From Tiny to Small

So, we bought a house.

The house is brand-new — a rare thing from what we’ve seen in our area’s real estate listings. It’s a wee little home, and at just over 800 square feet, it’s exactly the size we were looking for: bigger-than-tiny, but still small. The house sits on half an acre — flat and useable land with lots of sun and patches of shade, surrounded by trees. Which means there is space to park our tiny house.

There’s a lot of work to do on the land: digging out junk in the dirt (bowling balls, bottles, tires anyone?), prepping a pad for the tiny house, possibly cutting down some trees, and landscaping. But in the meantime, we’ve moved in and completely love it. Moving from a tiny space into a home with three rooms, we’ve had to buy essential pieces of furniture we donated, gave away, or have left at my parents’ home. That’s what happens when you purge dramatically and then, a few years later, find yourself back in a somewhat standard-size home. But it’s all good: it offers a clean slate. When Nick moved in with me in San Francisco in 2012, all of the furniture and stuff was mine. This is officially our first home as partners, so it’s nice to fill it together.

For those of you who have been following along from afar, this might seem sudden. What happened? Could they not stand it any longer? Did they fail? Moving on to a bigger space was always part of the plan, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. I thought we’d last in the tiny house for a few years; I thought we’d park in at least one other location. But as you might have gathered from these posts, the time in our tiny house was temporary. The space felt like a testing ground. We used it to see if we really wanted to live in the country. We lived in it to understand how much space we truly needed to feel comfortable (and no, 131 square feet is not enough). We stayed in it to save money, pay off bills, splurge and travel and not feel like we’re drowning, and just try something different. When we realized that we’d achieved our various goals — yes, we love this town! no, we don’t need a really big house! — we did what we always do: devised our next plan, acted quickly, and (somehow) made it happen. On a random Thursday afternoon, we decided to see a house for sale — we were flying to New York City that evening, for a weeklong trip, so we thought, why not see this house? Why not collect more data on what we like and don’t like? But we didn’t expect to fall in love with it. And we certainly didn’t expect to put in an offer. But we did. Two days later, as we sat in the lounge of our Midtown hotel, we learned that our offer was accepted.

We’ve been in our new home for a week, and I still can’t believe it’s ours.

Here’s a peek, courtesy of Prisma, which transforms your photographs into little works of art:

I’m not sure what this means for this blog — I may write another post or two in the coming months as we transition into this space. A truck driver will tow the tiny house here next week, and getting it situated on the lot will be yet another adventure.

So I won’t say goodbye just yet!