We are putting the finishing touches on a 665 square foot home for our family of five. Here is the backstory. You may find Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.
Our kitchen
The keys sounded a faint tap-tapping as I typed words into the blank space then clicked the magnifying glass. Searching. Quite literally searching for home. Scrolling, clicking, looking. Cabins. More cabins. More possibilities. More hope. For hope was indeed rising. Yes. Just when it seemed like this dream of ours had become nothing but wet streaks down weary faces, a portion of land was offered to us on which to place a portable cabin. Just. like. that. Land with a well, septic, and electric all in place, with mature trees and a cabin-spot there at the apex of creek and horse pasture - all of it calling out to us, Here! Come live here! After a long stretch of nothing, this sudden something was hope that filled like breath rising; hope that we could quite literally stand on, wade in, and run across.
A little cabin came up on the computer screen in front of me. It was small, yes, but there was a right-track feeling about it. It had plank walls, paned windows, wood siding, a tin roof. And? It was moveable. Saved to favorites, we visited often; looked at it, talked about it. Would this work? Could this be? We made phone calls to the man who builds, then a dashing road trip through autumn’s leaves to see ones similar, to stand in them, to touch them, to imagine. To decide.
A great sea of paperwork opens up when the possibility of building is on the horizon. Permits were submitted for, phone calls were made to this office and that one. It seemed that we spoke with all the powers that were and all the powers that weren’t. And all the while, images of small dwellings and ideas of the spaces within them filled my every thought and waking moment, for I knew that a few short weeks is not much time in which to plan a home, even a small one. Good thing I had a savings account of design inspiration that I’d been keeping for such a time as this. I’d surely be leafing through.
We’d found land, we’d found a builder, the last of autumn was falling, and I began to sketch.
Update: You may follow the story to Part 4 here.
