Construction: Weeks 18-22 (Including move-in!!!!)

Well, this is a much-delayed post.

My cabin got finished (YAAAAY!) and I moved in (YAAAAAAY!) in mid-February (YAAAAAAAY!)

I moved in the midst of an extremely large and demanding work project, which meant that my first several weeks in my home felt like camping. There was no time to get things organized and properly placed (tasks that are not my forte at the best of times and therefore would have consumed a lot of resources that I did not have available) and there was certainly no time for blog posts. But I have hot and cold running water, electricity and Internet, a bar fridge, an induction hot plate, a mattress and my awesome desk and kneeling chair and so I was good to go.

The last weeks of construction and first few weeks of living in my home felt surprisingly fragile to me. The pieces left to do in the last stages were very small, but they felt more overwhelming than many of the bigger elements that had been tackled toward the beginning of the process. I don't know if it was because I was tired, or had less time free from desk work, or felt daunted by the enormity of the transition facing me, or because of my erratic hormones and mood swings (most likely a combination of all of those things), but I felt delicate and teary.

Fortunately, I was able to feel the feelings and do the work and make it into the cabin. I love it and feel very contented and peaceful there. Which is not to say that I don't get tired and cranky and stressed or anything like that, but I feel like I have the space I need to be myself and feel safe in that, and that is an awesome feeling.

Having the floors stained and polished was a gift from my Mom. The floors are one of my favourite things about my house – handsome and easy to clean.

The amazing contractor who stained and polished my floors added a lovely rectangle at each door at my request. I don't know why, but for some reason, these boxes remind me of the department stores I went to as a child: Eaton's and Simpson's. I don't know why that should feel like a good and comforting thing, but it does.

And these beautiful stripes in my bathroom/mechanical room. 

One of my tasks was to sand and stain the material for the wood trim. I should have done it as soon as the trim material arrived, but I didn't and ended up having to rush it at the last minute before the carpentry crew came back in to install it.  

Painting the bathroom door

Forsythia: a gift of spring from a dear friend.

Getting so close! The trim and kitchen cabinetry got installed and only the electrical and plumbing finishing remained.

The bathroom door got hung with awesome hardware made by the blacksmiths at Ross Farm Museum. 

The back of the bathroom door – distressed.

The toilet and shower got installed. The tiling and the bathroom sink are going to have to wait until more money, time and energy are available. The water runs. Some of it is hot. This is more than good enough. (And yes, I do have a shower curtain now, I just don't have a photo of it on hand.) 

Everything including the kitchen sink! Complete with running water.

And the shelving unit on the reverse of the kitchen counter/shelves which serves my office space. Complete with an electrical outlet that was pretty awkward to install. My electricians had to do some super problem solving. They were very gracious about it. 

Move-in day! While I did spend a few nights at my house during the transition, it wasn't really home until Salinger moved in on February 15th. Here he is, settling in for his first night. It didn't take him long at all to adjust; he also seems to love our little home.

I had plenty more help during this transition. Help painting, help moving, listening ears and leaning shoulders.

On the day of my occupancy permit inspection, one of my tender-hearted friends helped me move some furniture from my tiny house and shed into the new cabin. We talked and cried and jumped up and down together. I could have hugged the building inspector when she okayed everything – no, wait, I DID hug her (with her permission). There were no snags and I felt again my deep gratitude to all of the dedicated and professional contractors who built my home as if it were there own, with care, precision and kindness. And I was grateful for the more-or-less successful job I had done impersonating a general contractor – I had acquired and supplied all of the necessary paperwork, we had ticked all of the necessary boxes and done everything we were supposed to do.

The cabin is lovely to live in. It is warm. It is bright. It is airy. It is beautiful. It is simple. Everything works.

There are many finishing touches that need to be added. Now that my very hectic work schedule has slowed up, I need to move in properly. I need to move some pantry shelving and book shelves from my tiny home into the cabin. I need to figure out where things are going to go. I need to find the bag of hardware that will let me put my bed frame together. I need to apply linseed oil and varathane to my kitchen/office cabinets and a few coats of varathane on the window sills, too. I need to set up my turntable and move my records in. I need to make myself fully at home.

