Tiny homes are so interesting to me. And last fall I had the pleasure of meeting Carmen of Tiny Adventures who is based in New Brunswick, at Blogjam and I thought I would introduce you to her and her partner, Max, so you can follow along on their Tiny Home Adventure!
Carmen and Max are still in the planning and developing stage of their tiny home adventure, but I love reading about their latest project and keeping up to date with any progress. Carmen is very engaging on social media and I love how you never know if her videos will be in French or English! Pour a cup of coffee and join me as we chat.
Where and when did the idea start to build a Tiny Home?
Max: Every time I saw or thought about Tiny Houses and alternative living, I thought, “Man, that’s a great idea.”
Carmen: I’m not sure exactly when the idea first started for me, but it was similar to Max. As soon as I started hearing more about the Tiny House Movement, I was very interested in the idea of having that become a reality for myself. It’s only in 2016 that we actually told each other that we were both coincidentally interested in doing the same thing.
What made you decide to build your own over buying one or having someone build one for you?
Carmen: For me, there was no question about it. My dad and his dad built the house I grew up in, and I knew that one day I would ask my dad to help me build my very own house. And the funny thing is, even before Max and I started dating, I always hoped that the two of them would work together on building my home.
Max: I’ve always wanted to build a house, to look at my home and know that I create that from the ground up. And this is probably the only way I’m ever going to be able to afford it, because I’m way too cheap to pay someone else to build it for me.
What are you most excited about in regards to living in a tiny home?
Carmen: Living in a home that is our very own. I can’t wait to have a kitchen that I helped design, that is perfectly functional for me, that meets all my needs. I also love the idea that every single item we own will have a specific place to call home. No more wondering “Where did I leave that?” or “Where should we put this?” There’s only one place it will fit, so that’s the only place it will ever be when it’s not in use!
Max: Saving money, and having that safety net of knowing that I have a home I can always rely on, even when the power goes out, even when everything goes wrong.
What are you most nervous about in regards to living in a tiny home?
Carmen: Personal space. Definitely personal space. I’m worried we’ll argue more because we’re always in each other’s face and we don’t have a place to call our own, where we can each just be alone for a little while. But we’ve already talked about all the things we are nervous about and we’re continuously trying to work towards preventing the worst from happening. For example, we decided I would have a workplace to go to, my little office space, where I could be alone. We also decided that the bedroom will have a door, so we can close it for privacy and a little alone time if the other person is somewhere else in the house. And best of all, we plan on building a garage inside of which Max will have his very own office/tool house to work in and be alone.
Max: Humidity, mold and air quality.
Carmen: You can see we really have two different perspectives about what worries us. Hahah!
Do you have a goal/plan as to how long you’d like to live in your tiny home?
Carmen: We don’t have a set amount of time that we would like to live in it, but probably something along the lines of 5+ years. We’re not exactly sure where life will bring us, but to me, this will definitely be my home and I know I’m going to be extremely attached to it so I might not even want to move out until much later. We’ve discussed having kids in the future, and I can definitely see myself raising a child in our tiny home.
Max: As long as it can support us. But we’re definitely going to keep it forever. When we do decide to move into a bigger home, it will serve as a summer cottage for the rest of our lives.
What are your ‘must-have’ features in the tiny home?
Carmen: The kitchen is my biggest area of “must haves.” I don’t think I could live without a full-sized oven, a full-sized fridge and enough cupboard space for a small/medium-sized stock pile. And a double sink! I never ever want to go back to living with a single sink. Another important feature was the perfect desk, which I actually think I’ve already found thanks to Max’s aunt! We might tweak it a little bit and add a file folder cabinet underneath, but having a good desk was very important to me since I hope to mostly work from home one day. Honourable mentions in this category are an L-shaped couch (I’ve always wanted one, specifically a grey one) and a stackable washer-dryer set.
Max: I need the entire house to be “injury-accessible.” So not wheelchair accessible, but even though you’re injured, you could still easily use every room and every feature in the house. That means no ladder or rock climbing walls.
They offered some more specifics about their current plan for building the home and where they’d like to locate it. I love the well-thought-out plans they have to insure that they have the room to pursue their passions and to host guests or family in the future, too.
As for specifics about the tiny house, it will be on a trailer with wheels. We went back and forth on whether to get a fifth wheel trailer or just the flatbed, and in the end we’ve chosen to go with a flatbed because we were able to find a better price. The house plan will now be built around the trailer type we chose, and although nothing is set in stone, we’ve decided that we are not doing a loft bed, but rather an actual bedroom on one end of the trailer. We’ll still have lofts, accessible by stairs (not a ladder or a climbing wall as Max mentioned haha!) but they’ll either be for storage (probably) or for extra guests. The couch we plan on buying will also be a bed, and that will be our go-to spare bed for guests before we decide if we actually want to turn the lofts into guest areas.
It’s a long term plan, but eventually we want to be able to run at least part of the house on solar or wind. To start off the plan is to be connected to the grid, but also be using certain propane appliances. We’re currently making payments on our first appliance, a gas range oven, so we’re pretty excited about that.
But we’re still in the planning phases and have lots of work to do so we’re trying not to get our minds set to something too specific so that we can be open to change if it doesn’t pan out the way we thought it would. Currently Max is working on a computer program to design the trailer because we’re buying different parts from different people and we’ll be building it from those parts.
The only other thing that we know for sure is that we want to buy land soon, somewhere up north of Moncton, but fairly close. We don’t want to live more than 10-15 minutes out of the city because we know we’re probably going to be working in the city for a while and it’s not worth the time and gas for us to buy cheaper land further away.
Oh, and another thing that is guaranteed is that Max will have a (very) large garage on the property. We won’t be building anything permanent right away, but we do own a giant tarp garage, big enough to fit the Tiny House into, so we’re hoping to set that up as soon as we buy land. I think it’s fantastic because Max plans on building himself an insulated shed/man cave in there so that we can each have a space that is our own, and also somewhere to get some work done on his many many hobbies that would take up too much space in the tiny house. He’ll also be keeping his 1964 Chevy C10 in the garage, his pride and joy.
Eventually, after we save a bit more money and know that we want to stay on the same piece of land, we’re thinking of building an actual garage and having a live-in suite upstairs, which could be used for guests, potentially be rented out, or maybe to be used as an in-law suite later on. Only time will tell I suppose!
If you want to follow along their Tiny Home Adventure, be sure to follow Tiny Adventures on
Facebook,
Instagram and
Twitter and their blog
HERE so you don’t miss a thing!
A special thanks to Carmen and Max for taking some time to chat with us!
To be continued,
Lori
