First Day of Living Tiny: Chaos
Although we have been living in our incredible Tiny House for almost two weeks now, we honestly have not had a moment until now to breathe and keep everyone updated with our progress. Over several blog posts, I will reveal many of the struggles and learning lessons we encountered, but the amount of drama in our first day with our home is arguably too long for this post alone anyway.
We spent the morning of March 1st scrambling to get supplies to be ready for the delivery of our house. We ran back and forth between Walmart and a local RV Parts supplier, trying to find a power cord, heated water hose, and sewage hose that would meet our needs. We had no idea what we really needed, so we were learning on the fly, pestering the builders at Mustard Seed Tiny Homes for information. Eventually, we ended up with what we thought were the right supplies.
Our hauler finally pulled into our new neighborhood, Crown Villa RV Resort, with the ice-covered house behind a Ford F-450. Almost immediately after the hauler arrived, snow began to blanket everything in several inches of fluffy powder within hours. Originally we thought we would be able to park the house with the utility closet closest to all of our hookups. However, due to the 3-4 feet of snow piled up around our parking spot, there was no way for the driver to pull the house in, and still be able to get the truck out. Out of necessity, we parked the house as close to the back of our lot as possible, trying to get access from the utility connections to our utility closet at the back of the house.
The second after the driver unhitched the house from the truck was definitely one of those moments where I felt profoundly clueless about what I had gotten myself into. I was scrambling to find the right size wrench to even drop down the supports on the trailer, but I still had no idea how to properly distribute the weight on the trailer. My first mistake was to put as much tension as I could on each jack. Being a complete Tiny House/RV ignoramus, I thought that I needed to get the tires off of the ground. I am certainly lucky to not have damaged the jacks in the process, which are only designed to stabilize and support a small percentage of the weight of the entire trailer.
Just looking at our house, I was facing a mix of emotions; pride in our design choices, confusion as to what to do next, and stress about how much I had to learn before I could comfortably call this our home. I figured the first thing to do after dropping down the jacks was to set up all of our utility connections.
It took a while to even find where our water connection was, because the entire bottom section of the utility closet had about 6-inches of ice caked onto it. Unfortunately, our haulers truck did not have mud flaps on it, so heaps of ice and dirt found a new home on our Adventure Abode. I chiseled away at the ice only to find that our 25-foot power cord and heated water hose were about 10-feet short from reaching.
At this point, my patience and energy levels were draining very quickly, yet there was still all of our unpacking to be done. Lauren was a great help in unpacking the inside of the house but all we had on our minds that first day was to get the house to a point where we could get to the bed and finally get to sleep in our own bed again. Without power or water, we were resigned to spend the 12-degree night without those necessities, covered with as many blankets as possible to stay warm.
To our pleasant surprise, around 8pm our new neighbors knocked on our door and said they had heard about our troubles and were able to find a spare 50-amp power cord that they did not need that night. They helped us connect both cords, which were able to reach to our utility closet and finally our lights turned on and we had a glowing and more importantly, heated home to sleep in at night. After we hugged our new neighbors gratefully, we spent another hour or so unpacking before passing out with exhaustion in our new warm home.
We spent the morning of March 1st scrambling to get supplies to be ready for the delivery of our house. We ran back and forth between Walmart and a local RV Parts supplier, trying to find a power cord, heated water hose, and sewage hose that would meet our needs. We had no idea what we really needed, so we were learning on the fly, pestering the builders at Mustard Seed Tiny Homes for information. Eventually, we ended up with what we thought were the right supplies.
 |
| Just as our house was pulling up... |
Our hauler finally pulled into our new neighborhood, Crown Villa RV Resort, with the ice-covered house behind a Ford F-450. Almost immediately after the hauler arrived, snow began to blanket everything in several inches of fluffy powder within hours. Originally we thought we would be able to park the house with the utility closet closest to all of our hookups. However, due to the 3-4 feet of snow piled up around our parking spot, there was no way for the driver to pull the house in, and still be able to get the truck out. Out of necessity, we parked the house as close to the back of our lot as possible, trying to get access from the utility connections to our utility closet at the back of the house.
 |
| Ice completely covering our utility connections |
The second after the driver unhitched the house from the truck was definitely one of those moments where I felt profoundly clueless about what I had gotten myself into. I was scrambling to find the right size wrench to even drop down the supports on the trailer, but I still had no idea how to properly distribute the weight on the trailer. My first mistake was to put as much tension as I could on each jack. Being a complete Tiny House/RV ignoramus, I thought that I needed to get the tires off of the ground. I am certainly lucky to not have damaged the jacks in the process, which are only designed to stabilize and support a small percentage of the weight of the entire trailer.
Just looking at our house, I was facing a mix of emotions; pride in our design choices, confusion as to what to do next, and stress about how much I had to learn before I could comfortably call this our home. I figured the first thing to do after dropping down the jacks was to set up all of our utility connections.
 |
| Maneuvering our 18,000lb home was extremely tricky with a fresh coat of snow on the ground |
It took a while to even find where our water connection was, because the entire bottom section of the utility closet had about 6-inches of ice caked onto it. Unfortunately, our haulers truck did not have mud flaps on it, so heaps of ice and dirt found a new home on our Adventure Abode. I chiseled away at the ice only to find that our 25-foot power cord and heated water hose were about 10-feet short from reaching.
At this point, my patience and energy levels were draining very quickly, yet there was still all of our unpacking to be done. Lauren was a great help in unpacking the inside of the house but all we had on our minds that first day was to get the house to a point where we could get to the bed and finally get to sleep in our own bed again. Without power or water, we were resigned to spend the 12-degree night without those necessities, covered with as many blankets as possible to stay warm.
To our pleasant surprise, around 8pm our new neighbors knocked on our door and said they had heard about our troubles and were able to find a spare 50-amp power cord that they did not need that night. They helped us connect both cords, which were able to reach to our utility closet and finally our lights turned on and we had a glowing and more importantly, heated home to sleep in at night. After we hugged our new neighbors gratefully, we spent another hour or so unpacking before passing out with exhaustion in our new warm home.
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