In this category you will find all the things that have to do with creating something, if it is cooking meals, sewing projects or building on our homestead
We love garlic in our food. If we make soup, roast a chicken or some other meat or make a sauce. We put garlic in there. Unfortunately I can not store garlic in our Tiny House very well. It always starts sprouting after a week. Therefore I never buy much and often run out.
To solve my problem with this I decided to preserve garlic for quick and easy use and to prevent the garlic from going bad. This way I should never run out anymore. I have seen people mince the garlic and put it in oil, but I often use the cloves, so I just put the cloves (bigger cloves sliced in two) in olive oil. I bought 5 bulbs of garlic, but could only fit 4 bulbs in the glass I chose. The last bulb will be put to good use fresh. Luckily I had 3 helpers. More and also less useful. Those of you with small children will know what I mean. But the pealing went very quickly and was a lot of fun. And the garlic needed for today’s soup was ready for use also. I store the glass with garlic on oil in the refrigerator.
With our last post we had the hull and the electricity done. Now we move on to the interior.
Since I liked the rustic barn-style look of the under construction planks, we decided to leave a part of the under construction planking visible. Since we did not plane these planks we could not leave it all like this because of the children. We do not want them to get grinder when they walk along the wall. Therefore we started adding planed planks up to a curtain height. We put the heater back right away, since it is getting colder.
For the main part of the Tiny House we used Spruce. Only at the entrance we used Larchwood.
At the corner where the stacked bed for the 2 older kids will go, we added planed planks up to the sealing. We added in an ornament by using Spruce and Larchwood and we used a different orientation as the planks below. We love how it turned out.
We put in the basic construction of the kitchen, so we could lay the floor. The kitchen is not finished yet, so the kitchen will be covered in a different post. We laid a laminate and used Larchwood for the trimming. We are not big fans of laminate, but at the moment it is the most practical for us.
We used a minimalistic trim out of planed Spruce around the windows.
Next thing we put in our beds and dressers. Some of you might recognise them from Ikea. The 2 older kids wanted to paint there dressers them selves and give it there best shots. They had a lot of fun painting. Then we added an old cupboard which we decorated with some life edge Larchwood to make it pretty.
With the small room that should become the bathroom, we did not really know what to do. We need the room for storage and really wanted to move in. We did not have the wood to finish this room, so we put some cardboard on the walls to prevent grind from getting on our clothes and other things we wanted to store there. Some day we will change this room, but for now with a composting toilet in there and the storage it is just as we need it.
Than we have the wardrobe to do. We already have the Larchwood on the lower wall, but in order to hang our coats without getting grind in there we need to cover more of the wall. We decided on a bit of a contrast. We put up some screen printing plates which are black. We put up a lower wardrobe for the kids and one on a normal height for us adults. And for some storage we put in another old cupboard decorated with some life edge Spruce.
We also put a shelf on the wall with some decorative lantern and a small drawing. This drawing symbolizes our dream.
A small farm on which we can provide for all of our needs ourselves.
Now we have moved in with at least a sink in the kitchen. Once the kitchen is finished I will post about it.
Our Tiny House door is rotting and does not close any more
Despite the fact that our Tiny House is not finished jet we have already moved in, because we wanted to celebrate Christmas there and with the predicted very cold wetter the kids have more space to play inside of the Tiny House as they have in the caravan. We have finished up the walls and the floor and started building a kitchen, but I still owe you the posts on that. These will follow soon.
But first things first. We have a big problem whit our front door. It is a wooden door which we bought 2 years ago. At the moment we do not have the possibility to build our own door. We gave the outside a paint to give it some protection. When we build the door into the Tiny House it already was a problem fitting it. The door was warped from the beginning and did not close; we could not lock the door; etc. We reduced the door lock mechanism from a 5 point door lock to a 1 point door lock in order to get the door to shut and to be able to get locked. The doorframe also needed to be modified.
Now after 2 years of use the wood is starting to rot. And if that is not enough we had a few days of heavy frost. One night we had almost -20°C.
That gave our door the rest. Due to the door being build out of low quality and thin wood, moisture formed on the inside and drained the wood. As you can see on the picture above.
This caused the wood to expand. It expanded so much that we could not close the door properly any more. We can only smack the door and hope that it will just pop enough into the frame to keep it in place.
Locking the door is not possible any more. Luckily we have 4 big dogs, so we are not afraid anyone will break in.
The morning after the -20°C the door was actually frozen shut. We had difficulties getting it open. The wood is so very soaked in with moisture, that water runs out and froze on the door and inside of the frame.
Ice under need of the door looking from the insideIce drops hanging from the doorframe
We had already ordered a new door, because we did not trust this door anymore, but it came broken and it needed to be swapped. This new door kept us waiting longer then expected and we tried to somehow get the door to at least close again. We put a lashing strap around the door to press it together and then screwed a few planks to the door.
We hoped we could close the door again, but it did not help. After a few days where we could not close our door finally the new door came and we changed the door.
This time we bought a plastic door and it fits perfect. We can open and close it lightly. We do not like plastic, but for now we are very happy with this door. We just need to get a fitting lock and door fittings, but the store was closed on New Years Eve.
Beautiful Chaos 