

Starting Over - # 1 The Beginning

I remember the day my husband and I came out to the property and while praying about our situation we kept saying to each other, "All we need is a roof over our heads."

Indeed. We laugh now for we then looked up and saw, we had a roof.

Behind that faux wall in the picture was a trailer. We intended to move into it and build out the gazebo into a Tiny House. It would answer all of our problems.

However, someone in the neighborhood felt our property and our trailer and all the work tools and camping gear were salvageable the dear little scavenger. But instead of just taking what was laying around they took the time to rip out the wires, lighting, stove, and refrigerator as well. Strange they felt ripping the wallpaper down as well as the roof tiles.

Although this was a bit daunting we did not let this stop us. When an instant decision had to be made we went ahead and moved into a tent that looked like the picture below.

That worked out great for the first week or two. Remember those micro-storms that were taking trees down in 2014 at the end of the summer? We woke up to one as it ripped the seams apart on the tent. 

We had to move into the box to be house. Yes, we seriously had begun to build The Huge Tiny House from used materials. 

 

Bob, a dear friend brought out a huge pile of used 2" by 6", 2" by 4" and such. His truck was draggin it's butt. 

This is a couple of pictures of some of those used materials. Not only did we have to collect them, we then had to turn them into usable wood and such by removing screws, nails and sometimes even old foam insulation had to be scraped off. We had a lot of used items to drag out to the property. 

Some of our neighbors began to snicker at us and call us the Pallet Palace, endearing themselves to us along the way. Delightful!