A Tiny House Photo Album

The 650-square-foot straw panel cottage we started building in 2022 is just a few months from move in. Check out how far we've come.

Hi, everyone! First things first: “Future Cottage,” the series I created to track my family’s progress building a 650-square-foot modern house crafted from straw panels (on a budget!) is one of the perks of being a Paid subscriber to A Tiny Apt.

That said, I’m making it available to everyone today—free—along with a tiny discount/special price on an annual paid subscription for the next 48 hours (ie: from $50 down to $30). There’s just too much good stuff I want to share about not only the process of building a tiny house and how 😵‍💫 exhilarating it’s been, but all the learnings, too. Both about working + dreaming within a small(er) footprint while continuously eliminating anything excess, dumb, or just not a part of the BIG vision. So, if you’ve been thinking about becoming a Paid subscriber, let’s party! I’ll have more updates on the home stretch of “Future Cottage” over the next two months, along with some other extremely cool + exciting announcements…so stay tuned. And as always, THANK YOU for being here ❤️.

What I keep realizing over and over again, especially in writing this newsletter, is that doing new things, CHANGING, leaving something (or someone) behind, and building anything, whether it’s a home, a job, or just a better desk set-up, requires stuff like time, focus, and imagination…but also FAITH. Faith in ourselves to keep coming back to it, again and again. And faith that something good will come from all that time away from the other stuff that seems to endlessly need our attention.

And, for me, faith that the terror we always seem to feel peering over the edge of something risky and unknowable won’t totally consume us. And that isn’t just the big stuff but actually the small stuff…that ultimately adds up to the big stuff.

Case in point: This morning as I was trying to pay a doctor’s bill on an app I spent an embarrassing amount of time logging into, I went to grab my credit card to type in the security code. When I reached around in my bag for my wallet, it wasn’t there.

Mild panic.

I dumped my bag out onto the counter…still no wallet.

Official panic.

Heart racing, I ran into my bedroom and then up to my desk to see if I’d left it in either place. No dice. SHIT, I thought. I immediately headed out into the hallway to get my shoes on to see if somehow I’d dropped it on the stairs coming up, and there on the floor right in the center of our doormat was my Tiffany-Blue Comme des Garçons wallet. Just sitting there, like “someone” had left it for me.

OR, more likely, it fell out of my bag and just looked that way.

As I picked it up, I had this tiny awakening: Why did I automatically think I was a complete fucking idiot, careless, recklessly moving through the world with an open zipper! But when I was standing there in my doorway with the wallet in my hand, and my heart attack slowly subsiding, I comforted myself like I would my sister or my daughter or my best friend…it’s okay, you’re not an idiot. You just misplaced something…it happens.

Hey, your wallet is just fine. And so are you.

So, before we get into Future Cottage and everything we’ve been doing over the past six months, I’m sharing this little reminder to have faith—in the stuff you’re working on, in yourself, and the people you love…but mostly yourself. Faith that we have good instincts and intentions. Even though occasionally we drop our wallets in the hallway and leave it there all night completely unattended, and then wake up and have a quasi stroke because we think we’re going to have the spend the whole day calling credit card companies and applying for a new driver’s license and won’t that suck because we have a bloody newsletter to finish 😐.

(Speaking of grace, for ourselves and others, if you haven’t read Anne Lamott’s Grace Eventually collection of essays, here you go.)

Where we started, almost exactly two years ago. Scroll down for the reveal of HOW FAR WE’VE COME!

Behind me, some sample remnant beams for trimming that we are trying out. Also saving every bit of usable lumber for future shelves or art projects or God Knows What. If it’s not warped, it’s fair game!

Okay, for all you ATA newcomers—a speedy recap!

In the fall of 2020, my family and I bought a 1960s pediatrician’s office on roughly two acres of land three hours north in Columbia County. We had no plans to buy anything, but we were renting our friend’s house and we kept driving by this building with the For Sale sign out front. And, for some reason, the flat brick midcentury building accompanied by a sizable stretch of mowed grass just kept calling to us. Thankfully it was cheap given the area; had it not been, we wouldn’t have been able to buy it since I had just left my former company and future income was uncertain. It was definitely a dark-night-of-the-soul time, but as we know, great real estate can be a lot like soul mates…or YSL at the thrift store—rare and only comes along when they’re supposed to. I just had this feeling that the weirdo brick building and the land beside it was ours, just like I did with our Tiny Brooklyn Apartment, and we would make it into something beautiful—something, as an older parent, to leave to my daughter, and something that would restore the land that had been starved of any flowers or bees or butterflies for a long, long time. This land was also once occupied by the Mohican people, and we’ve been doing our own local research to know more about the land’s history and honor anyone who has lived here before us.

