My tiny house project: construction begins

One of the most basic ways of reducing your ecological footprint is to make your housing reasonably sized. So when I decided to convert my 280-sf detached garage to a “granny flat,” I thought my progressive and environmentally-minded city wouldn’t mind a bit. Well, I was wrong.

Nonetheless, I’m happy to announce that construction has begun, and I’ve got trash-filled pictures to prove it. First, ponder the dream: a vision of the way it’s supposed to look. Now, check out today’s reality:

There’s clearly a lot of work to do. And in case you don’t believe the house is small, check out the relative scale of the dumpster to the right… we could almost put the whole house in it! (and perhaps we should?)

So far the work has involved removing the inside walls to the studs and ceiling to the rafters.

It’s hard to imagine just from this picture, but now that the ceiling panels are gone the place feels substantially bigger than it used to. Soon the ceiling joists are going to go too — the plan is to remove them and use the interior of the roofline for a loft space.

It’s exciting to see things happening at last. I’ll post more updates as things progress. The schedule says things will be done in 3 months. Famous last words?