My family and I traveled down to Lakeland this past weekend to visit my mom to see how she’s been since moving in to her tiny house a little over a month ago. I also invited Alex from tinyhousetalk.com to come up and see it since he had expressed an interest when he interviewed me a while back (check out his post and video).
I must say my mom has done an awesome job (with lots of help from various people – especially her neighbor Bob and husband Rick) finishing off her tiny house. If you recall, due to pressure from my neighborhood association I was forced to move the tiny house to Florida a little less finished than I had planned. The exterior was complete with the exception of paint and the interior siding was up but not much else. Since then she has painted the exterior, had cabinets custom built, installed hardwood floors, and turned it into her own personal gallery.
Upon entering the house I realized I had forgotten how roomy it felt (it’s been at least a year since the last time I was in it). When I spoke to my mom about us all showing up for the day, I said we could do a tour of the house but then spend the rest of the time outside so that we weren’t all cramped inside. After all, there would be 6 of us (this is before I knew that Alex was bringing his fiancée Andrea and her dog). Well the heat and the rain spoiled that plan and we all spent the day inside. Yet not once did the house feel crowded (even with a two year old taking up half the couch napping). My wife Beth even commented on how this experience had changed her thoughts on entertaining in a tiny house.
We all had a great time and haven’t stopped talking about it since. I want to thank Alex, Andrea, and Louie for making the trip up the see us. I really enjoyed their company and had a great time with everyone.
As we left, Beth turned to me and said: “Your mom seems so happy now, I think you gave her a new lease on life”. That was the goal 
One issue that did come up is that my mom said that the water heater always cut out after about a minute of use. She said it was always just as she got her hair all lathered up that the water would become ice cold. After investigating and experimenting I realized that the issue was that the compartment that contains the water heater isn’t ventilated enough and the heater burns through the available oxygen pretty quickly which then extinguishes the flame. The burning of propane produces Carbon Dioxide which is heavier than air so ventilating the bottom of the compartment out of site should fix her problem.
Also on a side note, I have decided to build another tiny house. I am working on the plans now and expect to begin construction in the next couple months. On this build I plan to post as much as I did on the first but also include a lot more video. I’ll provide more details when I know them. Talk to you all soon.
