Moving Back Into a Van. (House still for sale.)

I’ve spent time traveling in a van. I’ve spent time posted up in one spot. It was a learning experience. It enhanced my life.

I traveled by bicycle. I learned more.

When I wanted to bolster my abilities, I set out to build a Tiny House on Blocks. (The house is still on my parents’ property. Name your price, and you can have it. Re-do the interior and make it your own.)

A year has passed since me and Kristin left for the big city. Aspects of apartment life have been acceptable, but the grass is always greener everywhere else. Grass is also less expensive to walk on than it is to claim ownership of.

We are moving into a 1998 Dodge Ram. We got the extended body with a hi-top. It has all the function of a tiny house. I’m starting to think I had it right in the first place. Vandwelling is another shortcut to home ownership. Enhance your life while following the sun.

Me and Kristin and the Two Dogs are leaving in a week. We’ll drive our new home down to Key West, New Orleans, Austin. We’ll pick a spot in the desert. We’ll truck slowly along the 10 and into California. We will continue in this manner for months. If everything stays upright, months can become years. We are leaving on an open-ended loaf-about.

http://721pm.blogspot.com is where I’ve been writing since my 20’s. That’s where I wrote about living in my first van. That’s where I wrote about riding my bicycle from Philadelphia to Florence, Oregon. I’m writing there again about vandwelling, and there are many photos of Nessie, our van.

About that tiny house. Tell me how cheap you want it, and schedule a truck to drag it up to the driveway. Think of it as a well-crafted shell, and consider re-doing the interior your way. I’ll accept any offer you think is fair. Try me. 747-444-1076

Tiny House for Sale: $12,000 OBO

Tiny Home for sale.

$12,000 OBO. I won’t attempt a profit. This is the first house I built. I over-researched every step. It is not move-in ready, but the time to move in has been greatly accelerated: the walls, windows, insulation, and roofing are in place. The appliances and layout are the choice of the next owner. Improvement can be made to the electrical system of spaghetti, but four Trojan batteries are included. Everything is included. If you are interested, you just need to move it, which probably means hiring someone.

If you are interested, submit a bid. I don’t bite. (747)444-1076

I am ready for another chapter.

I’ve learned exactly what I wanted to while building this wonderful little home. I can comfortably construct framing and cut rafters. I can bend copper tubes, and design a basic propane system. I can confidently put batteries in a box, and I know what thickness of spaghetti to use at each interval to distribute power to a house.

I moved back to Philadelphia a few months ago. One month from now, Kristin and I will be married. All I want from life is a new project or adventure. My mind still swims with ideas and plans involving converted truck houses, cars with mattresses instead of seats, and housing built from material out of the waste stream.

I dream of pedal-powered tricycles with large wheels and low gearing. I dream of a pole barn where we share bench space and affordable tools. I want to build a force field of flowers and concrete around a commune where we create, construct, but mostly look at the stars. I want to exist like more life can be squeezed from the bottom of a toothpaste tube. I want to work hard at always needing less. I want the hammer to form the blacksmith, while I find reality under a blanket.

Meanwhile, I need somebody to buy this Tiny House.

Call Chris: (747) 444-1076. I am available for all matters of commerce or jibber-jabber.

Winter Adventure 2015 Begins

Well, I pretty much finished the house, I guess. Improvements might grind into view some time in the future, but for now it is in a state of rest. I have constructed the ultimate hangout fort; a cozy respite. It resembles a house, but has no bathroom or running water. The storage is inadequate, and wires hang down on the walls, leading to a fuse box spouting spaghetti. It’s a great place, it really is, but my focus has shifted elsewhere. I became embattled in a desperate fight to earn enough money to travel for as much of the winter as possible.

And so I did. So we did.

Kristin and I shoveled thousands of books in and out of cars and boxes. Soon enough, our income stopped being a subject of worry. Now enough money is flowing in to cause a twinge of excitement, and I am positive that we have more than enough for our meager needs.

