X Marks the Spot
This is really it, parcel 28 outlined in red, the piece of land in the low spot on a North Carolina mountain top that I will soon make my home.
(Click on the picture to expand it.)
My early inheritance will be the lower left hand corner that I have outlined in green. The red X is where a future house will go. The blue oval will be my cozy little 14'x24' cottage to build first and live in while I get established and save money. Once a house is built several years down the road, the cozy little cottage will be very sweet guest quarters.
Wave Hi to Mr and Mrs C. in North Carolina. You can see their modest mountain retreat just above the number 28.
Aren't spy satellites the best thing ever?
7 comments:
Can you give more details about the 14'x24'cottage? I LOVE tiny houses.
I'm going to send in my 5 dollars so I can be a member of the Small House Society. The membership page at their site shows a picture of the home of Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond. He was a lot like you, you know. He liked his solitude too, and he was a walking botany encyclopedia (at least when it came to the plants native to the woods of Concord, MA where he lived).
The Small House Society
The tiny cottage will be something like these plans. The objects in the living space are changeable and I want to fit a washer and dryer in too. Given the location the front porch may be regionally appropriate. NOT!
Sometimes we do seem to live inside a science fiction movie - from Hawaii you can view a single point in North Carolina from overhead!
An Austin blogger named Emily has made a lot of posts about small houses - here is that string from her index:
http://humblelabor.wordpress.com/tag/small-house-living/
Annie
What has been very interesting today in the technology science-fiction way is the number of hits I have had from the fire. The immediacy of it getting into a search engine makes me almost feel like a reporter.
You probably know where I found that small house plan. Seeing it made me go back to what were my original thoughts as the costs were getting up to $300,000! I don't want to live in a camping trailer for any length of time. The design process did move the garage to under the house which helped too. I have made my case to my Dad and my "wife" and both have seen the wisdom of my plan.
By removing the second story on the house and not buying an $8000 trailer, the savings on the overall costs of developement could be as much as $50,000.
For about $40,000 I should be able to get the road and house pad cleared, the septic system built for the future larger use, a well drilled and a real roof over my head.
Your Builder's Cottage model looks perfect for the woods. What is it about the porch that won't work in that region? Are you guys going to redesign that part?
Besides the cost savings on building materials, your tiny house will save you a ton of money on heating costs too. I already checked -- the average January nighttime low temperature in Clyde, NC is 21.6 degrees Fahrenheit; the average January daytime high temperature is 47 degrees. I found that information here: www.homefair.com
At the countryplans.com site where you got your plans, I especially liked this cottage because it looks like a miniature version of a lot of our houses out on Cape Cod -- except I've never seen that type of roofing material before.
I'm looking forward to seeing all the steps of your building project -- even the less glamorous parts like clearing the road and house pad, drilling the well, etc. Anything to do with building houses, decorating houses, restoring houses, landscaping around houses... is of major interest to me.
I was joking about the front porch as a place to put the washer and dryer where I can set in my rocking chair, sipping cider with a shotgun across my lap while I do my laundry.
Oops, that's what happens when I read things too quickly -- At first glance I thought you wrote "inappropriate" and that you were referring to the design of the porch itself.
Ah, yes. Cute visual I have now of you up yonder on your front porch -- in your rocking chair sipping cider with a shotgun across your lap. But to make the scene authentic, you'll have to string clotheslines across your front porch to hang your laundry out -- no dryer.
Post a Comment