"Moving House" Again

   

6:31 AM on November 1st.  I am in my car about to drive over to Big D's house to meet up with Kyle and B, who will again be towing my tiny house.  It is pitch dark -- the light that can be seen is only the glow of downtown Cincinnati shining up onto the low cloud cover.  It is windy -- about 9 mph -- and snow flurries, the first of the season, are playing in front of the headlights and melting on the windshield.  Also I think it is about 28 degrees Fahrenheit.

Between the previous view and this one (taken at 7:17 AM), a lot happened, some of which I have recorded on video.  I will post the videos singly at another time.  At this point the house was just out onto the main road, having made it under all the low-hanging trees which had had all summer to grow and hang further over the road...

We took a circuitous route to the metal recycling depot from Big D's, in order to avoid an underpass about 5 yards before the entrance.  Still snowing.

 
In this satellite view, the underpass may be seen, and just past it on the left is the entrance to the business.  The clearance was marked as 13' 4".  And the house is approximately 13' 3" from the ground to the roof peak.  So I had no intention of going that way!

 
Then we went a bit farther out of the way to avoid another underpass, which I believe was marked as having 12' and some inches of clearance, instead going through a new shopping center and down a cross street in the city.

And here we are at the recycled metal weigh station -- the house is finally on a scale!  After worrying for over a year about how heavy it was (if the weight of the empty house was too great, really the whole project might have failed -- how can I be a traveling artist/peddler without carrying a bunch of stuff with me?) we found that it was just under 5,000 lbs.  Hurrah!  The axles can support 10,500 lbs maximum, and I plan not to go over 9,000 - 9,500 lbs, so it looks like I can breathe deeply again, for the first time since I found out the trailer by itself weighed 2,300 lbs (up from the specs I first saw, which said 1,600 lbs...)!   Whew!

I guess Kyle and B were a little giddy too, because mere minutes after weighing the tiny house, they (I later found out) decided they thought the house might just make it under the underpass (which coming the other direction was marked 13' 4") and decided to try it.  Yikes!!  As they turned right towards the underpass, instead of left to retrace our initial route, my mind froze up for a second, and all I could imagine was the roof peak trim (so recently completed) rumpling up as it was accordioned off the house and left behind lying in the road! Aarrgh!  Help!

One thing I am thankful for is that I was not actually taking video at the time, or I would have an embarrassing record of me spluttering and shrieking at the guys, who naturally couldn't hear me.  I was trying to make a sharp turn, enter the stream of traffic (luckily none), call Kyle on the cell, and hold onto my camera and at the same time shriek.  Needless to say, the truck towing the house moved VERY slowly under the underpass, and I realized that, of anyone in the world, I would prefer to have the combination of Kyle and B be the ones to be inching under there.  However, I swear there was only an inch of clearance!  Anyhow I had thought the weighing was going to be the most exciting part of the trip, but that was nothing compared to the momentary vision of my tiny house getting beheaded...

After that, there was nothing to it! Entering the interstate for the first time, seeing tractor trailers whooshing past us, looking at my speedometer and watching our speed hit 50mph, then 55mph (first time for both), no problem.  I include this photo in memory of my father, who used to sing a song about the tattooed lady -- "On her back there was a road map of Kentucky, and the Dixie Highway ran along her spine..."

The sky had lightened, and now we were out in the country, off the interstate, but still safely on a main road that was used by truckers (not a criteria I had thought to be basing my travels on). 

Our trip took place just a few days before the mid-term elections, and I was tickled to see a campaign sign for the current county clerk, to whom I had made out my utility trailer-registering check earlier in the year.  As my house (with its license plate permanently secured to the aft wall) sailed by the sign, I remembered joking with the assistants, saying that it was really more of a mobile interactive sculptural piece, bolted to a utility trailer, not a house.  Needless to say, she had my vote the next Tuesday.

Like a real pro (which he is!) B casually backed the trailer perfectly into the position Kyle and I had chosen for the house. (Note the snow on the roof of my friend C's house.)  A few minutes later, the leveling jacks were down, the tongue was stabilized, and that rubber chock was in place on the cement pad.  Almost simultaneously, an unknown neighbor drove by and called out to us to see if the house was "one of those tiny houses". I was proud to say that Kyle had built it, and that it was in fact my house.  She was thrilled and said she'd come back and see it sometime. So all was well -- move number two a success. 