Salinger: showing his appreciation for the beautiful, wide windowsills (and not so much for the view of winter outside... )

Eventually, as time and money are available, I will have the shower tiled, the bathroom sink installed, and a deck built. This summer, I will try to do as much as I can to contribute to the healing process for all of the cuts and scars on the land that were caused by the construction.

In good time, I expect that the Crooked Wood, Salinger and I will all find our stride to integrate and grow together.

It's my happening... and it freaks me out

So, uh, I'm building a cabin, yeah?

Well, I'm not building it. I might contribute some amount of work to the project, but mostly it's going to be built by other people.

People who know what they are doing.

And that's a good thing.

So far, I am finding this a tremendously complex and daunting process. There are so many different people who need to do so many different things. Estimates have to be requested, acquired, considered and selected for each element of the project.

Decisions must be made.

I confirmed my third contractor today – and I am having a full-on anxiety meltdown.

I'm not entirely sure why. I mean, what's the worst that can happen? It can all get horribly fouled-up and I'll wind up with a bunch of debt for no actual building or a building that I can't live in and I will have to declare bankruptcy and lose this land, my shed, my un-winterized tiny home on wheels, the new building (or some unfinished part thereof) and have to start over from scratch. 

Well, that's not so bad, is it?

Afterall, it's only money and security and the comfort of feeling like I'm good at modern life. I think I can live without all of those things. I think I have the resilience to come through this if it's a massive disaster.

But, I hope it won't be.

Please, please, please, don't be a massive disaster.

Please.

Please.

Please.

The epic move

Well, we are here. Salinger and I.

I've just had four very intense days. Thursday was spent packing, Friday moving the house (eeeeeee!), yesterday trying to organize Wholehearted House and Sunday cleaning my winter apartment and moving Salinger.

Salinger is NOT a fan of moving. He hates driving in the car. But after we got to the ferry I think he figured out that we weren't going to see the vet and he seemed to calm down a bit. After an initial prowl around the chaos in our tiny home, he settled in for a long nap on the bed by my feet.

I kicked back, eyes half-closed, bone bone bone tired. Not a lot more got done yesterday before the fading of the light. I had already put in a full day, scrubbing and packing and wrestling Salinger into his carrier.

I don't have electricity to hook up to my little rig. That is next on the agenda, but I will be roughing it for a number of weeks, if not months. Fortunately, the days are long, so I will have plenty of time to work in daylight. And the dark early mornings are good for thinking, resting and working on the computer (as long as I can figure out ways to keep it charged – I'm working on that).

On the downside, the weather forecast is cloudy and rainy for the next FIVE days. Salinger and I seem to have a knack for moving to this house at the beginning of a long stretches of rain. This will make two out of three years. The first year in March, this year in May (if you'd like, you can listen to a song I wrote about that first rainy/snowy/sleety March here). 

But on the upside, at least it's pretty warm (I slept very comfortably last night) and I'm hopeful that the wet weather will make for some calm and quiet days that I can spend organizing the interior of the house and getting some desk work done.

This morning, Salinger is outside checking out our (new-to-him) land. It's raining pretty heavily. I think he is mostly hanging out under the house, mewing at the door periodically to make sure that I am here and will let him in upon request.

Here is the story of the move:

I decided to rent a U-haul to accommodate some of my stuff.
I wasn't sure how much weight we should try to move
inside the house. And also, it was just hard to maneuver in
my house with 100% of the contents inside it. Everything
became a lot easier once a lot of my stuff was stogged into the van.

The evening sky at Pennybrook. There was a fair bit of nostalgia and
melancholy involved in this move. I felt sad to leave both
Pennybrook and my winter accommodations.

