Yes, you read that title correctly. We built and own a tiny house. A whole 312 square feet. Curious how that came to be? Well, it all starts in the great city and capitol of Florida, Tallahassee.
Nick and I met in the beginning of my senior year at Florida State {#gonoles}. Upon graduation, I secured a real “big girl job” at a local publishing company, Rowland Publishing. There wasn’t any real plan {when is there really a plan?} but we knew we needed a place to live.
Nick’s mom, Nancy, had just found a cute vacation cottage down on the Ochlockonee Bay in Wakulla County. It was really easy for us to envision ourselves living there. The large swaying oak trees and tall tall pines along the bay, easy access to go fishing or cruise around on a boat, the peace and quiet of being away from the city. We made great friends with the neighbors across the street from Nancy’s cottage, Bob + Ginger White. Their home was nestled right along the water and they had this great long boardwalk that jutted out into the bay. They also happened to own the small “shack” across from their home and right next door to Nancy’s place. Long story short... The little piece of land with that shack became ours!
The plan from there was to turn the shack into a home! From a young age, I had a serious fascination with architecture and interior design. {Heck, I took 3 years of autocad in high school!} I had soooo much fun drawing out my first home! The initial structure was a total of two rooms, a bathroom, and a “porch”. Now I put porch in quotes because no porch is only 3 feet wide. So we gutted the structure and started putting it all back together, to our liking and desire. This included closing in the way-too-small-to-even-be-considered-a-porch strip, making the final dimensions of our tiny abode a whopping 312 square feet (24’x13’). Nick is very handy and ran all of the plumbing and wiring. I came in clutch with the palm nailer to secure the hurricane clips {yay Florida}. This entire process took us about a year to complete. We both worked full time, so this was a project we tackled whenever we had the chance!
Below are some images of before and after :)
The publishing company I worked for fresh out of college created beautiful magazines throughout the entire panhandle. Rosanne Dunkelberger, then the fabulous editor of Tallahassee Magazine, wrote an amazing article on tiny homes and our little place was featured! Mark Walheiser, an incredible photographer, came out to our neck of the woods and took the most incredible shots of our mini masterpiece. I don’t know about you, but being in a magazine is SO COOL. Here’s a link to the article if you wanna read more! {http://www.tallahasseemagazine.com/Deal-Estate/July-August-2016/Living-Large-in-Small-Spaces/index.php?cparticle=2&siarticle=1#artanc}
With the home being so small, you would think that we would have gotten sick of each other. But that’s totally not the case! Maybe it’s because we spent a lot of time outdoors on the river, out in the gulf, or just outside in good ole Mother Nature… but really, there’s nothing tiny about the house when it comes to appliances and fixtures. It’s very cozy!!
All-in-all, there is something so satisfying about seeing and actually living in something you built with your own hands. Sometimes you’ve got to get scrappy to make your dreams comes to life! So there you have it, you know someone who’s lived the tiny house life. There’s more you may not know about me… but we’ll save that for another time ;)
Cheers!
CC
P.S. More images from the talented Mark Walheiser can be found here: http://www.markwallheiser.com