Moving to Waimate was a huge adventure, challenging but rewarding. We were interviewed and featured on the front page of the paper!
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Tiny House Living Space
This post was written when we had our tiny house open house! We had over 100 people in our house.
HI Readers! Pat and I have just finished a long day of cleaning and "renovating" and wanted to share some photos with you!
Living in such a small space means everything really has to work well. Things have to be convenient and useful. Otherwise you might find yourself wanting to give up all together. For example, when we ordered our storage crates, we were still undecided about what sort of seating we wanted. Little did we know that the plush seat we made, bumped the height of our "couch". It wasn't a huge deal, just a slight inconvenience when we were watching TV or on the computer. So we decided to cut off the very short legs of the crate! While we were down there we decided to insulate the wheel wells. Turns out there was a bit of a draft coming from under the crates. We only noticed it once the weather got a bit colder.
When we built the house we knew there would be things we would want to change, so it was really straightforward and only took a few hours.
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I hope it makes a big difference. Otherwise it would have been a waste of tape and insulation!
Along with the insulating of the wheel wells, we also decided to finally get our record player out of storage and install it on the wall so we could use it whenever. It was a job for patty cakes!
I had found a perfect green suitcase (for 5 bucks from the EcoStore) and it worked a charm! See below:
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Thanks for reading!
We will be in the states soon, drop us a line if you want to say hi!
Cheers!
Pat and Cori
Hello from the othersideeeeeeee....... We haven't posted in awhile because we are busy living our lives in our tiny house!
In case you don't have time to read the whole blog we spent 2015 building a tiny house on a used trailer. It took up every weekend of the better part of a year and $15,000. We are electrically off the grid via three solar panels, we use a wood stove for heat and a composting toilet for you-know-what. We also have gas hot water and a cooking stove top. Check out these photos of our life in the tiny house! We couldn't recommend the lifestyle more.
Thanks again!
-Pat and Cori
This post details the day that we finally moved into our tiny house.
Hello hello! We have great news! Our tiny house video by Bryce of Living Big in a Tiny House was completed!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd7ZNuzvYRs&w=560&h=315]
We had a great time filming and chatting! Sadly the filming happened before we had a chance to finish the porch but it is finally complete.
For more you can visit his website: http://www.livingbiginatinyhouse.com/tiny-home-built-recycled-materials/
Cheers!
Pat+Cori
Hello Again! Friday night was the very first night we slept over at the tiny house. We arrived at about 9:30pm and found the house to be warm and when we turned on all the lights, very well lit. The pillows and kitchenware were quickly put away and we had a nice quiet evening with a glass of wine and a good book. We were very comfortable, warm and everything we needed to relax for the evening was easy to access and use. We slept very well and the hot shower in the morning was amazing. We were both able to cook and be in the kitchen area at the same time without running into each other and the eggs and hashbrowns were delish! It was a great night and we were sad to go the next day. We did make a short list of item to improve but over all we did a great job of planning and anticipating our needs.
Hello!
We finally got around to making our toilet, it took a while to find the right raw materials, but Pat scored a sweet crate that we painted, cut a hole in the top, and mounted hinges. The toilet seat is a special slow close seat (you can afford to upgrade your seat when you're pooping a bucket.) We need to work on sourcing a regular source of sawdust, but we still have some time. 
Sorry we don't have more pictures. I wasn't around to document and supervise Pat.
Thanks!
-Pat and Cori (mostly cori)
Hello Blog Readers, Today at the tiny house we took down our crappy awning and have replaced it with a more permanent roof structure. Our goal is to add more living space to our tiny house and will be complete once we finish building the attached deck.
I have built the roof out of pallets I got for free and the corrugated iron was left over from building the tiny house. I purchased three used rimu timber posts to support the roof from the ground, and some roofing screws. The total cost of the roof was about 40 dollars. We had help from our awesome land owners to lift the roof into place with his loader. Thank you so much!!
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the composting toilet and the deck!
-Pat and Cori
Sorry for the terrible quality!
Hello Everyone, Things are starting to finish up at the tiny house. We just have a few items left on the list and we can finally call it home.
Today I decided to build a shelving unit to go around the television. I used one of the crates we got for free and some left over scraps we had laying around. I also quickly built a small kitchen utensil drawer out of some left over materials. It is nothing fancy but it will work.
Hope you like!!
Hello everyone, Today I worked on finishing the pull out bed. I found a old door in the rubbish and cut out a good section to use as the front. I also pulled up all the protective floor covering to expose all the beautiful flooring that has been under cover for a long time now. I also added a bunch of other updated photos. Hope you enjoy!!
Hi, Today Cori and I worked on our under floor pull out bed and I welded four little tabs on the kitchen sink to support a cutting board to give us some more counter space. We also finished off a few other little things. I hope you enjoy the pictures.
This is for pillow storage at the head of the bed.
Now here's a video of Cori.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGvXMo4i2sA&w=420&h=315]
We installed some bathroom shelves using old apple crates.
Trim for the bathroom window.
As Pat would say "Sweet."
-Cori and Pat
Hello!
This coming week is ECO WEEK, sponsored by the Canterbury Sustainability Department. We were asked to participate by hosting an tiny house open house. Check out the website: http://www.sustain.canterbury.ac.nz/ecoweek/!
There will be a few visitors to the tiny house this Tuesday, so we made a big push to get a lot of stuff done (plus cleaning!). Enjoy.