Since I met Kevin my husband (also an architect) almost 15 years ago, we talked about building a sustainable house one day. Something small using progressive natural materials that could offset the growing energy costs as climate change continued to accelerate and impact how our homes regulate temperatures. With a limited amount of $$ to invest after buying the property for under $200k, we had a choice: A) Start renovating the doctor’s office while commuting back and forth with no place to live locally until it was finished. This was projected to be a two-to-three-year project. Or Option B) Design and build a tiny modern cabin in the empty lot beside the office—this was initially mowed grass, but we envisioned building something that backed up against the western horizon and surrounding farmland, (the sunsets are so beautiful they could make you cry). To build the cottage was roughly half the cost of a full renovation of the doctor’s office, which is 1500 square feet. Also small, but more to manage and budget for. On the plus side, we could “camp” in the doctor’s office while we build the cabin and have our own place to stay…even if it is a somewhat surreal doctor’s office set up complete with a reception area, two tiny doctor’s offices and five tinier exam rooms branching off one long hallway that runs the length of the building and feels eerily like The Shining at night (for the record, I have never seen a ghost here, but occasionally I think I do).

So, that’s what we did—moved into the doctor’s office, I made it as cute as I could even though it has no kitchen and we make due with a small fridge, one induction burner, and a toaster oven. (If you’re interested, I wrote a little column about it in Domino to commemorate what it felt like living in an in-between commercial space. I mean, our bedroom is literally Exam Room #3).

While we “camped,” we laid the foundation for what we’ve been calling Future Cottage—a 650-square-footprint and just enough space for a family of three (or four) to live flexibly with a light carbon footprint for decades to come. It’s taken two years and most of our savings, but we are about two months away from actually sleeping inside and waking up in our cottage for the first time. In snapshots…here’s where we started and how far we’ve come. And in the next installment, I’ll be sharing more on our finished deck, kitchen tiling, some CHIC new furniture—both vintage and new—and a few cool custom textiles projects, as well. (To get fully up to speed, you can read back to all the earlier updates on Future Cottage right here.)

Okay, let’s get into it…

Finishing the Walls In A/C Plywood.

The main bedroom, above, and below, a zoomed out view of the central living space, complete with sleep-work loft (for guests and writers, alike:).

While it was tempting to leave the straw panels exposed, I got nervous they would shed over time. As derivative as plywood walls feel these days, it really is a classic, hard-wearing choice that’s easy to adapt and customize with staining, paint, or just appreciate it’s organic beauty as it ages over time. We chose A/C pine plywood (A and C refer to the finish grade) with a water seal, which warmed them up a tiny bit. Before we make any big color/paint choices (maybe just the bedroom doors in contrasting primary shades?), I’m going to live with it all for a few weeks and also see how it contrasts with more tile and color coming with the backsplashes in the kitchen (I’ll share pics of that in the coming weeks when they are finished). Another color question: We are having the stairs to the loft crafted by our local carpenter and dear friend Ken. Question: Do you think the stairs should be a color or just raw wood? I’m kind of partial to a dark gold or pink, perhaps like the below inspiration (which for the life of me I can’t remember where I found)?

The Wildflower Meadow.

Before…and after.

