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Arizona Shed to Tiny House Tiny Homes Tiny House Uncategorized

Same Old

Nothing really new to report here, same old thing. LOTS of wind, nearly every day. That means they can’t pick up the shed; the wind has to be under 10 mph. A few days ago we had sustained winds of 45 mph with gusts over 70!! Crazy. I wisely parked the camper heading into the prevailing winds and I was so glad! If winds like that had been hitting the side of the camper we’d have gone tumbling down the hill for sure! We also have had 6″ of snow in the past week (3 separate snowfalls). But it pretty much went away the next day when the sun came out, and the wind does help the driveway and road dry out fairly quickly. Hate that the county still hasn’t put any gravel on my nice new road. I try not to go anywhere for 3 or 4 days after a big rain or snow.

Roxie was sick for two days! Don’t know what it was; she just seemed to feel generally yucky. She didn’t eat anything for two whole days but was drinking water, and she didn’t have a fever. All she wanted to do was lay around on MY bed and sleep! That’s weird because normally she’ll only spend a few seconds on my bed; she likes her bed on the floor. She’s always been a Floor Dog, not a bed dog, not a lap dog. So glad she’s feeling better today!

I am packing up the camper and we are leaving today for an A-Frame camper rally near Sedona. I’m not staying in the expensive state park with everyone else, I’ll be boondocking a few miles away. After being in this spot for 3 months it’s a real pain to pack it up! All kinds of things are in here that normally are not, and since I don’t have anywhere to store things, I’ll have to find a place in here to carry them. I also have stuffed every little crack and crevice with little bits of foam, probably 100 little pieces! I’ll never get them back where they belong. Maybe by the time I get back the weather will have moderated some. We have been having nighttime temps in the teens, and some nights the wind doesn’t die down all the way, so it tends to get a little breezy in here! I’ve been waking up to inside temps of around 50, even with the heater going full blast.

We had such a wonderful winter up til about two weeks ago! The days were sunny and warm, in the mid-60’s, and nights were in the 20’s. And now when it should be getting to be spring-like, winter has hit with a vengeance. I am quite worried that the spring winds are here to stay and I’ll never get that darn shed picked up! I can’t start the new one until that one is gone, because it has to go in the same spot.

Here are a few items that folks have purchased from Amazon lately. Feel free to use these links to access Amazon and do your shopping! I really do appreciate it.

Roadside Assistance Auto Emergency Kit

“Prey” by Michael Crichton

12 oz. Hanging Hummingbird Feeder

 

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Arizona Shed to Tiny House Tiny Homes Uncategorized

Update

Just a little update on what’s going on here. Still haven’t heard from The Guy about when he’ll pick up the shed. It’s back to it’s original state; I removed the shutters and windowboxes, patched the holes and repainted. I am assuming he’s waiting until he gets an order in this vicinity again, so he doesn’t have to come all the way from Tucson just for this.

I’m working on a little project right now, a water tower!  The local feed store has 275 gallon plastic water containers with a metal cage around them for  $120. That’s a great price; they are usually $150-165.

water tote

I can get 275 gallons of water delivered for $25, so it would be a really convenient and economical way to have a water supply here. Right now I have to take my gallon jugs to town and  pay $.30 a gallon to get them filled. The nearest water dispenser machine is about 25 miles away, so it’s not always convenient. At $25 a fill-up, that’s only $.09 a gallon!

I’m thinking that I want to  build a platform for it so it’ll sit about 3′ high. That way it will be easy to use the spigot at the bottom, and eventually it will gravity-feed to the house, and I won’t have to worry about getting and maintaining a 12 volt pump. I bought some 4×4’s for legs and some 2×6’s for crossbars. 275 gallons of water weighs somewhere around 2280# so it has to be sturdy!

