Mom in France

Official Photos of Tiny House

Here they are, the "official" photos of TIny House!  I guess there won't be much more to say until we add some of our own decoration (thanks to our interior designer and prop stylist for much that you see here).  We have entered into the next phase - a garage to studio conversion but it's slow-going and messy and I've lost some of the enthusiasm for picture taking.  Maybe when we thaw out and things get moving in the spring. 

In the meantime, here is Tiny House.

How to Live in a Tiny House

The key to living in a Tiny House is to two-fold: 

1) Get rid of all non-essential items.  Be ruthless.  Karin:  you do NOT need all that stuff from Boston you never unpacked (9 years).  We cleared out an entire attic, and I was ruthless about selling/donating even large furniture that we knew would just need to be stored indefinitely.  E:  you do NOT need 6 pairs of running shoes.

2) For the stuff that remains, think about the available space and storage.  Consider the built-in.  (We considered, and did).

Our house, largely in thanks to our interior designer, is very well-laid out for storage.  I love that stuff has a place to go!

Here are a few of my favorites

The finished closet under the stairs.  See the IKEA kitchen rack for the brooms, etc?  I love having all that stuff off the floor and they are in easy reach when I need them.  In the small space under the stairs is our luggage and cat hang-out.

 

The Laundry/Coat closet

It's our catch-all just inside the entry-door.  We have a long rod for coats, a rack for shoes as well as high shelves for cleaning supplies. The bulk of the 7x4 closet is taken up by our hot water heater and stacked washer/dryer. 

Why I love this space:  There is a place for all of us hang coats. Even living in a tiny space, I avoided the kitchen washing machine (common in Europe).  Now I can do laundry, close the door and not hear it while I'm watching TV only a few feet away.

The Kitchen

I love pretty much everything about the kitchen. But there are some cool storage bits.  Like the bread basket (it is France, afterall!)

Gabage bins out of sight!

Finally, our big splurge in this house were the oak built-ins in the living room and bedrooms.  Downstairs, we have double-deep drawers that serve as a toy box for the kids.  Genius!  It a perfect everybody-is-happy arrangement.

 

The Firebox

Yippee!!  My mom is coming for a pre-Christmas visit.  YIKES!  We really need to get our &*(* together and finish up this house.  So the race is on.  The garden will still be a disaster (fair warning, Mom, if you're reading!) but we aim to get the house ship-shape.  So we're busy bees for the next few weeks.

Earlier in this project (and for the years of dreaming leading up to it) I spent my time on design blogs and hoarding home design magazines.  I was obsessed with how our house would feel and how the design would support and enhance the way we live.  Meanwhile, E was staying up late reading books on insulation, "green" building techniques and energy efficient ways of heating and cooling.  One of his big wishes was to have a wood burning stove in place of a traditional chimney.  With this house it was an easy choice - we had a chimney already but removed the gas burning fireplace.

Last week we had the new one installed.  I like to call it the firebox.  Because that's what it is; a fire in a box in the corner of our living room.  We were able to buy a small firebox (average 6kw output) since our space is small and so well insulated.  Once installed we had to wait a couple of days to light it (not that we need it - it's still in the mid-60s here during the day) to let all the evil chemicals related to the installation completely evaporate.  E was so excited - like a kid on Christmas Eve - and chomping at the bit to light it.  Once we'd past the 48 hours mark he went for it...and filled our house with smoke and turned the glass windows on the stove completely black. 

He was impatient.  Of course he thought something was wrong with the stove!  Ha.  After 1/2 hour the flames started roaring and he was happy.  Meanwhile, I spent 45 minutes the following morning cleaning the glass with oven cleaner - not so fun.

We have had a couple of good fires since then but then last night he came home and wanted a fire RIGHT NOW.  So he lit it and...filled the house with smoke.  At dinner time.  *sigh*.  He got it working, that is burning without a lot of smoke, but then I had to clean it again.  He asked me today to try to light one and see how it went - were there any leaks on the 2nd floor of the house where the chimney passes (in our bedroom!)?  Any further leaks coming from the stove itself? 

