day 814 : : blog post 020
Things are beginning to come to the pointier end of the project. Few things go untouched today with extensive upgrades to the walls, floors, kitchen and lounge room features. There is painting which starts to really reveal what the final look will be and some slick ideas for a cubby work desk. Even a time-machine gets a look in…! 😄
Enjoy and thanks for watching! 💚
day 814 : : blog post 019
Construction continues at an impressive clip (in YouTube time: IRL it took soooo long) with some giant strides made in the bathroom area. Mike is busy innovating in this episode as well, adding more unique flavours to the build in keeping with Moroccan and Hampton influences seen previously. The lounge room gets a look in as well, with the final internal wall of the house erected.
Enjoy and thanks for watching! 💚
day 717 : : blog post 018
Having fitted a new rear wall into the house on the last episode, the stage was set for building forward from there. At the back of the tiny house is a storage room and the bathroom, an expansive area by normal tiny house standards. It also was filled with a laundry (oh, the laundry is back here too) list of considerations that Mike must figure out. A satisfying episode indeed, as many of the rest of the internal walls are fleshed out.
Thanks for watching! 💚
day 668 : : blog post 017
The big rear doors on a semi-trailer – while cool – are not very house-like. Early on, we thought we could make the rear area all storage and just the doors, but we quickly realised that turning it into a fixed wall held many opportunities.
In the episode, Mike gleefully disconnects the massive, heavy doors and builds in facilities for a storage room and pass-through compost receptacle onto a solid, weatherproof rear wall. Along the way, we see some new innovations in the bedroom, trial the new aircon system and even make the tremendous leap to new headwear. Have fun!
Hope you enjoy 😁✌🏼 Thanks for watching!
day 612 : : blog post 016
Some significant changes in these episodes of my semi trailer project.
In video one (episode 14) we’re going vertical! Walls are going up and things are taking shape. Getting the raised kitchen floor in place allowed Mike to start getting stuck into building cabinetry around the bedroom area. With Moroccan-inspired themes, clever storage solutions, unique space-saving ideas and a Swiss-army knife of layouts planned, this bedroom has far more going on than your typical home!
In the second part (episode 14a), Mike entered into the tiny house construction world with energy and optimism…and not much else. A handy person to be sure who had done some work at a cabinet-maker, but building a tiny house was all new. So when it came to cutting holes into the roof of his new (old) trailer, it seemed pretty straightforward. Oh to be able to advise that bold younger Mike about what to do! Well, see for yourself but be prepared for some heartache as we lean into this supplemental video of Mike’s cautionary tale…
Thanks for watching!
day 500 : : blog post 015
The changes are coming faster now which is great…because you get more videos from me! Haha, well I am benefitting too from seeing the house take shape in a meaningful way at last.
Never underestimate maximising storage in a tiny house…even a big one like ours! Influenced by another semi-trailer builder, we decided to raise the floor to take advantage of about 3m cubed extra storage space, an interesting aesthetic and a great place to hide utility lines.
In this episode, Mike wrangles with the complexities of creatively incorporating all these elements while trying to understand the skills of several different trades. The result is very effective and satisfying!
Thanks for watching!
day 430 : : blog post 014
Wow, 2 updates in two months! Who would have thought it possible 🤣
Less construction and more cool gear in this episode as Mike does some unboxing of new Philips smart lights, fleshes out how he can re-engineer a caravan aircon unit to be a ducted system and tinkers with a lift-bed design to maximise bedroom space. Don’t be scared by my abstract introduction to this video! 😂😂
Thanks for watching!
day 384 : : blog post 013
All my blog posts now are just apologies for mega long-overdue updates 😭 No excuses…not even a global pandemic!
It was always going to be important for us to get as much light into the house as possible and studies show it is psychologically excellent for wellbeing, but when you cut holes in a roof, beware the consequences!
In this episode, Mike wrangles with what will be an ongoing struggle with this particular roof and it’s construction challenges. Mike also gets stuck into the early stages of bedroom building with some storage innovations and design aesthetic. Enjoy the video!
day 188 : : blog post 010
Ugh, I cannot believe that I am 188 days into this adventure and I feel like so little has been achieved. This experience has been more daunting, complex and self-confidence-diminishing than I expected it would be, even despite my initial fears that this would actually be the case. Part of it is inexperience, sure, but also daily tent life, our location, my own mental state and the scale of the project all factor in. This might take years to complete at this rate!