I made a rope corral to keep most of the
contents that we moved inside the house from
shifting around and to keep the weight
over the wheels, as helpfully advised
in an email from Wholehearted House's maker, Adam.
My friend Katy, who helped me pack, was interested
in seeing before and after photos to see how much things
 moved when we hauled the house.

I hope the grass will spring back quickly
at Pennybrook in the spot where
my house and deck sat for two years.

I was going to have my house moved by a local towing company (Adam, sadly, has moved out west, so it was not possible for him to move it). I was feeling pretty anxious about it, and the thought of working with strangers was stressing me out even more.

A couple of days before the move was scheduled, I was talking with my friend who's cut down all of the trees on my land and telling him about feeling stressed. And he instantly offered to move my house for me.

"What!" I exclaimed. "You can do that?"

"Of course I can."

I don't know why it had never occurred to me to ask. I knew he had a big truck and mad skillz.

Anyway, he was amazing. Simply stellar. Every curve and bump was managed with aplomb. And, we took our time; he was totally patient with my anxiety and my lack of experience helping to move very large objects up and down narrow driveways. My Pennybrook landmates were also extremely helpful, especially Jude, who provided both practical and moral support on many fronts.

The bottle jack, hoisting the house off her blocks
and back onto her wheels. (We also moved this
mattress abandoned by another temporary Pennybrook
resident down on to the pile awaiting Big Garbage pick-up).

Heading down the driveway at Pennybrook.
Pretty much the same journey in reverse to the
one I described when we moved my house up to Pennybrook,
with the exception that we didn't have to manage
the curve on the lower part of the driveway because
the neighbours kindly gave me permission to
travel out on their straighter driveway – the connection
between the two driveways is normally blocked off
and I didn't know when we moved in that the barrier
is removable!

Backing up the driveway into The Crooked Wood.

The "after" shot for my friend Katy. Not much
moved except for the things I had forgot to put
down as low as possible.

After some preliminary organizing on Saturday.
In a typical case of two steps forward and one
step back, it now looks way worse than this because
of all the things I've added from my winter
apartment. Sigh.

Salinger, king of the chaos around him.

So, we are here, Salinger and I. There are plenty of blankets on the bed. The propane stove works, so there is tea and soup and fried or baked potatoes any time I want them.

I don't have electricity or refrigeration or running water. I feel like I could sleep through most of the next five days, avoiding the rain and recovering from the move and from the huge amounts of work I did this winter.

It is so quiet here. There are only the sounds of the birds and squirrels, the rain and VERY occasional passing cars.

My to-do list is long. Desk work is unrelenting. And I have so many things to do for the continued development of The Crooked Wood. But that's another blog post.

For now, it is enough to sit with the major accomplishment of having gotten this baby moved and settled here in her (hopefully) permanent home.

Tiny Home/Land Report: From Overwhelmed to Confident (in about 4 hours)

I admit that I have been dragging my heels most of the summer, not doing much of anything about my land, except thinking about it. (And by thinking, what I really mean is worrying, fussing and spinning my wheels).

A couple of weeks ago, I decided that I needed to accept that I wasn't going to be anywhere near ready to over-winter in my tiny home this year. So, I began the hunt for a winter rental (and I think I've got that just about sorted, which is good).

Three days ago, I called a (known and trusted) contractor about putting in a driveway. Two days ago, he and I went to look at my land together. I explained my two or three tentative plans, we ixnayed one of the ideas but didn't see any major impediments to either of the other two. The estimate is forthcoming. The deciding factor between the two plans will be cost. Depending on how much money will need to be spent, I will decide on Plan A or Plan B and also whether I can afford to proceed this fall or if I will have to wait for the spring.

From OVERWHELMED...

After the meeting about the driveway the night before, I woke up yesterday morning feeling completely overwhelmed. I had intended to go to the municipal planning department to talk about building permits, but I just couldn't face it, even though I know I have a two-page list of questions I need to ask, trying to narrow down my options.

As I understand it, in my municipality, if I leave my house on wheels, I don't need to get a building permit to put it on the land and it doesn't have to meet code. The first building I put on the land, regardless of its size, does need a building permit and does need to meet the code, but anything after that does not, as long as it is smaller than 210 square feet.

