Timing Is Everything

…and sometimes it doesn’t work out. In December I let my sister know that I would be moving along come the end of January, which would give me the sense of urgency I needed in order to get things wrapped up. 30 days to sell the remainder of my non-necessities, to finish up the remaining van projects, and to get things in order for a couple months of travel. At the end of December I […]

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Purge – I challenge you!

It is that time of year; the parking lots of shopping centers across the country are packed with consumers doing what they do best. Soon houses will be filled with brightly wrapped boxes adorning the floor around a dying tree, while children and adults alike dream of all the items they may have waiting for them. To me, Christmas has become a holiday centered around stuff, sadly, rather than about family or religion. How did […]

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Not a matter of if, but when

If you have been following along, my last post So you think you want a Vanagon huh?, addressed the romanticized concept of vanlife – specifically in a regards to the VW Vanagon. These vans are, at their newest, 25 years old and are all wearing out.  Mine and my dad’s are no different. While my van is suffering through snow and sub-freezing temperatures back in Bend Oregon, not to mention an engine transplant, I am […]

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This Last Year

In the fall of 2015 my sister, who lives down in Terrebonne Oregon, asked how I felt about trying my hand at building a tiny house. It is something I had been talking about doing for a while, but never had the space or funding to undertake. Enter this opportunity. They had a building near their house that was gutted and need of a lot of work, but was a solid structure with sheathing, a […]

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Cabinets – 1

I had built the cabinets for my previous Vanagon out of 3/4″ plywood – three sheets of it. To say the least, they weighed a ton! I learned some valuable lessons about how to build cabinets and what I needed in this next version. I wanted these new cabinets to weigh far less than the last ones, this was a high priority.  When I go backpacking I try to keep my load as light as […]

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A Footprint Is

A footprint, as I often think of it, is our environmental one – how much resources we require and how many earths it would require if everyone lived this way. It is also, the space we take up, like the footprint of a house. Both are at play in this case. The latter is quite tiny – approximately 60ft2 total with probably about 40ft2 of living space. That is a  less than 3% of the […]

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The Beginning

As with all things, there must be a beginning. For me, the first step is the structure of this site and getting things up and running. I have already been working on the Vanagon, and will get to that build in the next post. But here, now, I want to quickly tell you a little about me, this site, and what the end goal is here. At the end of 2011 I purchased my first […]

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