For three days, we have been traveling south and west. We haven’t slept in the car yet, but we came close. We’ve already had occasion to sneak a dog into a restaurant – successfully – and we are on our way to killing time in a goofy and deeply satisfying manner. With the eschewing of as much responsibility as possible, I am as happy as I have been in a very long time. Roads and destinations lie ahead, and we can pass time and locations at any pace we see fit. It feels like freedom.

I am chronicling our adventure more completely at 721pm.blogspot.com

Thank you again to everyone who has read this nonsense, and especially to those who said nice things and wished me luck. Your affirmations that I am an acceptable human bolster my confidence that everything will be alright in this thin moment of life on Earth.

Future Thoughts on Dwelling.

The first house I ever built is a working experiment. The purpose was not only to create refuge and shelter. In addition to creating a suburban sanctuary, I desperately wanted to learn new skills to apply throughout my life. I’m glad I did.

I’m poised now. I’m ready.

At no point did I think that my little 8’x12′ structure would be my final home. It’s a lily pad. I’m paused upon it; waiting for my next leap. I have long been obsessed with alternative dwellings – and finding the right design for every imaginable circumstance. It is unfortunate that experimentation in this realm is so expensive, because otherwise I would have box trucks, vans, tiny houses, and shacks spread far and wide across the land. Each would be adorned with smart and simple interiors designed to sustain life indefinitely or as-needed. I would have a string of vacation homes tucked in every corner throughout the United States and beyond. I would allow good people to visit my lands whenever they’d like, and I’d hope that only good people found out.

With a wealth of free land and structures to visit, a semi-nomadic lifestyle would be easy. I can think of nothing healthier than getting the hell out of here, no matter where “here” is, as long as you’ve been there for awhile. When I leave my area for a time, I return rejuvenated with a fresh perspective on myself and the space I occupy. With more places to go, I would go more often. CouchSurfing.com is fantastic, but a key under the doormat would be an invincible invitation.

It’s probably the people who have nothing who assume they are the most generous. I recognize that it is easy for me to offer everything when I have almost nothing to offer.

A Tiny House can be an onerous drain on materials and resources. A simplification for some is still a challenging investment for others. Tiny Houses are cute as a button, and I want to see them continue to become a norm. But my heart has another idea. Box trucks are cheap once they need expensive repairs. A box truck can contain an enormous amount of space and provide the perfect platform for conversion to a full-time home. The roof and walls already exist! I can hardly think of a better canvas to begin to paint a cozy home. Do you have an active imagination? Then you can see this too.

Vans. I have lived in a van for months at a time; more than a year in total. Almost nobody understands the satisfaction gleaned from opening the side doors each morning to a burst of the outside. There is great satisfaction in weathering a storm as you drift off to sleep – with a roof that will never in 100 years leak. I have long dreamt of permanent parking. I have longed for a place to park my van home forever – on the outskirts of a cute little town, or on a forgotten lot inside the city. I have parked in one place for weeks, but always eventually you must move. Usually sooner than later, and in practice, every day is better.

I can imagine almost no greater joy than the freedom to permanently install a box truck or van on a reasonably-located lot of land. I would bury four posts three feet deep in cement. Cross beams would span the posts, and the vehicle would be supported a foot or so off the ground. With the sleepy old vehicle level and at rest, the next chapter would begin. The interior would be gutted. In the case of a van, even the driver and passenger seats could be removed. Wood flooring? A raised roof? The finished interior would be the choice of the beholder. In the case of a box truck, the cab would make a lovely front porch. I’ve imagined myself as the captain at the helm – perched in the glass bubble of the cab during a storm or blizzard. I sit there almost steamy warm from the drop of propane providing the heat. I listen to music. I listen to audiobooks. I put my feet up and read, or eat breakfast and brush the crumbs onto the floor. Years pass as I sip coffee and wonder that I’m alive.

