Well It Happened

I am not sure whether it was my subconscious trying to delay the inevitable or just a case of burn out, more to my liking is just the simple fact I am not a finish carpenter and that I was not ready to tackle a project that I thought I just was completely unskilled to do. Not that I could not do it, it was just I wanted it done right and I knew that I would have a challenge getting the end product that I wanted.

I started on My Mini Mobile Cottage journey in earnest on the 15th of January 2011. Being the optimist I am, I   figured I would be living in the cottage by the end of summer. That is the summer of 2011. What an awesome learning experience this has been but I had no idea that I would be doing a blog post on the 11th of March 2012 stating that I had just finished the last major project on the Cottage.

I had this picture I pulled off  the Tiny House Blog. It was a gal who had modified her Teardrop Trailer and I just really liked the look. Framed in forest green and with pine doors. I have carried that vision for most of the build that I was hopeful to end up with something close. Here is her kitchen. I finally found her site and it is Tiny Home Teardrop

My first real modification on the vision was drawers. I have never build a drawer and very quickly realized that drawers were not in my skill set. So I wondered down the path of shelves and just simple cabinets. Now that I am done, I feel it would have broken up the four sections if I had put in drawers but I really don't need them, I would have filled them with junk anyway. So here is the unfinished kitchen look.

I have run out of the Beetle Kill Pine so I was only able to do one set of doors with what I had left, the rest is just regular pine. I tried a couple of different routing patterns with the doors, as usual I finally settled on what I like...by the last set of door. Oh well.

Well here is my kitchen in its full glory.

While I could easily come up with of 20 little things I would like to do. None of them are pressing and I am very hopeful as the weather starts to turn to be able to get into my Kayak and enjoy some of the Pacific NW that have not seen for a year and a half. Hope you have enjoyed the ride if you have been following along on my building journey. I will continue to document the small additions I plan on making during the next year, trim on the out side, bathroom shelves, another shelf in the loft. But for the most part, I am done. I have enjoyed the journey and am eager and able to answer questions if you find a particular post interesting and want to comment, those immediately come to my email and I generally address them promptly.

While I have built a "tiny house" I don't feel compelled to start a "tiny house" company or tour the country side telling people about all my opinions. I do have them though and really would enjoy talking about the tiny house community over a beer with anyone who wants to hunt me up and have that discussion.

If I have any encouragement for those who stumble across my ramblings. Believe it, you too can do this. It took a community to build this cottage. This is not my project but a project that I drove and as I got committed to it, people came forth and joined the effort as they wanted to share the vision. Thank You to anyone of you who helped along the way. There are far more people out there who have no idea what their blogs inspired me to do, or some hurdle their video on Youtube help me over come. I had no idea prior to this project how many people recorded video's of how to install a shower? Go figure.

I will soon post a video walk through of the Mobile Cottage. Enjoy.

Getting Close To A Fully Working Kitchen

I had a request for some outside shots of the Cottage so I will post two, one from each end. Okay I had to throw in one of the front door.

I have several little projects that I am trying to get wrapped up before I relocate. I won't have quick access to my tools so I want to make sure I have all the little things done, before more little things pop up. This is just an awesome living space and been very happy with all the equipment choices I made in building this cottage. I am working on a slow sand filter system for my discharge from the sink to use for watering a garden. Since I am really focused on 100% biodegradable soaps/cleaners, I feel I am good in that area. I am really working on a zero discharge system for aspects of the cottage. From living on a sailboat, I don't put hardly any organics down the sink (on a sailboat they just clog things up) so that is a habit I learned long ago.  That really helps keep my discharge clean and easy to filter. I will get some shots of it posted once I get further along. It should look pretty cool, I am building it out of half cut wine barrels.

Alright on to the little projects. The first two are lights in the loft. Since I am rigged for 12volt up there and I like to keep my Droid phone charged by my bed I not only wanted a good LED light but a charger station. It works great with my car charger. I used the same strategy I did on the fireplace hose cover and I like the way it came out.

While those lights were a little spendy as they are "full marine grade" if you get my drift. They are LED so use a minuscule amount of power and will outlast the cottage, I think they are rated for 50 years or some crazy thing. After climbing up the ladder a couple of hundred times, I realized it would add some additional security so I put up a handle, again thanks to sailboat experience they have these readily available. May I never have a challenge going up or down the ladder. It would not be  pretty to fall from the loft.

As you can tell I have not oiled the handle yet, It should look a little better once I do that. The other aspect of the ladder is it flipping off the loft for some crazy reason. I have added a ladder lock as I don't move the ladder around from side to side and if I take if off it gets stored in the loft. But when it is just me around the cottage, I leave the ladder down as there is plenty of room to get around it without touching it. So to lock it I just slide the dowl through the hole and to unlock, slide it the other way and then up to the loft it goes! But when it is down the stairs also make handy temporary shelves.

So back to the Kitchen cabinets. I have put in the shelves that I wanted and am comfortable with the layout. I have the faceboards in the garage painted and drying. They will get another coat and then this weekend I will mount them.

 Then I will build the doors and by then all the major work on the cottage will be done. I have about 100 little items I would "like" to get done but none are pressing. I will start working on a video of the finished product. Should be fun.