A whole new level

I’m pretty chuffed with the location for my tiny house (although after my last post I feel like I should be calling it my ‘building project’ rather than my house). Firstly, it’s in a beautifully green, lush, quiet spot in the country. Secondly, and more importantly, there’s such a connection to this place for me.

During my childhood my maternal grandparents had an incredible garden, full of secrets and surprises and the best hiding spots. They lived on a big bush block (1.5 acres approx.) and the smell of wood fires burning on a chill autumn afternoon still takes me straight back to Nan’s backyard. After my Nan and Pa passed away within a few months of each other a couple of years ago, my sister’s family bought the property and I was so grateful to keep this place in my heart.

My sister, brother in law and their ridiculously sweet natured and down to earth offspring now live on that same block and are some of my favourite people on the planet. They’re generous, enthusiastic and open minded people who barely batted an eyelid when I brought up the far fetched idea of putting a tiny house on wheels in their backyard, and (possibly) living in it. How bloody lucky am I?  Honestly, I couldn’t and wouldn’t be doing this without them. Not just because of the space issue, but the support and interest and hands on help they’ve already given me to even get started. I am so, so thankful for my family and love the thought of living a stone’s throw away.

So that was really a long winded prelude to the real crux of this post: I actually have a real life flat piece of land that was made just for my own tiny trailer to go, ready to go! It’s there! It’s measured out (with a bit of extra space either side just to be safe) and I’m going to be building on it, just as soon as I have a trailer to build on! I can actually picture it now, when I stand there and visualise it. Doesn’t it look like bliss?

It feels real. It IS real. So, so thankful. 🙂

The secret.

So when I first got serious about this building project and started reading and listening and meeting all of the other wonderful people on board the tiny house movement, the idea of a blog came up. There are some amazing blogs out there, documenting builds, lifestyle changes, challenges and successes, my newsfeed is filled up daily with them! They’re inspiring and a wonderful way to share information and ideas, but there’s also, at their heart, a bit of a conundrum.

In Australia, according to all of the local council regulations that I’ve read, there isn’t really a legal way to live in a tiny house. If you plan to build a secondary dwelling on a block of land, then it has to meet building regulations (which tinies rarely could) and be connected to services such as power, water and septic. Many people choosing to go tiny don’t want to be connected to services for one reason or another, and so for those two reasons alone tiny houses aren’t well suited to be classed as separate ‘dwellings’.

Given most tinies are built on trailers and have wheels, the other option is to class them as caravans. Now, according to council regulations, living in a caravan counts as camping and you’re not technically allowed to camp on your own land for more than 28 days in a year. I can only assume this is to prevent squatting and shanty towns popping up all over the place without proper hygiene systems in place, etc. Either way, it complicates things a little.

So the tiny isn’t a house, but it isn’t a caravan either. This is where the grey area comes in and the most feasible option I’ve heard comes up – to class the house on the trailer as a ‘load’ (only semi permanently attached to the trailer it sits on) that is being stored in the backyard/on the block, whilst you technically ‘live’ in a big house or somewhere else. (Can you see where the secret is starting to come into play yet, or is this all sounding like mumbo jumbo? Don’t worry, it’s taken me close to two years to really wrap my head around how people do this and to attempt to explain it to other people).

This strategy relies on some discretion on the part of tiny housers, as council won’t allow people to live in these trailers, even if they are allowed to ‘store’ them somewhere. That means by blogging and sharing information, tiny housers are also creating evidence that could result in councils kicking them off properties or realising that people are living illegally. It’s a fine line between incrimination and enlightenment. At this stage I’m not worrying too much about the details, this post could go on and on about the tricky business of getting (and keeping) neighbours onside to prevent reporting, the danger of fly over scans that council use to map out changes to the land, etc. But as I said, I’m all about the baby steps at the moment. Right now, I have a building project to concentrate on, and the living part of it is future Saree’s problem. Who knows how long it will take, or where I’ll be in a year’s time? Who knows if I’ll end up with something that I could live in even if I wanted to? This adventure is full of unknowns, it’s kinda half the fun to be honest.

Until then, I’m going out on a limb and spreading the excitement and my lessons from this whole thing. This is a secret that needs to be shared.

Back to the drawing board

I just opened my last post and had to have a little laugh when I read the, ‘finally finalised the design for this tiny!’, bit. Let’s just say that might need to be revised slightly, and I’m becoming less and less sure that I’ll ever be able to say that for sure.

There has been some excellent progress, but as seems to be the norm with this tiny journey, it’s certainly not a linear process. I feel a bit more like circular would describe it. Or perhaps, whirling around in circles chasing your tail until your brains feel like scrambled eggs and then hoping you stumble in the right direction when you finally stop spinning. Fun! But not particularly productive.

One exciting update is that I’ve convinced my excellent, creative and talented carpenter friend, Tom, to help me build the tiny. The good news is that this means that there might actually be some kind of tiny house being built at some point. The bad news is that he has some serious questions about my floorplan and basically thinks I’m trying to cram too much into such a small space. Sadly, he may have a point.

One thing it looks like I’ll have to compromise on is the stairs vs steps debate. I think my idea of ladders has been coloured from childhood experiences of climbing up and down little bunk bed ladders, with those round rungs that dig into your feet and make midnight bathroom visits even less appealing. I was imagining something luxurious and beautifully crafted with storage included, like this set of tansu steps.

Tom says I’m dreaming.

Well, not totally true. He says I can have steps, just not if I also expect to have room for a couch and my stove and a 1 metre wide bathroom and a desk, all along the same 6.5 metre wall. Luckily, he also says these are things we can nut out a bit and make up as we go along, so long as we have the nuts and bolts of the floor plan mapped out. Considering I spoke to my tiny trailer fabricator the other day and locked in a few of those nuts and bolts, let’s hope he’s right!