None of this might happen. In America, we live in houses – not cars. If you think that tiny houses have hurdles of zoning and code, then consider the almost universal illegality of living in a car. In certain private settings, an installation such as described would be possible. The challenge is in the details. One certain fact is that securing a loan would prove nearly impossible.

I get lost in romantic fantasy. I must always remind myself what is real. I have another recipe. I know a way to live well, and if it is inside your reach, it is something to consider. More than a simple consideration, this is my plan. This is what Kristin and I intend to do. The year 2015 in my mind is synonymous with the following vision.

I need a place where I am free to create and improve. I want space that is mine with no undue restrictions. I have a covenant with Mother Earth, and our business together will be no nevermind of naysayers. To paint the picture more clearly, let me describe my dreams using real words.

Step one: Find a distressed property with a bit of land at a good price.
Step two: Build, move, or somehow install your personal tiny home somewhere on the property.
Step three: Rehab the main house, adding value.
Step four: Rent out the main house for an amount of money greater than the mortgage payments.

This four-step program is simplified, and it can be modified. The important point is that it is thoroughly possible – if you are motivated – to acquire some personal space at almost no long-term cost. The only major downside is that it can be quite a hurdle for some people to muster the funds and motivation to get past the initial barriers.

The plan is a good one. There is nothing overly romantic or impractical about this plan. Accessory dwelling units are common and legal. Done correctly with faith, most of us can achieve this freedom. Affordable mortgage payments can be completely covered by the rent checks, with room to spare for taxes, insurance, and the interminable unknown. In the long run, you live cheap or free while getting equity in a house that you can later keep, sell, or use as collateral for other loans to build your tiny sustainable empire.

I am taking steps toward making this a reality. Tiny steps. I am putting money in a jar. I am a romantic who could be classified as borderline insane, if not for the fact that some of my ideas eventually see light.

Talk to me.

Love,
Chris
747-444-1076 or chrisharne[at]gmail

I’m Done! I’m Happy!

You know what? I think I’d like to gut my whole house and start over. I keep making these baby-steps improvements, and it seems like each one is a tiny compromise adding up to a compromised heap. The heater takes up too much prime real estate, and so does the fridge. But I have the copper lines run already, and the big holes cut in the wall. If the bathroom were a teeny bit smaller, we could fit a better couch. I haven’t been happy for a single moment with my choice to install drywall.

I woke up happy today. I woke up late as rain fell from a gray sky, and I remembered that my therapy appointment had been moved to ten o’clock. Maybe I’m happy because I’m leaving soon. Or maybe it’s because I decided to lighten up on myself and forgive the multitude of intertwined debacles which I’ve been collecting and arranging like dominoes. The bottom line is, everything is fine and I’m thankful that I finally noticed. My only challenge is to remember: everything is fine. Peachy, even.

I started writing here to show my process and progress with building my tiny house. Around the time I finished the exterior is when I stopped knowing what to do next. The process of framing is very straightforward. Once you finish one step, there is no question or confusion about what to build next. The interior is different. I am awash in choices and possibilities, none to few of which I can actually afford. So for now, I’m done.

We have lights, heat, refrigeration – we have a cozy bed, and we can charge laptops. We have a house. It’s not the perfect house, and the options for improvement are many. But we have a house, and I can honestly say it’s a pretty cool one. My goal was to learn, and I’ve done that. I’ve built walls, connected wires to batteries, and bent copper tubes for propane. I learned 99% of what I wanted to learn, and the rest doesn’t intimidate me in the least. I accomplished what I set out to do. It took a year and a half, and I have one more important piece of advice that I need to follow: ease up on myself. Sounds good.

The future of my house is as uncertain as its genesis. By force of will, I made this thing happen. My parents want this house eventually gone. They still think some code enforcer is going to bust up the party while squawking into a walkie talkie or something. That won’t happen. But I want the house out of here too. I want to install myself on greener pastures. I want my own space under my own control. I will get there in time. Impatience and frustration will not turn the wheels any faster.