In this view, taken a few days later, I thought the roof lines of my house and C's went very well together, no?  All in all, in addition to the landmarks already noted, the route of my tiny house this time went past: 

• A and N's grade school
• The supplier of a special order screen for my ground floor starboard window
• The pizza place where H works
• The garage whose owner received and assembled the trailer off the truck and delivered it to Kyle in October 2013
• The turn-off for the home of CB, dessert maker extraordinaire
• The facility where my storage unit is, "howalel fatah" in Arabic, where Minnie found me
• The turn-off for an educational farm, still my all-time favorite job
• The turn-off for my most recent alma mater
• The office of my financial adviser (thank you JL!)

Catching Up in Preparation for the Second Move...

I am not sure if I mentioned anything last spring about the exasperating wiring issue with regard to the trailer electrical hook-up.  But, suffice it to say, Kyle got to spend some quality time re-re-wiring the connector that receives the plug from the towing vehicle's electrical system, in preparation for the second move.  Big D needed his driveway back, to work toward paving it, after doing some sewer pipe repair.  So the tiny house is going a bit further south into Kentucky, to the driveway of the home of my dear friend C (one of the award-winning staining crew).

This is the 7-pin connector, looking outwardly just the same as before Kyle fussed over it for the third time, thanks to the trailer instruction manual's mistaken wiring diagram.  All's well that ends well, however, in the words of the Bard.

During a day-long reconnaissance trip, Kyle and I traveled the possible routes from Big D's to C's, visited weigh scales at both a truck stop and a recycled metal company, and scouted C's driveway for the perfect spot for the tiny house. At first it seemed great to locate the house here on the pad to the side of the garage, but a bit of fooling around with a tape measure showed that the sweet "little" Bradford pear tree would have to be pruned more or less in half vertically to squeeze the house in there.  Not good.  So the decision was eventually made to set the house right in front of the left garage door, about 3 feet away from it.  This way C can still get from the house to the garbage cans directly, and her husband's car can fit between the trailer hitch and the sidewalk portion of the driveway pad.  In an interesting side note, we discovered that his car, a Highlander, is a foot longer than my house (not including the tongue).

Before leaving Big D's driveway, the wiring for a couple of the electrical receptacles was completed, looking very exciting!  Even if the power won't be turned on for quite some time, since by moving the house further south gives P, my electrician, an even longer drive to work on it.

I ran around to KOI auto parts three times before the move, twice to get the trailer running lights we needed, and the last time for a big rubber chock. C's driveway slopes down to the street, and we didn't want the house to roll out into the neighborhood sometime when nobody was looking!

Here in a corner of Big D's studio is my stockpile of salvaged items and furniture to be up-cycled into interior cupboards and shelves for the house.  After bringing it to Big D's, and moving it again to C's, I will be psyched to actually start installing things.  Hopefully we can start with this fairly soon in the new location.

However, there is also a lot of clearing out to be done in my generously-sized apartment and storage units (after 21 years, and the inheriting of treasures from a grandparent and both parents).  These bags include only some of my art and ceramics books! 

Three Views of the Wainscoting

I think this was the morning of the Sunday party; the floor was swept, and most of the wainscoting boards had been installed the night before.  It was a sunny morning, and these views give an impression of the feel of the interior.  This one is looking toward the stern; the wainscoting stops just where the window seat nook will begin.

Here is a view of the starboard wall.  The (substantial) chair rail will be installed over the seam between luan and wainscoting.  Forward of the window will be the desk area, and aft of it will be the propane fireplace, leaving enough room for the window seat to fold out into a single bed, from port to starboard across the stern.

And here is a view of the port wall, showing wainscoting installed forward to the edge of the shower pan.  The kitchen window is pictured here, and below the dormer loft floor on the port side will be the kitchen, what there will be of one!  Probably a 30" high fridge, overhung by a microwave, and a propane stove on the countertop forward of them.  That's all for now, folks! Next will be preparation for the second towing of the tiny house...