Our tiny-house plan was looking perfect — too perfect, as we found out last night. For the second time this month, a deal to rent a site for our tiny house fell through. It’s a bump in the road, but fear not, I have some nice news too.

First, that bump in the road. Here’s the situation: Tom and I are staying in a rental holiday house with the dogs, and doing pretty well. We had agreed orally with a landowner to rent part of his rural block, along with a powered and plumbed studio but not the garage it is connected to.

For us it was a “wow” deal. Electricity, wow. A toilet, wow. Lockable storage space, wow. A place where Tom could set up his massage table, wow.

But then the bitch-goddess of broken relationships interceded. The other tenants of the block of land, who lived in a house 100 metres away from our planned site, suddenly had a break-up. Their lease on the house would end.

In scouting for new tenants, the landlord told applicants that a tiny house (ours) was to take up another part of the site. And he seemed to give the applicants the choice of whether they would share the land or not. The successful applicants chose not to share.

So our deal with the landlord was of course like any oral agreement, unworthy of the air that carries its drifting molecules of promise and intention.

Lesson to us: arrangements are nothing if they’re not signed on paper.

Actually we’d already learned this lesson earlier in the month, when another oral deal evaporated amid an effort by the landlord to double, yes double, the rent he’d mentioned to us.

So we move on, a little more battle-hardened and our arses a bit more calloused against future road-bumps. Which of course there will be.

We’re looking at rentals or camping grounds or driveways or rural land or some corner of a lifestyle block where we can place our perfect house and live there with our dogs. Offers and suggestions welcome!

The Awesome News

But I promised you some nice news. Here it is: I made the Mustard Yellow House in Lego bricks.

Yes, can you believe it! I’d been toying with trying to draw a floor plan to help you lovely blog readers understand the house layout, but found myself in the Digital Lego program making the whole thing in 3D.

It’s not perfect but it’s a pretty good rendering — check out actual house photos here. It’s allowed me to fashion a new title image for this blog and to present some views of the Mustard Yellow House that might help you imagine what’s it’s like, and how it will look one day with some decking and planter tubs, and of course with its two Kiwi guys and two little dogs.

Click to enlarge.

Yes, it’s a small achievement — perhaps a waste of the several hours it took to build it. But at this point in our journey, it reminds me that even if there are bumps in the road and plans that fall flat, everything is awesome!