That was when Wayne asked me if I owned a truck.
“No,” was my reply. He looked at me a little dumbfounded.
“Well, you are going to need one,” He said.
“I know,” I replied, “I know.”
I had just purchased a 24′ houseboat and I knew that I am going to need something to lug the monstrosity around. I know what you are thinking, 24′ is not that big in terms of house boats so it can’t be that heavy.
This particular boat was built by some well meaning do-it-yourselfer from a kit. The whole thing is made of wood. No lightweight fiberglass or sheet metal. This thing is solid. Or at least the hull is solid and was decently constructed.
The upper portion, not so much.
When Ashley first sent me the craigslist ad for the boat and even after we went and saw it, I was a puzzled and intrigued by the ugly brute. And a little scared, it looked like a lot of work.
Here is a mug shot of our new boat,
Jumping into this project there are many things that I didn’t have in place. I didn’t have a place to park the hulking beast and I don’t have a truck that could get it there. I don’t have plans I am following and I don’t have any experience in boat building.
If there is one thing that I have learned in the past year is that you do not have to have all of the details figured out. Keep the vision in mind and keep going. Cross bridges when you get to them. Don’t let all of the what ifs and scary sounding things out on the horizon prevent you from action.
If you would have told me a year and a half ago that I would be living in Oregon in a house of my own with a detached studio apartment out back, working at an engineering company that lives and breathes sustainability I would have told you, “you are crazy”. I would not have been able to imagine it. I would of had a multitude of objections blocking me from seeing that future. Yet, here I am in Oregon working at a company surrounded by sustainability nerds like myself.
Now when I can’t see the path ahead to the future I want, and my vision starts to get clogged by the weeds of doubt and fear I focus on the next step and keep moving. The future is there, I know it is there. I can feel it. How I get there will be the adventure.
Let me take a step back and fill you in on what the vision is exactly and what the heck I am purchased a boat for.
Where it all began
I have been interested in tiny houses and alternative construction techniques every since I stumbled on Simon Dale’s “Hobbit House.”1
Simon’s house led me down a rabbit hole of unconventional buildings and building techniques. I read about straw bale, earth-bag, rammed earth, cobb, and everything in between. I dreamed about building a low cost, low impact house for my family off the grid in the forest.
But life happens and we ended up in a more conventionally built home in Utah. Although it was a pretty sweet 1901 brick farmhouse. Today, we are in a 1950s ranch style home in Oregon. How we got from point A to B Ashley and I covered in the podcast, episode 1.2
Along the way I was still dreaming about building a tiny house, but it seemed ever more unlikely for our growing family.
That was when Tim Ferris asked his followers on Twitter this question:
I was volunteering at the time at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems3 working with Pliny Fisk III.4 Pliny is a like a mad scientist of buildings. He is always looking for ways to push the boundaries.
Given that I had some new insights, thanks to Pliny, I chimed in on Tim’s question. I browsed through the other replies and came across this one:
I had to find out more about this hobbit house. I dug into Kristie Wolfe5 and found out that she wasn’t living in the house, but that she had built it specifically to be a destination vacation rental. And even though the hobbit house was out in the middle of nowhere it was booked solid for months at $200 a night.
Around the same time we stayed at Brad “Darby” Kittel’s Salvage, Texas in a tiny house.6 Darby build’s beautiful tiny houses out of 99% salvage materials. Each tiny house is unique and full of character, craftsmanship, and charm. He builds the houses to sell, but he also has about six of them up on Air BNB. That was how we found the place.
While we were there we learned that Darby’s customers make back the purchase price of their custom built tiny homes in about a year renting it out on Air BNB.
Through all this it became pretty clear that people enjoy staying in unique places. If you build it really well it doesn’t matter where it is, they will come to you, negating the oft repeated mantra of ‘location, location, location.’
The Vision
Ashley and I put our heads together and came up with all kinds of fun things to build; a tree house, a tower, a light house, or a forest cottage like in a fairy tale.
I have had an interest in sailing from the time in college when for my senior design project I helped build a land yacht (Basically a wind power cart). I designed and built the sail.
I like peruse the Craigslist ads for sail boats. There are small dinghys and there are much larger ones that come up sometimes that are like floating tiny houses. So it was that one night looking at craigslist we got the idea to do a boat.
But our boat needn’t be sea worthy. It is going to be dry docked, surrounded by flowering shrubs, afloat in a sea of wild flowers tied up to a little dock. A tiny isle of luxury.
References:
- Simon Dale’s Hobbit House
- The Tiny Hotelier Podcast, Episode 01
- Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems
- Some of the research Pliny Fisk III was working on while I was volunteering at the center.
- https://twitter.com/kristiemaewolfe
- Tiny Texas Houses
