Whydiss

At the start of 2022 the place we had called home, a four bedroom unit was ending coming to an end, in the middle of the year. The accommodation crisis was just starting to affect our city and I had real concerns about securing our next rental property.

With each rental application going nowhere and with the deadline to our move out date looming, I started looking at alternative accommodation. We viewed and applied for local granny flats which would mean putting all of our furniture into a storage unit and living in a very small home.

Each night as I lay in bed, I kept scrolling through the ads and one night I came across a micro tiny house for sale. It occurred to me, if we ended up living in a granny flat or one bedroom unit, a micro tiny house would give us extra space. With each rental application I submitted from that point on, I would ensure it had a flat driveway just in case I could purchase a micro tiny house or caravan.

I quickly learnt with the help of Google that the average length of a driveway in Australia was 6 meters. I also learnt that there are not many full size caravans (no push tops / no canvas) that was six meters in length.

It was a huge blessing to have found a micro tiny house for sale online, especially in the city we lived in and requested to view it. Mostly the tiny house builders were located outside of Queensland or on the Sunshine Coast, which was a few hours drive away.

The advertisement for the micro tiny house was just 30 minutes away and stated it was a concept tiny house. Below are the concept drawings that were in the original ad and I booked in a date and time to view the first model.

Upon meeting with the seller, I learnt that the micro tiny house was built via a university grant offering a solution for urgent accommodation. This small, mobile, modular home was built by the Architect (grant recipient) who then proceeded to lived in it for two years.

It looked a little different to what I’d see online and the Architect explained it had recently undergone some renovations, including a change in paint colour on the outside.

I could see past the cosmetic issues with the building and could picture how the room could be utilised based upon our own needs. We could change the layout to suit an additional bedroom, or home office, sewing room, it really was an interchangeable space.

We went back for a second visit with a builder friend of mine, who advised the tiny house was solid, even if the roof was a little dodgy, however advised to put my money into a second hand caravan. Except we had lived in a caravan before and didn’t like the thin walls/roof and ‘fixed’ layout.

With every fibre of my body I knew we had to take this micro tiny house and viewed the $20,000 purchase price as a sound investment in securing our future accommodation needs. I had no idea at that point in time, the rental crisis was just beginning and would go on for many years.

As we drove away with the micro tiny house, our city had recently been affected by the worst flooding / natural disaster in Australian’s history. Many families were displaced from their flooded homes and were living in temporary accommodation all over the city.

This had in turn had driven up the price of the rental properties that were available. It also meant a single income family with pets were lower down on the ‘desirable’ renter applicants list, and all real estate agents openly stated they preferred double income + no pet applicant families.

Animal shelters were being overwhelmed with family pets being surrender, which made me determined to keep our beloved Nala (chiahauha) and Chewie (dachshund) at any cost. I couldn’t entertain the thought of choosing between our family pets and a rental property. We just had to come up with a new home solution for our family.

At this point in time:

• Our home state of Queensland lifted it strict quarantine restrictions and opened it boarders to the rest of the world.
• Our community had been cut off for a week due to all access bridges to our community due to flood water.
• Our city was affected by one of the largest natural (flood) disasters in Australia’s history.
• Miss P had spent two weeks ill with the covid and we spent the Easter Holidays in isolation.
• Started a new job working for one of the largest insurance providers, assisting families who’s homes were flood affected.
• Recovered from another health set back
• Our current rental unit was placed online / for sale and each weekend we had strangers walking through our home.

By this point, I had abandoned all attempts in securing another rental property, there simply wasn’t any available and chose to make this 10.5 square meter space work for our immediate needs.

We just needed to keeping our good health going and the rain to stay away, long enough for us to make the alterations needed to move into the micro tiny house, who I had named Tina Tiny because she was a pocket rocket like Tina Tuner.

#tinyhouse #tinyhousebuilder #tinatiny