I’ve also decided to put off building the 8×12 tiny house until Fall. There’s no way I could come up with the $1000 or so I need to build & insulate it before summer, and I would not want to leave it for summer unless it could be locked.  That’s the bad thing, I probably can’t stay here in summer if I’m still living in the camper. Even if I rig up a shade cloth over the camper, I don’t think I could keep it cool enough without air conditioning. It’s only got 1″ of foam insulation in the walls & roof, and I’m very sensitive to heat!

So I’m thinking about trying to build a really small storage shed, 6×8′. I’m going to need a shed anyway, and I’m pretty sure I can afford to build that and insulate the heck out of it, and maybe I could get a comfortable chair and hang out there during the day this summer, and sleep in the camper at night. It almost always goes down to 60º or less at night in summer, so that would help a lot.  I’ve found some easy plans for a homemade evaporative cooler that should help. It may not cool down the whole space, but if I aim the fan at me, it might keep me cool. It’s not one of those hokey ice-filled cooler with fan things; I have no way to make ice! It is a true evaporative cooler using a small $8 water fountain pump to drizzle water over a special pad, with a 12v fan in front of it.

I really have no desire to go wandering around this summer; I really want to have a garden and I can’t do that if I go a-wandering. And just thinking of driving 300+ miles to get to the higher elevations in Colorado or New Mexico makes me tired. Some folks spend the summer in Flagstaff but it’s just not high enough; it’s only 200′ higher than here. (I’m at 6700′) The average high here in July-August is 90 which is way too hot for me!  So I think I will work on building a little storage building, and see how it works out. Hopefully I’d know something by May about whether or not I can stand the summer….before garden planting time! The last frost date here is May 10.

Building the tiny shed would also give me a good idea of whether or not I can build the larger structure in the fall.  I’m a little worried about arthritic hands and knees and how they’d hold up on a big (to me) building project. Boy it sucks to get old!

Here are links to some of the items readers have purchased on Amazon. Feel free to use these links to browse and shop!

Mohu Leaf HDTV Antenna

Samsung Galaxy J3 Case

Norpro Glass Cheese Dome with Marble Base

 

Categories
Arizona Shed to Tiny House Tiny Homes Tiny House Uncategorized

A Do-Over!

Surprise, surprise…..I’m returning the shed. I know it’s cute, but pretty is as pretty does.  It is not what I ordered, and the things that are not as specifed mean I’d have to significantly change my plans. At first I kept thinking, “OK, I’ll have to modify the plans for that”. And that. And that.  Well wait a minute….I don’t think I should have to modify my plans that much, just because the guy didn’t feel like buildling what I ordered!  None of this is my fault!  So I’m having them pick it up. Since it’s a Rent To Own deal, there’s no penalty at all for sending it back.

I ordered 8’ sidewalls because I planned to have a murphy bed that drops down from the wall, but have it high enough so someone could still sit or sleep on the sofa below it. He assured me that that model came with standard 8’ sidewalls, but mine has 7’ sidewalls. This meant that the wall bed would have to barely clear the top of the sofa underneath, and it also means that my guest bed would be unusable. And it’s entirely possible that the ceiling fan would cut my head off as I was climbing into bed, since it would be a foot lower and the bed a foot higher!

I ordered 2×3 single hung windows and got 3×3 sliders. In a tiny house, wall space is at a premium, for kitchen cabinets and other wall storage. There’s not much floor space, so you have to go up! (Another reason to have higher ceilings as well) Three windows that are too wide mean 3’ less wall space, and I only had ONE wall kitchen cabinet in the plan….it meant no wall cabinets, and it also knocked out my plan to have 15” Ikea wall storage units on either side of the living room window, and on the side wall, where the TV goes on the wall, it meant the largest TV I could have is a 19”. It also meant that the corner where I had hoped to have a tiny wood stove eventually, was no longer big enough.