I am excited to take some time off to get a fresh perspective. The year 2015 sounds like a great time to assess the situation and plan the next move.

This Tiny House is Getting a Bookmark put in it.

I have a little bit to say about tiny houses again. I started getting frustrated out the wazoo on the regular with mine. There are reasons, but it’s an unfortunate fact that none of the reasons are “good.” Sometimes I just get that way. I look up, and all I see is weight.

I lose my sight all the time. My vision doesn’t suffer much, but my heart pumps out an extra beat.

If you have a contractor friend or $20,000 – I have great news. You can have your own tiny house. You can begin a small-world-after-all journey where you float in and out of the fairytale pages at will. Do NOT be afraid. You cannot lose.

If you’re going it alone with a few grand – if you’re waiting for windfalls – if your name isn’t Bob or Deek: you might not find this easy. This can be a hard fucking scrabble.

My story here continues; my story here ends.

I began building my house a year and a half ago. I was under-funded, but I hoped I could make it work. I started selling more stuff online, and as the money trickled in, materials were purchased. What I didn’t realize is that I’d never be done.

I’ll never be done!

I’m not particularly happy with my home’s layout. If I could go back a year and start from there, I would change a lot. A lotta lot. At no point have I had enough money. I look at people’s tongue-and-groove this-and-that and all I hear is the Beach Boys. “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice!”

I have this cute little house, and I’m living in it. It beats the pants off my apartment in Philly. Most of the time it’s where I’d like to be more than any other place. Quiet; heat cranked; just a touch of cowboy. But I have wires hanging all over the walls, not nearly enough storage, and washing dishes is a nightmare. (Yes, even doing a shitty job of it). Furthermore, I can’t afford to continue pumping all my money into this project. Every time I get a couple hundred bucks, it’s gone. I’m going to escape for the winter with Kristin, and money is too tight to be buying some kind of pine right now.

All of this started to get me more than frustrated. Now I have to focus back on telling myself that everything is fine, and nobody died from not having a halfway decent table saw. At some point – and I don’t care when or how – this house will be “finished.” For right now, I’m just trying to live my life and count my blessings. Reality is whatever you think it is, and I need to remind myself that life is easy. If I don’t do a goddamned thing for the rest of my life, I will live and die just the same. And I mean that as a good thing. That’s a bar I can step right over.

**** I’ll be traveling this winter. Me and Kristin will be driving around and sleeping in my tiny car. I’m usually a pretty damn good writer during my jackassed adventures, so if you want to see a story unfold, go to 721pm.blogspot.com. The trip is an unplanned hip-shot with a fair chance at a boatload of WTFs. Hopefully in a fun way, but almost definitely in some kind of way. Also, thanks for reading this. I love writing, and I feel absolutely great whenever somebody notices. I hope to have something cohesive and coherent going by… November 10th-ish? I have no idea how we’re going to sleep in my car for +/- 4 months, and it will be a screaming success if it isn’t a disaster.****

Finding Courage and Building Storage.

The house is nearly complete. Now we’re at the stage where I can chill out a little bit. Sure – there are still hurdles to hop. It’s not quite time to bury the saws – but we’re living in a tiny house.

I put up a bunch more cheap trim around stuff. It’s starting to look more finished. Kristin started painting some of the trim, and it’s starting to look great. I have barely a clue how to design and organize a space for living. I know a tiny house requires lots and lots of storage, so I’m just jamming in as many storage ideas as possible.

For the walls and roof – and windows and door and loft – I had a plan. I had measurements for every two-by-four and screw. Now I have no further direction. I didn’t make a 3-D model of interior details. These details all depend on what materials I can find for the smallest amount of money and what I’m able to find or hack together. This approach requires an open mind.