BATHROOM
TRIMMING MISSION: Cover up the fact that our plastic wasn't long enough to reach the floor...
CORI CUT ALL OF THESE (FYI, I do more than just take pictures.)
ALL DONE! Now on to the light and fan!
And now to clean up the look of the sink. First we peeled back the plastic and then came up with this brilliance! 
Just an old suitcase with an attitude, came free with an old newspaper from 1975!
Next up: Kitchen!
A nice curtain rod in anticipation for an actual curtain!
We needed some more storage!
And EVEN MORE STORAGE!
Why so SERIOUS???
We also finished some trim if you can tell.
We also installed our bench top. And added some hinges and protection.
I know you have seen our letters but we finally finished all the electrical in the house today! All we have to do is test and mount our solar panels.
This is the cleanest we could get the house!
Thanks for reading!
-Cori and Pat
Hello blog readers, I have been working on building a homemade butcher block from completely recycled materials. Thank you Tom and Maria for the beautiful rimu timber. I bought a 5 gallon bucket of used wrenches for 40 dollars and used them to build the frame. The end product has one coat of stain and three coats of polyurethane. The only new material I bought was the wheels. I hope you enjoy.
Hello blog followers, We got a lot accomplished at the tiny house today. The trim around the entrance door and kitchen windows is complete. We were able to use the rimu we got for free from some friends. We cut all the pieces to size and stained them before brad nailing them into place. We also installed a barn style door to the entrance of the bathroom only using some recycled materials we had laying around. I love it when things come together!
Now watch as Pat explains his recycling magic!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxjD0k7ICXo&w=420&h=315]
Hello everyone, Today at the tiny house we did a bunch of little things including trim, kitchen lighting, vinyl in the cabinets, and some decorating. We also lowered the trailer off the four blocks its been resting on for over 7 months. We hooked the trailer up to our truck to test the lights and towing capabilities. After filling all four tires on the trailer with air we shifted the tiny house with no worries. Success! Watch the drama unfold!
Below is the first long distance photo that we have been able to take without a fence in the way!
Nice view!
Pat getting ready to try it out!
Finally got the kitchen lighting up.
I found these in a store in Wellington, three for $12! It took us a while to decide where to put them.
If you look closely you will see the vinyl that we glued to the shelves of the kitchen cabinets. It makes it look so much better!
This thing is really coming together huh?
FINALLY some trim!
I am embarrassed to say that this took me a good 30 min to do!
So it doesn't going flying open while we transport our house!
We also have a few videos if you are interested!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vf6ZXasg_8&w=420&h=315]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kK_c4IvfcU&w=420&h=315]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsTZm70acEc&w=420&h=315]
Hello bloggers, It certainly is spring. This is the second weekend we have been rained out, making things at the tiny house difficult. We have still managed to get things done though.
We painted our lockers, storage cabinet, and kitchen cabinets. I also have been hooking up some of the electrical outlets and switches as I go along. We did the trim above the kitchen all out of recycled timber. At this stage it is really difficult to use recycled materials to do the finishing work because their imperfections make it difficult to be satisfied with the result. This is new territory for the both of us and we keep losing our patience. Building a tiny house is hard work but we had a unexpected visitor today which boosted our morale.
And that's All Folks!
It doesn't seem like much but it is coming along. We did some more major clean up because our tiny house is going to be a part of Eco Week! A sustainable themed week long series of events hosted by the University of Canterbury. Following Eco Week we will be moving our tiny house to our newly rented lot in Christchurch. Everything is happening so soon! Stay tuned for more ;)
Pat and Cori
Hi Readers! Last weekend was one of the first weekends we worked on the tiny house that was cut short by bad weather. But Pat still managed to paint the beige walls (you probably can't tell from the pictures but the walls were scratched and dented). So this weekend we made a huge push to make up for our lost day!
This Saturday we lined our bathroom with plastic we got for free from a friend. We didn't have enough to cover the ceiling as well so once again we used up some scraps! At least our whole house (inside and outside) matches! We also had time to install our sink that had been lying dejected in our shower for ages!
This is the floor I did a while back, finally you can see it ! Previously we had used cardboard to protect the flooring but this weekend we brought the vacuum cleaner along with us. 
We spent the rest of the day cleaning, laying down blue plastic and checking on our bathroom walls.
Sunday was a later start. We got began by hooking up our plug outlets and our lights. Check out the difference it makes!
We finished up the day by finally putting a door on our storage cabinet (we also shortened it!)
It def needs some tweaks but it is on its way! We had a great weekend with lovely weather and our house looks and smells brand new!
Thanks for reading, next weekend hopefully we will have a couch installed and some more trim!
Please enjoy our first attempts at using the panaromic feature on Pat's phone ;)
Signing off!
Pat and Cori
Hi everyone, Today at the tiny house we insulated and covered our ceiling. It has felt like forever that the ceiling has been not finished, but today we got it done! Some really good friend of ours had some extra polystyrene laying around. We took what they gave us and bought what we needed and today got around to finishing our ceiling. That stuff sure does make a hell of a mess but in the end it worked out well.
After the insulation was up we calculated that we had enough left over roofing material for our ceiling. The rust, holes, scratches, and all kinds of minor imperfections gives it a good rustic look.
We also had time to build a door for our utilities box completely out of scraps we had left laying around.
Hope you like it!
Think I am looking kind of stiff haha!
