FT RV'ing/Update: Tiny House!

[unsinkable]

It might be more cost effective to expand the garage. Although concrete is expensive. But then you'd have a bigger garage that could be used for other stuff in the future.

[Lang Syne Boardie]

22 minutes ago, unsinkable said:

If money is the issue, and you don't know how much it will cost until you are actually doing it, it might not be a good plan.

If you can't afford to safely heat the building in winter, then you're back to where you are now, minus all the money you spent. Which I'd guess would be in the thousands of dollars.

 

 

I'm not as worried about mistakes or unknowns with cabin construction as I was about RVs. Construction and utilities are firmly in DH's wheelhouse, professionally, over thirty years. He will have blueprints and permits and such, as well as friends and relatives who are also skilled tradesmen and general contractors. This is a safe bet for us with a lot of "knowns."

[Liz CA]

15 hours ago, Tibbie Dunbar said:

OK, this idea is not looking good. I just researched our area's average highs and lows, and as many as FOUR months of the year, during the school year, would probably be too cold and harsh.

Edit: Maybe July in this state is not the best time to make plans for winter. We are roasting right now! Hard to remember December!

 

If you are / were considering an RV, would you consider a small mobile home? I am no fan of those either but for a single college student it may work. They are hopefully marginally better insulated than RVs. I know some that had pellet stoves in them and those kept the living space fairly warm.

[Lang Syne Boardie]

48 minutes ago, Liz CA said:

 

If you are / were considering an RV, would you consider a small mobile home? I am no fan of those either but for a single college student it may work. They are hopefully marginally better insulated than RVs. I know some that had pellet stoves in them and those kept the living space fairly warm.

 

I think the neighbors would dislike a mobile home on the property. I walked around the neighborhood today and saw a lot of houses with multiple outbuildings in the big backyards, including detached garage apartments, but a mobile home wouldn't go.

[Wabi Sabi]

I live in the same part of the country as Tibbie, and we have an outbuilding that my dh converted into a studio space: 

He bought one of those pre-built glorified sheds from a dealer for about $3500. Once it was delivered we had a handyman run power to it from our house, wire the building, insulate, drywall, and install overhead lights on a switch. We installed cheap laminate flooring and painted it ourselves. In the summer it has a window AC unit and in the winter we run an oil-filled electric space heater, the kind that looks like an old radiator- they are quite safe and in such a small space it does a great job of keeping it warm inside, even when it's cold for an extended period of time. He's been using his building for 7-8 years now and it's still in great shape. 

 

[Catwoman]

3 hours ago, Tibbie Dunbar said:

 

I'm not as worried about mistakes or unknowns with cabin construction as I was about RVs. Construction and utilities are firmly in DH's wheelhouse, professionally, over thirty years. He will have blueprints and permits and such, as well as friends and relatives who are also skilled tradesmen and general contractors. This is a safe bet for us with a lot of "knowns."

 

Would it be possible to expand the garage by building a second floor over it? I’m thinking that it would give your son the space he needs now, while also adding value to your home in the long run.

Also, kind of unrelated, but I think you mentioned a composting toilet in an earlier post, and I just remembered that when I watch tiny house shows, many people have opted not to get them because they are very expensive. I don’t recall exactly how much they cost, though, but I remember thinking it was way more than I would have imagined, and that it was an awful lot of money to pay for a very inconvenient toilet!

[Catwoman]

4 hours ago, unsinkable said:

It might be more cost effective to expand the garage. Although concrete is expensive. But then you'd have a bigger garage that could be used for other stuff in the future.

 

I posted before I read this. Oops. But I suggested building above the current garage, so it’s technically sort of, kind of, a little bit of a different suggestion, right? ?

[Lang Syne Boardie]

DH says the house can't be expanded upward; it's too old and the foundation couldn't handle it. (When we realized we were locked into the house after the 2008 recession and housing bubble bursting, we thought we might build on the bedroom half of the house, to help our growing boys in tiny bedrooms have some more space, so DH looked into it back then.) 

One possibility for expanding the garage would be to build it further out onto the (long) driveway. A friend who is an artist, who also has experience with general contracting, drew up a plan for me awhile back. We were talking about half regretting that we'd needed to finish the garage, because it is so hard on DH to have to work on cars in the driveway...so did we want to build a detached garage in the backyard (eventually), or was there a way to still add a garage onto the house without losing that new room? My friend thought we could add a larger window to the side of the room addition and just put the new garage on the front of it. Her sketch looked great, as far as the look of the house from the street.

So unsinkable and Catwoman, thank you for the suggestion to build "up" because it reminds me that we could build "out" and go ahead and make it the addition with the garage doors and side door. Ds#3 could live there a few years, and then we could claim it as a functioning garage.

One major difficulty there would be that it would be far more expensive to extend the footprint of the house proper, but we could also probably get a reasonable home improvement loan. Not that we need more debt; we are on track to be debt-free within three years if we don't take anymore on. Whereas with the cabin idea, ds#3 would be paying for it, and DH estimates that he could do it (composting toilet and all) for less than $5000 at the absolute worst. Which would be less than ds#3 would need for housing for one year, if he rented locally, but he could live there for four years...

Depending on how the loan worked out, though, DH might prefer the garage option, because it gets him closer to getting a normal garage back! 

There's one other possibility here, which is that it's possible ds#2 will decide to move out within the coming year. I would not be surprised either way; he might live with us for half of forever (which is fine) or his commute might finally wear him down and he'll move closer to work. He is doing so well in life that there's no way I'm going to push him. But if he decides on his own, now that we are talking about composting toilets, we could use that method to turn the garage closet into a bathroom and ds#3 could move out there. 

We will probably not construct anything until late next spring. With children these ages, a lot can change. 

 

[Lang Syne Boardie]

If we don't add on to the garage, then after all our adult children finally move out, DH could restore half the finished garage to a one-car garage. He left the floor concrete, and left the openings for the garage doors, just so he could put it back if he wanted. Only one bay, though, because he's really proud of the utility room he built around the boiler and hot water heater, and does not want to take it apart!