So I made my effort and tried to remember my Girl Scout years.  I did not succeed on the first try - smoky fire, same as E.  Then I did a little Google help and experimentation and here's what I learned:

• Don't be lazy when building the fire:  Wad up newspaper and place kindling wigwam style on top.  Light the newspaper and only when the kindling is burning add a log or two - whatever fits easily into the box.
• Know how the box gets oxygen to fuel the fire.  A few stoves have a pipe connected to the exterior wall and pulls air from the outside.  Most, like ours, have a vent in the box that pulls air from the room.  We have a vent in the wall to the outside that must be open when the fire is lit and pulls in fresh air and enters the box via the vent in the bottom.
• Know how air circulates in the house.  Our downstairs is open and a big no-no we learned the hard way:  Do not have the kitchen fan going at the same time as the fire becuase the fire will begin to smoke (or a badly built, smoky fire will get worse) and smoke will get pulled, via the vent, into the room.
• The Firebox heats the room by heating the box.  It's cast iron.  It gets HOT.  Do not leave your coffee cup on top or it can shatter or melt.  Reinforce the IT'S HOT message to little kids and visitors.  (So far, so good on this point in our house)

Now that I have the hang of making the fire, I'm really excited - it's so cozy!

 

 

When is a House Finished?

I haven't written much about Tiny House lately because it is discouraging. It's been 3 months since we officially moved in and the house feels about 90% done but that last bit is detailed and difficult to complete.  However, each time a bit gets finished, we are so happy! And we have a moment of satisfaction in seeing things come together - a little bit more of the dream realized. 

We definitely had that with the insulation.  While the inside feels mostly finished (minus some paint, light fixtures, closets and toilet), the outside is still clearly under renovation.  There is scaffolding on the walls and piles of construction materials and debris surrounding the house and in the driveway.  It's a bit discouraging coming home from work and having to make my way through the muck to get to the door.  So on the day they completed the first plaster and our house looked more like a house I felt a little bit of relief - could the end be in sight?

The insulation was expensive and difficult but we are really pleased with the result.  It hasn't been too cold yet here on the Riviera but it's cold enough and we haven't needed any heat.  Our home, even at night and during the awful rain, is staying in the mid-60s.  Unlike insulation installed on interior walls, the exterior insulation required several discrete steps - gluing the insulation to the existing wall (directly on the old plaster) [photo 1 and 2], covering the insulation in a fiberglass net [photo 3] and at the same time bolting the net and insulation to the concrete wall below to insure it doesn't move over time, and covering the entire surface with a plaster-like glue to seal it in [photo 4].  The final step will be to plaster - yet to be done.

 

Getting Ready for Winter

 

Our Indian Summer continues and I'm holding my breath a little because October usually means torrential rains.  We're in a race to if our exterior will be finished before the first big storm comes that finally turns summer into fall.

Last week the insulation was delivered - 6 weeks after we moved in. This was only slightly late and right away they started installing it.  Early on in the demolition we discovered that the insulation would have to be redone completely both in the roof and the walls.  Since our house is tiny, we decided to take the bad news as an opportunity and insulate from the outside using cork insulation - all natural, renewable and no toxic fumes.  The only downside is that it's almost 5 inches thick.  Which would have made it a no-go if we had to put it on the inside.  As it turns out, by ripping out the old insulation and wall board we gained a lot of space inside by just plastering the walls.

Lesson learned though - no interior insulation (except in the floors) means lousy acoustics.  Our tiny house echoes with noisy kids.  I'm shopping for rugs and other soft furnishing to eat some of the noise.

Once they finish glueing the cork to the existing walls, they will put a wire frame - I imagine it like chicken wire - then plaster stucco on top.  The roof insulation is made of wood fiber and looks like the usual pink wooly insulation except that its wood colored.   

 

The First Days at Tiny House

Tiny House is looking great but is definitely still a work in progress!  I unpacked about half the kitchen and that was about it while we wait for our cabinetry to be installed.  In the meantime, here are a few first pictures to give you an idea of what it looks like.

Are We There Yet?

My bed has been in storage since April 29th.  Since then I have slept in 6 places, none of them really well.  Almost all of those nights I go to sleep thinking about that day's progress and setbacks.

People ask us, "When will it be finished?" To which we reply, "It depends on what you mean by 'finished'." 

We move in on Friday.  When I was there over the weekend there was only a bathtub but no sink, toilets, faucets or hot water heater (though they are all sitting around in boxes).  There is no flooring upstairs. There are no light fixtures or outlets. The tile on the stairs is halfway done.  My sleepless nights, I think, are due to the fact that there's nothing I can do now but wait a few more days.  Our team (including E, who is painting, painting painting) is working very hard.

