March 2016 – Little Lou Tiny House

We found the most awesome piece of barn board in the barn (that we may not have had permission to be in). If you look closely, you can see the bands from the saw. I love how much texture and character this piece has. This was the perfect width for what we had in mind and the extra length was used to create an extra storage nook. No cutting required! I sanded the board and sprayed it down with a couple coats of poly. I used the barn board and three upper cabinets to make a little entryway table/sideboard.

We used upper cabinets on the bottom for two reasons.

They are not as deep as lower cabinets which leaves more floor space open
They were free

If you look closely, you’ll see that the doors are upside down. I could have patched the original holes and put the handles on the other side but I figured that was too much work. I know it might make some people want to scream but it doesn’t bother me one bit.

We found equally awesome piece of barn board to use in the space between the stove and the fridge. We also used a particularly gnarly piece as a back splash behind the sink.

The sink counter is not as interesting. I searched high and low for a used counter top that was the right size and matched the aesthetic we were going for. No luck. I also had zero luck finding a second hand sink. I really wanted a double basin sink but couldn’t find one that wasn’t massive.

I picked up a brown black counter top at Ikea. I liked to blue underside but after it was installed, it’s not as obvious as I thought it would be. It does the trick and it was affordable. I like the counter top but I love the sink. Is it weird to be in love with a sink?

counter

I used to run a recycling center for non traditional recyclables (Traditional recyclables being plastic, cardboard etc.). Residents could bring in a whole bunch of things ranging from textiles to paint to books and we would send them off for recycling. A good majority of the stuff that comes through the door is crap that has reached the end of it’s useful life. But there was also a lot of really useful things that were no longer useful to their original owner. This place was the best place for picking and being the person who worked there, I got first dibs on picking. More than once, I would be on the hunt for something specific and not long after I said it out load it would coincidentally come through the door. One time I was on the look out for a wooden drying rack, mentioned it to someone and a few days later someone else dropped off a perfectly good one. Score!

Basically, this story is my version of “ask and you shall receive”. I followed a similar mindset when hunting for salvaged materials for the tiny house. I would tell anyone and everyone what I was looking for. Which is how I ended up with free kitchen cabinets from my best friends parents. I had no idea they were renovating their kitchen when I mentioned my quest for cabinets. They were kind enough to keep the cabinets intact for me to reuse. At 30 years old they were looking a little dated and needed a face lift. Hours of sanding, priming and painting later, I had beautiful solid wood cabinets at minimal cost. Too bad we couldn’t rescue those stylish green counters.

As always, beyond grateful to the friends who helped out! Thanks Sarah and Ashley for working through those hang overs to help me paint Thanks Sarah’s parents for putting in the extra effort to salvage the cabinets and save me a whole lot of money.