It’s been a while since we’ve talked about the tiny house. Everyone’s lives and plans went on hold when this pandemic started, and ours is no exception. We had originally planned to order the tiny house in early/mid April, and clearly that did not happen. At this point I don’t really know when it’s going to happen.

The good news is, we’ve saved more than enough for the down payment we wanted to put down. The bad news is, SO was supposed to start a new job the same week everything went on lockdown, so they’ve pushed back his hire date to an as-yet-undetermined date. He had already given his old job his 2 weeks notice, so when they did layoffs he was naturally one of the first to go. Therefore he’s been unemployed for about a month now. Financially that’s ok for a little while at least (although his money to live is now coming out of that accrued down payment savings) but it does make things complicated when it comes to ordering the tiny house. It’s tricky to get a good loan when you’re technically unemployed.

SO has already applied for other jobs in the mean time of course, since at this point we have no idea what’s going to happen with the other one, but as you probably guess, not a lot of companies are hiring right now. That leaves us in kind of in this weird gray area, having to wait to see what’s going to happen. Once he does start a new job, it’ll be a month before we can go order the house and do all the loan paperwork, and then the houses take 5-6 weeks to build. So… we’re going to end up at least a couple months behind schedule, best case scenario.

But – there is a little bit of a silver lining. This spring the builder released a new tiny home model, one that we actually quite love. They already had a lot to choose from, but we have a king size bed that we are unwilling to give up, and as you can probably imagine, not many of these 399 sq ft tiny homes have bedrooms big enough to fit a king. So originally we only had a few options, which was fine because we really liked one of those floor plans anyway. The new one, though, can also accommodate a king. AND, it has a bigger closet. Plus you can add a back porch without taking away too much of the bedroom space. It does mean that the living room area is smaller, but both of us really like the bigger closet and the back porch.

Technically the one we like is a combination of two of this model’s floor plans:

Basically it’s the bottom one with the loft/stairs, but with the back porch added from the top one (we’d probably do smaller porches – 6′ front and 8′ back). Adding the back porch requires moving the washer and dryer to where the pantry would be, to open up that space for a door. You can see an example of one like what we’re thinking in this video tour.

I actually really like the model in the video. Like a lot. More than I’ve ever liked any other model as-is. There are only a few things I would change: that ugly reddish orange accent color, the kitchen sink (I want stainless), the door on the little pet nook, the location of the closet door (I’d like it opening into the hallway rather than the bedroom, and with a pocket door). And we don’t want/need cabinets up in the loft. And the bedroom door needs to open out, not in. And I’d add an island on casters in the kitchen. But otherwise… I’m obsessed with it. I like the colors (except the red), I like the brick accent, I like the shower tile, I like the closet, and I like the little raised area in the loft that would make a damn fine reading nook. I even like the exterior. That’s rare.

I think the big reason we like this one so much though is because with such a small house, we plan on being outside a lot. We want a porch we can hang out on, when it’s not too hot, and had planned on putting a big front porch on the other model. I had been waffling a lot about screening in a front porch though. I love the practicality of it, because if we’re going to be outside a lot, I’d prefer to not be inundated with bugs, but I HATE how a screened front porch looks on these models. It makes it look exactly like the cabins from the Girl Scout camp I went to as a kid, and I absolutely hate the idea of my house looking like a camp cabin.

But if we did two porches, we can leave the front one pretty and screen in the back one, using the back one as our primary outdoor space. That gives us the best of both worlds. Also having the screen door access off the back porch means that we could make the little fenced in dog-potty area back there, instead of at the front. I would much prefer that. The only downsides to this model are the smaller living room (I think we lose 2′ of length in the living room compared to the other model), slightly less cabinet space in the kitchen (maybe one set of cabinets), and slightly smaller bedroom. Our king would still fit, but it might be up against the wall on 2 sides. We both think we’re ok with those sacrifices, but we need to go look at the inside and see how it feels before we decide for sure.

I thought we’d had everything pretty much decided, but this new model definitely threw a wrench in the plans. Maybe it’s not so bad that we got delayed after all? We may not have seen this one otherwise. Fingers crossed we’ll be back on track soon so we can finally order one!