Organizing my tiny house interior demands a delicate balance, because I lack everything but an imagination. I don’t have much money or skill. My brain over-engineers at every opportunity. With no experience building tiny houses, I find myself reverting to my typical ways – I overthink every detail and take forever to get anything done. My mind is a thousand train cars with no engine. 

I have a legal pad with about 60 half-ideas spanning several pages. I need a bookshelf here; another outlet there… plenty of work to be done. But all is well. We’re cooking and cleaning and making coffee down in the tiny house. I haven’t been up to the big house too much in the past week. There will be an ongoing battle with simplification and getting rid of stuff that doesn’t fit – either physically or in a metaphorical sense. But there is sunshine on the horizon.

Me? I’m ready to do anything else. I want a totally different project. Building this house was hard as hell. It still is hard, but now I’m trying again to pace myself – or more accurately, to accept my naturally slower pace. I’m fighting to rationalize my brain from feeling too worried, hurried, or buried. I’m channelling my 17-year-old self, who was a genius. That guy reminds me: don’t take anything too seriously. If you’re not happy, then you’re taking something too seriously. Broken down to its simplest elements, yes – my life is exactly that black and white.

Oak scrap shelf. Super basic.

 

Wawa brand milk crate storage with stainless steel bicycle spokes bent into custom S-hooks. Awesomest version of a pot rack. Most of the cookware is camping stuff. So are the stoves.

We’re using the camping version of everything, which makes it all portable and miniature, which is my favorite thing ever. The crate spent years on my bicycle, and now serves a new purpose. I make coffee on a camp stove.

Trimming the brains; trim in the house.

Through the combined powers of psychiatry and positive thinking, I’m reporting my mood as “great.” Let me tell you more about it.

I quit taking Adderall (scatterball) for awhile to let my brain get back to its natural state. I want to make sure that I am a jackass all the time and it’s not just the pills. Confirmed. It’s my brain. I finally got a psychiatrist, since that’s what people ought to do if they feel like they are always spinning at a different pace than the Earth.

The act of finally jumping through the hoops to see a psychiatrist has pushed me toward better behavior in general. I’ve identified that there are definite changes that I want to make in my life. Simply identifying that these problems do exist and are fixable has led me to a higher awareness of what my brain is doing. Like they say, “awareness is the first step toward shutting the fuck up.”

That’s what I need. I need a dose of STFU. I get frustrated over tiny inconveniences. I need a little shoe to come out and kick me in the balls when that happens. I need someone to point out that I’m being a baby.

We can ease up on the houses here. Before we build all these houses we need the capacity for continued work. I’m happy to report that I’m feeling smarter and more sane than I’ve felt for a year. That has led me to continue working on the house.

I’m putting up trim. I have wires running all over the place, and holes all up and down every wall surface. I’m leaping back into action by screwing strips of wood to everything.

I found the cheapest wood available at the Big Orange Store. It’s rough sawn fence boards; a half inch thick. I’m ripping them on my little table saw and screwing them into everything. I quit trying to be a professional cabinet maker, and started trying to make progress instead.

Every photo I’ve ever taken is a grainy sack of baloney, but I sure don’t mind clicking keys on a keyboard. That’s why this blog basically fell apart. Some day I will learn how to do more photos and less words. Some day I will get tired of sticking sticks into my brainhole.

Good Shit: the fridge is in. It’s working like a boss. We have food down here, and we’re working toward cooking and eating down here, since we finally can. 10 out of 10 for awesomeness.

More Good Shit: I built a little cover for the fuse box and charger, so it’s not so frogdamn ugly over there. It’s got bead board on the face of it. I’d give it a 7 out of 10 for quality, so at least it matches visually.

Triple Good Shit: We sold the little couch and got some Ikea “Poang” chairs. I’ve always loved these chairs. Super comfortable. They are also easy to move around, and they take less space. Great. ‘Cause this house is super-fukkin-small. Free chairs: at least 15 out of 10.

Good. Night.

Systematically Destroying Minor Tasks feat. Reckless Abandon.