Once we move, it will be a bit like posh camping. Dusty.  With a lot of work still going on, both inside and outside where they will begin to insulate, re-roof, install skylights and air conditioning.  It will be busy.

In the meantime, the most complete thing is the kitchen.  I'm so excited and for this alone I can't wait to move in.  We are still waiting for the worktop but we have a temporary one in place so the kitchen is ready to go when we arrive. We worked hard designing it and it really turned out just as I wanted and imagined it.  My favorite features are the hidden appliances (fridge, dishwasher and microwave) and the pull out storage to the left of the oven.

 

 

The Progress So Far

We meet with the entire team tomorrow to plan the next two months' work.  The interior should start coming together with the flooring in place, finalizing the interior walls and installing doors, floors, etc.  In the meantime, I captured some photos of how our new home is right now:

The construction:

The garden.  This is the part we can really enjoy right now and we eat at least one dinner a week under the trees enjoying our little slice of the Mediterranean.  Did I mention we have a sea view?  It's hard to tell in the picture below because it's just a sliver and the sea blends with they sky.

Tiny House Setbacks

I'll tell you this sign:  my fingernails are bitten as far as they can go without bleeding.  Even as I admonish Boo to do as I say, not as I do.

We are just past the 2-month mark of Tiny House renovation and at the hopeful mid-way point.  As far as we can tell, we are mostly on schedule.  However, the project has proceeded in a two-steps forward, one-step back fashion.

Early on, as the builders were in the dramatic demolition mode (how quickly it went from some body's else's house to a work site!), they found that the insulation, now 35 years old, was sagging in the walls like an old pair of nylons.  It had to come out.

We *try* to make choices that are environmentally friendly and energy-efficient when our budget allows.  For something like insulation which, ideally, will last another 35 years such an investment was a no-brainer. We chose to put the insulation on the exterior of the house which is has two advantages - more energy efficient and we gain much needed space inside.  However, it is 3x more expensive than the cheap-o way of installing polystyrene sheets on the interior walls. Also, we will need to re-plaster the exterior right away which was something we were planning to do at a later stage as our cash-flow allows. That early choice, though it added a big chunk to the expense wasn't too scary.

However, as the project continued and we were started writing A LOT more checks such bad surprises were not so easy. The second one to come along was the news that there was no insulation in the roof.  At all. So it was seemingly stupid to make such a big investment in the insulation without doing the roof. The roof though is funny.  It's a slanted, shed-style roof built in concrete with terracotta tiles lying on top. Which means to insulate we must take of all the tiles, lay the insulation, and put all the tiles back. Ca-ching!  The builder gets a lot and we spend a lot since most of the expense is in labor. Boo-hiss.

We soldier on.  My husband makes lists of things he can do himself (while I hold my breath, hoping for the best).  We list things that are "must-do" versus "can wait."  The big thing hanging in the balance is the pool.  We carefully plan our finances for the rest of the year.

We keep the faith - what choice do we have?  A friend who saw the house for the first time remarked that it was great to be able to do over a house from scratch - no pink tile in the bathroom to live with our inconvenient kitchen.  But, she said, "if you don't like how it looks, it will be your fault."  Ugh.  Scary thought. I try not to let those kinds of thoughts shake my conviction.  It will all come together, right?

 

p.s. New pictures to come next week!

 

Tiny House Renovation Week 2

Last week while I was away on business we had our first unhappy news:  All the insulation must be replaced (ca-ching!).  Today I passed by to see further demolition and the first bits of construction.  Now what is there is really just the roof and four walls with some new holes in place.  The floor has been completely removed and the insulation is almost out. 

I remember when my Mom first saw Tiny House last fall and she said that it "stretched the imagination." Now that we are months into the planning and the work has started, I have to say that for me it's even harder.  I've been working with our interior designer and the vendor for the kitchen but I have to say I find it hard to match the vision in my head with what's there today:

 

I noticed today that besides of ripping stuff down they actually built something:

 

Then I looked up and there was a big hole where a wall once was: 

 

 

Someone asked me last week why we decided to buy and renovate Tiny House.  Good question!  It took me awhile to agree to it but now that we're in to the project I am enjoying watching the place become completely transformed (for the better!).