Journey to a tiny house

The first night I came to stay at the family estate was the day I moved there. I had no idea that was to be the case at the time. We had been working on building a relationship with my estranged parents after a spectacular battle over custody of my late brother's son. When my mom's battle with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease began to enter the final stages, I reached out and asked my parents to join us in sharing a suite at my mom's favorite place, Walt Disney World in Florida. The trip had taken us a long way in restoring our relationship, so a month later when two days before Thanksgiving my dad told me his mother (my Grandma Ruth) had died the same day my mom went on hospice, I drove directly from a friend's house to help take care of her. I did not have any clothing or personal belongings with me, but that evening would come to mark the day I essentially moved our of our downtown home.

For a few weeks, I alternated with my dad sleeping next to my mom and sleeping on the sofa. Justin and the kids began staying on makeshift beds at first on the weekend and before long through the week as well.

The situation was pretty tense for a while. My hip problems were so bad I tried sleeping on a hospital bed and all manner of solutions. Eventually, we settled into me sleeping on the sofa and my family fully moved into a dormitory-style situation in the large back room of the house. For a while, we slept in my dad's RV, but it was a nice new RV he purchased for travel, not something to live in. The situation was bleak.

It actually rather sucked.

We looked at building a home on the land last year, a big place with a bedroom for each child, custom built. Unfortunately, it is very hard to build a second home on agricultural land, especially if you are self-employed. After months of hoping, we finally threw in the towel.

We had talked for a while about the possibility of building a small cabin or tiny house out here, but we were struggling to find something we felt comfortable committing to. Then a couple of months back, my dad found me a fifth wheel to use for meeting clients for my vintage rental company. We purchased it for $250 and towed it back to the family estate (now dubbed Whimsy Hollow).

I knew I wanted to gut it and fix it up, but I did not know where to begin. For a while, we just sort of sat on it. One day as I began to evaluate what I wanted to do with it, I realized that there was nothing in this world I would love more than to sleep next to my husband, and the loft in that fifth wheel was looking like a sound option. The past year had been trying, but it had taught us what we could live without, had acclimated us to a level of minimalism and simplicity that anything would be an improvement.

I did not even have to tell Justin...he was already on the same page with me. This was one of those rare cases where we both were on it fast. Before I could start ripping out the interior, he already had. Within two days, we had made it livable enough to fix  up while we live in it. 

We plan to add on to it and we are telling the children we would like to think of it as a "cabin." We may not be in a 2400 square foot house at the moment, but so far, the simple joys of being close together in our own space have been profound. Stay tuned for before pics!