We always knew we wanted to eventually re-wild the land, bringing back more native plants and grasses and plenty of wildflowers to encourage more bees, birds, and butterflies to do the Lord’s work of saving the planet, not to mention giving us ever more things to take videos of. I want to be very clear though: I am not an experienced gardener, but I do have an informal degree for Green Thumb In Training. Our local gardener/friend Susie has been doing this work for thirty years, and teaches us so much when she comes for a “walkabout,” which is simply roaming the property to discover all sorts of new, miraculous things showing up, like wild raspberry bushes, milkweed for our growing Monarch colony, a hulking Mulberry tree, its many branches bending with the weight of ripe berries (which we eat by the fistful)…we literally never even knew it was here until this very summer! Much of our gardening time is spent up using all our upper body strength to eradicate the land of what has now become my mortal enemy: Bittersweet vines. When we arrived, these insidious vines were choking the life out of most of the trees and plant-life here. But since we’ve been pulling them out section by section, we’ve freed numerous rose bushes, two Walnut trees, a silver maple, blooming sumacs, two flowering privets, and a giant hydrangea bush. For the meadow, since it was already barren, we just tilled the soil, added compost and mixed various native wild flower seed packets with sand (for the carrier), which helps to evenly distribute the seeds and make it easier to see them as they start to come up. At first we didn’t think it was going to work…there was nothing, not even a sprout for weeks. But then one morning we walked outside and it was like a dream…tiny buds everywhere—Red Corn Poppy, Lance Leaf Coreopsis, Shirley Poppy Mixed Red, Cosmos Wild Sensation, California Poppies, Black Eyed Susan, Wild Lupine, Purple Coneflower, Plains Coreopsis, Siberian Wallflower, Blue Flax Perennial…it’s wonderful. And a total work in progress as every day it changes, morphing into something different and even more beautiful. Best of all, many of these flowers will come back year after year, and because I can not be counted on to do anything on time, they will do this with or without me. Which makes me very happy indeed. 🌸 Here’s a peek below….⬇️

A (Luxurious!) Working Bathroom.

Because we’re very familiar the reality of living with a single bathroom, it was important that this one felt special. Not just functional but on some level, in just 30 square feet…luxurious. The tile is Aviator Olivine from Zia (who generously gifted it to us to see how we would use it), and it sincerely takes my breath away. Another added perk to our tiny bathroom: It’s the only space in the cabin with radiant heat beneath the floor tiles, so it will be extra cozy when the temperatures drop occasionally below zero in winter. Because I am a bath person in this life, and every other life, Kevin found the deepest and shortest bathtub he could from Kingston Brass, because even the worst day can’t be made a tiny bit better with an epsom salt soak. In an effort to use absolutely every little leftover thing we can, Kevin and our friend Parker fashioned a vanity for our IKEA sink from remnant particle boards. Kevin knows how much I love the raw turquoise trim of the boards, so we’re keeping it that way. As for the cement board wall where the medicine cabinet will hang, I love the raw branded typography, so we’re going to let it show through a thin coat of white wash paint, which will brighten the wall up and make it feel less dull. What do you think…is it crazy to let the type show through and become part of the design?

The Deck, Because…Parties, Right?

Given the house is only 650 square-feet, we imagined having either a cleared pea gravel area or a raised deck to give us even more space to play. After we started laying gravel for pathways to and around the house through the meadow, I felt more certain I wanted an actual deck, to feel just a little bit removed from the surrounding landscape (and honestly, before we move any furniture in, I’m dreaming about a little outdoor open house party this fall). Because cedar is the most naturally resistant to weather damage and ages so beautifully (its patina is called “silvering”), we went with that, which also matches the geometric cedar sections around the frame of the house (as a reminder, we couldn’t afford to clad the whole house in cedar, so we balanced small cedar sections with cheaper-but-still-cool metal siding). Twenty-nine cedar boards later (we thought were were ONE short, but... ”It looks perfect.” 🥹. A few days after we started the deck with help from Parker, we got a little furniture delivery from the interiors company Sundays based out of Canada, one of which was the teak Plane bench, which I couldn’t wait to put on the deck when it was finished (and in the winter, we’ll use the bench inside, too).

That’s all for this installment…I’ll be back in a few weeks as things start really moving fast. And next week, we’ll go thrifting (sort of!) with one of the coolest and chicest people I know…see you there.

And P.S: A quick reminder that my latest Closet sale will be taking place on the Pinstripe app (download it here, I promise it’s cool:) tomorrow, FRIDAY kicking off at 10am, so I hope you’ll come join us…everything including the below vintage quilted coat is starting as low as $10, so it’s definitely going to be a goodie! xxCb

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🪩 And…all the best/worth it things for home/closet/skincare you may need (or just REALLY want) are right here in our very chic, expertly edited A Tiny Shop (+ if you love/buy something we may earn a tiny commission). AND if there’s anything you’d like me to hunt down and add, please tell me in the comments!

See you over there:)🦄.