Living & Loving It

I’m in love with my new house!! I moved in on Dec. 29 and I’m loving it. It’s so cozy and warm, and I know people will think I’m crazy, but it feels so spacious! Compared to the 58 sq. ft. camper, that is. I have a full 6′ x 6′ of open floor space!!  That means I could actually fall down and not do a face-plant into the heater, which is something I always worried about before.

As you know I only half-insulated most of the house. The bedroom/living/dining space is fully insulated but the rest, just 1 1/2″ of foam insulation. It needs another 2″ of foam which should be done before the summer heat hits.  There’s zero insulation in the gable ends!  In spite of that, I’m having trouble with being too warm at night. Unless the temps are down around 20 at night, I’m too hot and have to get up and turn the heater off for awhile, then get back up and turn it back on in a couple hours. That’s OK. I really thought I’d have to make a false ceiling at the 8′ level in order to keep warm but I’m sure glad I didn’t do that; I’d be sweltering! I’m using a Mr. Heater Buddy for heat; the small one that goes from 4,000 to 9,000 BTU’s.  On sunny days I get enough heat from the sun through the windows that I can turn the heater off by about 10 a.m.

My door has huge gaps on both sides but I’ve decided not to seal them up, as I do need some fresh oxygen. This way I don’t need to remember to open a window when I turn on the heater. And the place still stays quite warm enough!

The only thing I really hate is the floor.  I used OSB for subfloor and it sat out in the weather for months, so it’s kinda flaky. I kept getting splinters in my feet until I laid down every little rug and towel I could find! The other day I was able to buy two really nice 2×3′ rugs for $3 each at a thrift shop! Now it’s very comfy and cushy with two layers of rugs. I’m sure I’ll soon be wishing I had a vacuum cleaner though.

I am completely off-grid right now, I’m not able to set up the solar because I don’t have a battery for the house. And too, the space for the battery is not available right now; the refrigerator is sitting there.  It’s one of those Catch-22 situations; I need to frame in the space for the fridge but it’s in the way, and it’s too heavy for me to move.  Anyway, I’m still able to recharge my Kindles, wifi, phone & laptop over in the camper. The biggest problem is lighting at night. I’m using those free lights that Harbor Freight gives away and one solar Luci Light (which is GREAT!) but it’s really hard to get good light for cooking. I try to get all my cooking done before it gets done, because the place really is filled with light during the day. I worried a bit about it being too dark because the windows are so small, but it’s fine.

I moved in well before I was truly ready but I was so tired of being too cold in the camper! So all the walls are just the foam insulation board, there was no shelving, no place for clothes or kitchen storage or worktop. I had bought three 16″ wide melamine boards at ReStore awhile back so I used one of them to support the cool Camp Chef outdoor stove &  oven, and another to be the countertop. I’m already jonesing for a wider countertop…..16″ is definitely not deep enough! But for now it’ll do.

Here’s the kitchen when I started out, and after I set up the base support & countertop:

And here’s how it looks now. I saw this $10 fabric shower curtain and thought that kind of thing would make a cool wall. Then I decided, why wait!  So for $10 I got my wall. I ripped the last 16″ melamine board into a 10″ and a 6″ wide piece and made shelves, and added an Ikea rail system. I like how it turned out, though I wish I had figured out a way to get the creases out of the shower curtain before I nailed it up there!

And as you can see, I’ve put the heater up on a small table so Roxie can’t get too close and burst into flames.

Here’s the “open-air” bathroom!

And here’s my bed. It’s about 40″ high and I can easily get in and out of it using the little stepladder. It’s super-comfortable with a 3″ inflatable pad under a 3″ foam mattress and 2″ memory foam.

One of the things that makes the house feel larger is the nice high peaked roof. The way I insulated it is called “Poor man’s blown-in foam”. It is 4″ slabs of foam that are sealed all the way around with Great Stuff.  (The orange squiggly lines) The foam I bought was used, plus it sat around for a year here, so that’s why it looks grubby. I decided not to seal the sidewalls because I was going to be heating with propane. It produces a LOT of condensation, so a really tight tiny house would be weeping rain inside, the whole time the heater was running.

Well that’s about it for Show and Tell today. It’s been horribly windy and cold here so I haven’t been getting a whole lot accomplished, and I don’t care! I’m just enjoying the heck out of my new house!