find deep fulfillment in everything you do
Just a short update: I finally have power in my container! During transport some connections were busted, and it took me forever to have it fixed. But now, there is no stopping me! It’s no “green” power yet, but that’s no priority for me at the moment. Soon some more updates will follow on my internal design, so stay tuned 🙂
Additionally to my “big” and relatively new office container, I also additionally got an old construction trailer without axis or wheels. It’s only 4m x 2,2m (compared to the office container that’s the standard size of 6m x 2,5 m) and is only the aluminum shell with a makeshift floor and I’m not even sure if there aren’t any leaks in the roof. Also it is/was “a little” rusty in places. Here are some first impressions in her new place next to my living container:
The next adventure was to get the thing to the piece of land that I'm allowed to put it. Since these things are actually not that light, the crane from the transport company almost couldn't lift it!
At first it seemed really far from what I was dreaming of, but now I see it as a perfect first step. I want to live small, but since I have no idea if I’ll still want it a year from now, I need to try it out. So I see this container as a perfect opportunity for me to test it out on a small budget and in an assessable timeframe. With this container I have a sound structure where I will still have to build in a water supply, a wooden stove, a “bathroom”, a kitchen and everything else I need in order to live in it. So it’s still a lot to build myself and learn by doing it, but I won’t need so much money and time to test out if I actually like living that small :-). Also it feels really good, to finally DO something after thinking and planning for more than a year.
The first question was, what kind of foundation I would use. Since I didn’t want to use concrete, the options I found were either to use thick wooden planks, old tires filled with gravel, a thing called foundation screw or – what I opted for – washed-out concrete boards. still concrete, but not integrated in the ground and easily removable. So I dug some holes, put gravel in and on top the washed-out concrete boards. That looked something like that:
Now that I tried it, I wouldn’t recommend using washed-out concrete boards for that endeavor, because they can break and if they do, they’re useless soon. I would guess that the best solution would probably have been the wooden planks. What’s your opinion? Anyone have experience with different forms of non-permanent foundations?
A little more than two years ago – maybe even longer than that – I started to realize more and more that there was something “missing” in my life. Since then I embarked on a journey to find at least some of the missing pieces. And now I’ll tell you about one of them.
Among some other things, I started to downsize my life about a year ago. I got rid of a lot of junk that accumulated over the years, and still need to get rid of some more. Also a little more than two years ago I first got the idea of a tiny house on wheels. I had a picture of a wooden, modernized, self-sufficient gipsy waggon in my head – and still have.
After the picture in my head had started to form, I looked for inspiration on the net and was and still am truly amazed by the many examples of people who had similar ideas and dreams and how they materialized them. Here’s only a short highlight of what I found:
Examples from the US:
http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/
http://tinyhouseblog.com/
http://relaxshacks.blogspot.com/
http://tinyhouseswoon.com/
Examples from Europe:
http://www.roulottes.nl/
http://www.wohnwagon.at/
http://www.bewegtleben.com/
http://www.wohlwagen.de/
To put this list on here without much of an explanation feels kind of like fastfood and I’m sorry for that, but I will dedicate another more comprehensive post to tiny and mobile living. I’ll also feature some examples in separate entries as well, but right now I need to rush a little to get to my exciting news!!