I know right off the bat that some of these things are finally-crafted excuses that I have bought into, but when muddled together in a stew of depression, the crappy state of the world and a meandering aimlessness of life’s direction – well, you get the ingredients for a frustrating journey. My “excuses” I suppose would be: laziness, fear of failure, lack of tools/knowledge/materials/plan and perhaps the complexities of compromise. These are undoubtably normal complaints given that we are noobie builders living in a rural area with perfectionist tendencies. However, my brain has a tendency of being the culprit for complication whether it is that I feel unmotivated or tangled up with how to approach problems or just down in general. Part of me is profoundly disappointed when I waste time that could be spent building, but another part of me will resist being pushed into moving faster and end up resulting in a stalemate of inactivity or frustration.
It might sound like this blog is dedicated to justifying my struggles – and maybe it is to a degree (so feel free to bail out on further reading if you want) – but I think it’s just the reality setting in that building your own home in a foreign environment while living in a challenging way is never going to be a walk in the park. The people around us where we live have been terrific at helping, offering advice and being friendly faces that we have enjoyed getting to know. However, I would offer this as fair warning to anyone who is about to embark on this type of journey: expect it to be especially challenging if you change too many life aspects at once, and, are not of completely sound mind. Let’s break down some of the challenges:
Fairly obvious: I have limited building experience and when problems come up, I have to research every little detail, ask for help or slowly (glacially) work through it until I have a solution.
Hand-in-hand with inexperience is this bastard of a problem. Not to solely blame Heidi, but there have been numerous comments about the expectation of getting into the finished home quickly and with a very high quality finish. Making it look great is a priority but if it were just me, I’d settle for rough n’ rustic. So I approach every situation with fear that I am making the right decision as everything cascades through the early decisions you make. And especially when lots of money is at stake.
Not to be taken lightly, there are things that pop up daily that can take a half hour or 3 hours of your time. There are disruptive weather events that can blow (pun intended) half a week with prep –> enduring –> aftermath. It could be energy issues, insects, leaks/repairs, challenging work conditions, temperature or simply chores like chopping/collecting wood and dealing with composting toilets and such.
From the standpoint of collecting resources and connecting with friends in Adelaide, this one is a big time-suck too. Going to Bunnings or a salvage yard is a minimum 1.5 hour excursion but usually ends up being a half-day outing as we might throw in groceries or other errands in there. Of course, I have limited supplies on-site so if I forget an item, it’s not just a quick skip over to the local shop. Trips to Adelaide are multi-day affairs. I enjoy the serenity and natural beauty that our current home offers, but the travel might get to me in the long run.
I’ll leave the last two big ones for last; to put it bluntly, I’ve been depressed for the better part of the past 5 or more years. That has ranged from just de-motivating daily life all the way to suicidal thoughts. The item below (Life Direction) plays into this significantly but so does the state of the country/world, veganism, loneliness, indifference and the blessing/curse of social media. Often I can just batch all my troublesome thoughts as “humanity”. It certainly leaves me each day on a knife’s edge of whether or not I will be easily derailed from being productive.
Almost there! Thanks for sticking with me through this downer blog post! My last struggle is where I am going in life and why should I care. I have amassed the cruel set of skills otherwise known as “the Jack-of-all-trades, expert-of-none” – all the things I have spent significant time getting good at are really just mediocre efforts at best. Worst of all, I lack that “passion” for anything in particular these days. I am searching for what gets me excited, and while there are a few possible interests, the motivation and desire needed to achieve them is laughably distant and therefore effectively unachievable.
Probably am sharing too much 🤔, but maybe this post is more about getting some thoughts out there rather than being uplifting to read. I’ll return to tiny house stuff now…
In terms of building progress, Heidi will probably say that I am being too hard on myself. In the last 5 weeks, Heidi and I have:
which seems like a few achievements, but I think that it could have been done in a fraction of the time. The trouble is that I can be veered off-course quite quickly when I hit a road-block and then waste hours over-thinking a solution. Maybe that’s all part of the process, I don’t know.
If I want to end this blog on a good note, I can say that:
Realistically, I am not going to solve my “humanity” or “life’s passion” problems overnight, but with any luck, I’ll turn a corner where the house itself will become motivating to get done when I see it starting to come together. But it’s a chicken and egg thing as I need to put in the hard yards to get to that corner-turn but I’m not sure where that motivation will come from.
Thanks for sticking through all that, Reader. ☺️👍
day 141 : : blog post 008
Here’s a quick video post for our tiny house project. This will be part of the documenting of our journey that I intend to do through the various steps of our temporary accomodation, design, organising and build phases of the experience.
This brief video gives viewers a sense of what it’s like to endure a wild South Australian winter storm while living in a tent! Stay tuned for our next video where we finally dive into the start of our tiny house build! 😀
Big Tiny Adventure 