One of the biggest decisions I face is what kind of building, if any, I want to put on my land.

Do I want to put a building on my land that is low-serviced? Basically a combo garage/firewood storage space, with on-grid electricity, but no heat or running water? Or do I want to build a small "water house" with running hot and cold water, a kitchenette, bathroom and washing machine hook-up (with either a full septic system or a greywater system and composting toilet)? Or do I want to build a full-on, rooted-to-the-earth tiny house with power, heat, running hot and cold water – everything contained in one place. Or would I rather not build anything at all and just perch on the land in my current tiny home either three seasons a year or year round (with the latter option obviously requiring a number of winterization measures).

Each of these options will entail very different things in terms of permits and cost.

And I don't know what I'm doing. I've never done this before so I'm learning at a great rate. If I'm not careful I get overwhelmed and I feel very lost and scared.

It's a big challenge for me to go slow, not get ahead of myself or try to take on too much at once.

And while I'm doing this project solo, by and for myself, it's important for me to remember that I don't have to do it alone.

Yesterday was a perfect reminder of that.

...to confident.

After my dismal, stressed-out morning yesterday, I was in town in the afternoon, running errands, when my phone rang. The call was from a couple of friends for whom I had done a substantial favour earlier in the summer. They had offered to return the favour with a day of work (meaning two person days of work – an agreement that seemed more than fair to me, especially since they are super-handy and work in the field of forest ecology, offering skills that I really need). I understood that they were having a busy summer and that our work party would need to wait until late summer, or even early fall.

When they called yesterday, my friends said they were unexpectedly free for the afternoon and since it wasn't too sweltering hot to work, was I available to come take a look at my land? I was mostly hoping for their knowledgeable advice about what trees to cut and what not to cut, but I got way more than I was hoping for! They brought a chainsaw and after four hours of work, we had cut out and cleared about half of the length of the planned driveway at a width of 16 feet!

It was an amazing transformation! My land has not been cleared or tended in any way in a long time. It is a stand of natural, mature forest – very little undergrowth, lots of standing and fallen dead wood. I find it remarkably beautiful, but what I was not prepared for is how much more beautiful it is with a swath of it cut out. The space for the driveway is now framed and canopied by trees. The trees look much taller now that one can stand back and really get a look at them.

The clearing sets off the trees to better advantage!
Look how tall and majestic they are!

And the things I learned about forest ecology were useful and fascinating. We selected the path for the driveway with an eye to preserving certain trees – favouring hardwoods (which are less common on my land) and a couple of beautiful old, super-straight tamaracks and pines. We mostly took out the small, crappy fir trees, many of which were standing dead anyway from a lack of light under the canopy of taller trees.

My friends explained how brush piles and piles of dead wood act as nourishment for existing trees and how they could be positioned to regulate water drainage on the property. And that I could transplant baby trees from the middle of the planned driveway to other spots on the property, where they will get more light – and not be decimated by the excavators.

Plus, we piled up a good start on next year's firewood!

One of several piles of firewood,
ready to be bucked up!

All in all, it was an extremely satisfying, informative, fun and uplifting afternoon!

In one short afternoon, I went from feeling stuck and stymied about my land to hopeful and heart-lifted.

It is very good to have good friends.

I am very, very grateful.

And I am strongly reminded to be open to receiving help when it's being offered.

Where once there were only trees...

PS: because our work party had been planned so spontaneously, I had to take off around 6:15 pm to keep a commitment with some friends who are visiting from out of town. My friends said they would continue cutting and clearing for another half-hour or so. When I went back today to take the pictures I had forgotten to take for this blog post, I was amazed to see how much more they had done. They must have stayed much longer than a half hour, and they cleared about the same distance again that we had cleared in the first four hours. I am amazed and humbled by their hard work, efficiency, diligence and their generosity with their work and talents. 

And I am even more grateful than I was yesterday, if that is even possible.