I ordered continuous eave and ridge vents. I plan to put in radiant heat barrier, shiny foil that reflects the heat back to the roof. I need those continuous vents to let the heat out! What I got was a little 2×12 aluminum vent in each gable end. I did ask the bulder about getting a refund on what I paid for the continuous vents, and I got a pretty aggressive-sounding email back saying he said that he hadn’t charged me anything for them, and that he should have charged me more for the shed; the base price was $4050 and he only charged me $4100. Also he said that the little gable vents are all I need. Well…the base price when I ordered it back in November was $3650! And obviously if he didn’t charge me for them, it meant he never intended to ever do what I ordered.  And who doesn’t know that heat goes UP, not sideways? The only way a gable end vent would be efficient is if there was a fan on it, pulling or blowing the air out.

Besides those things, the construction is a little shoddy, probably because they threw the thing up in a day and a half! Their website says it takes them 3-5 days to complete each shed. The studwalls in mine, which are supposed to be 16” on center, actually have very few 16” ones. They range from 15 ¼” to 21”! That means nearly every strip of insulation would have to be custom cut, taking way more time and involving a lot more wasted material. The masonite that’s covering the underside was not nailed down along half of the back of the shed, and is hanging down about ½” which means any enterprising mice in the area could easily get in and make nests in the cellulose insulation. I tried to nail it up but since the shed is only a few inches off the ground, I couldn’t get a hammer in there.

I ordered a 12 ½” wide custom wood window for the bathroom, to fit between the 16” on center studs. But where I planned to put it, the studs are only 15 ½” wide, so it won’t fit. I’d have to cut through existing studs and do a whole lot more work to make that window go where I wanted it.

The bottom line is, it was not his prerogative to decide what I did or didn’t need, especially with no discussion about it.  I had specific reasons why I ordered it the way I did, and yet 3 out of the 5 changes I ordered, I did not get. It doesn’t matter if he charged me for them or not!

So it looks like I’ll be starting over from square one. I could save up my money for a few years and buy an old travel trailer, though with the extremes in cold & heat here, and no electricity for air conditioning, I feel I need more insulation than a travel trailer can provide.  (Besides, they’re not very cute at all). I could try to rent-to-own another storage shed from another company, but you know the saying “Once bitten, twice shy”. That’s kind of how I feel right now.  

For the past few days I’ve been working on a floor plan for an 8×12 tiny house. That is less than ⅔ the size of this one, but is still twice as big as the camper, and I’m able to fit most everything I really need into the space. So I’m really considering building it myself. I would not try to build it in a hurry; if it took me 6 months, so be it. I’d have to buy materials as money allowed anyway, which will make it a fairly slow process. It’s painful for my bad knee and arthritic fingers to do this construction stuff, so maybe I’d only be able to nail up two or three 2×4’s a day. So what?! And maybe I’d get some (semi-skilled) volunteer help along the way, who knows?

I could build the shell of this smaller structure for around $1500, and have no monthly payments. The one I’ve got now cost $4100 and on the rent to own plan, would have ended up costing me $9100 after 4 years of payments!  I’m still thinking about it, but am really leaning in this direction.

What happened to our pleasant winter weather?! On Saturday we had 25-30 mph winds with gusts up over 50 mph, and a couple inches of snow.  Last night, the low dropped to only 11 degrees. (It had been in the mid-20’s) I brought in a second 1500 watt heater that runs off 1# propane bottles, and ran the two heaters at the same time, which worked great until it ran out of gas around 3 a.m. When I woke up this morning it was 47 degrees in here at bed level, and down on the floor, Roxie’s water was frozen solid in the dish! Once the sun came out it warmed everything quickly which means all the frost-covered metal strips in the camper defrosted and were raining on me!  I’m so glad I’d spent time on Saturday stuffing cracks and wind leaks with foam, or it probably would have been much colder in here.

Here are links to some of the items readers have purchased on Amazon. Feel free to use these links to browse and shop!

Dr. Bronners Pure Castile Lavender Soap

Herbal Deep Immune System Booster