I have irons in the fire. I have so many irons in the fire, I’ve had to start new fires for some of the irons. In a way, that’s a good thing, as long as I can manage to chill the fuggout about it. Staying calm is the difficult part. If I could zen-out my brainhole, the irons would be dealt with in turn – like the small, systematically-destroyable minor tasks they are.

Here’s the situation today. Kristin has officially joined me in the online reselling business. We have an office in the large house – as a temporary necessity – and it’s a hellhole. I have a backlog of items that should probably be thrown away or burned, but since eBay is part of the business, we’re heaving crap around with shovels and trying to find the carpet.

Once that’s dealt with, we can go back to cherrypicking valuable books at a series of locations, aka living the dream. Meanwhile: mayhem.

I also have to work on the tiny house, so:

– We can spend more time in it, since it is awesome.
– We can “live” there instead of just sleeping there.

This plan entails more work. Lots more building, and to be honest, I’m running out of steam. I usually run out of steam when I’m around 7/8ths finished with a project, and that’s about where we are in the tiny house.

We desperately need storage to:

– Put our belongings where we live.
– SEVER ONCE AND FOR ALL our attachment to large houses.

What I’ve failed to do is realize the magnitude of this undertaking. In my brain, somehow, if it can be written in 2-3 sentences, then it should only take… say… a week at most. I can’t accomplish anything with this ADHD business, unless I take Adderall, which stokes the fire under my irons, but also tends to whip my perspective on life back and forth like a vigorously waving flag. It gets worse around 5pm when I begin to daydream about ostrich-ing my head in the dirt.

But it is Not All So Bad!!!

In a bid to improve her workspace, Kristin turned to Amazon, and seemed keen to purchase this apparatus:

This thing is as boring as the day is long.

“Hold the fucking presses!” I thought. HERE is an opportunity to save $17. After a couple hours, I was able to counter with THIS apparatus:

I was once 16… now I have an angle grinder.

DON’T WORRY. This is definitely the most effective use of my time.

Duck When You’re a Target.

It’s impossible to see your surroundings from every possible angle. It’s easy to miss a glaring light if you close your eyes and turn your head. If you’ve lived in the same area all your life – there’s a good chance that within a mile there’s a stretch of road you’ve never set foot on. Not many roads? Then a stand of trees that you’ve never seen behind.

I don’t have a cable TV package. I’m too smart for that. And by “smart” I mean “cheap,” but in this case the outcome by any means is relief. I live in a tiny house, and by “live” I mean “sleep.” For now, I spend a lot of time in the lumbering cacophonous home up the hill. The big house is a cable TV package. Between Cecily Tynan, Kathy Lee, and Brooke Baldwin: this house never shuts up.

After the morning and afternoon programming, then comes the shows about houses. How to buy them, how to fix them – and generally how to act like an asshole. I hope my brush strokes aren’t painting too wide a berth. I’m nowhere above. I know about these shows because I’ve watched each and every one.

The lie I tell myself is that I’m better. I don’t watch these shows; I sit in a room while they’re on. You can tell yourself anything. Watching Mike Holmes retrospectively pinpoint the folly of a job gone wrong makes you no better than those who watch anything else. If you’re on the couch when an ad squirts out for the series “Swamp Hicks” or “Fartin’ Babies,” they’re talking to you. They have you pegged, and you are the target audience. I am the target. It’s time to shut it down, lest we all get struck in the back.

I feel like I’m struggling to wake.

Furthermore;

My plans are a process. Until I am out on my own again, I will be subject to adjacent programming. Until potato chips are out of arm’s reach, I will have them with soda. It’s time to go, and I’m ready. Me and Kristin are going to take my little car to California. And Arizona. Colorado. Oregon. There and on the way, we’re going to continue our business as middle-men, and watch the sun rise and fall. I estimate October, but gosh himself writes the schedule. No more winters, and a short stint presently to get our shit together.

And we’re off.