Living in a Small Space

When we get our land purchase finished and a well in place, the next thing to look at will be housing. We've already got a tent, but that's only good in nice weather unless you want really whiny kids. We also have the trailer that Steve built and we used to move across the country. It's built on an old travel trailer frame and has a plywood roof and walls with a double wide door at the back, a man sized door on one side and a window. It also has a pop up tent top with some sleeping space. So using that is an option. It would need some insulation, a waterproof membrane and roof covering and possibly we'd replace the canvas walls on the pop-up with insulated wooden panels. Another option is to build a small cabin.

Numerous plans area available for free or low cost on the internet and since many also include engineered drawings you can use them to get a proper building permit and do things legally. For temporary use or movable structures though the options are much more varied. One constant among all the cabins though, is good use of space. There are many creative ways of using your space well but the first thing you'll need to do is pare down your stuff so that you don't have lots of junk cluttering up your small space. Then you'll need to plan for making the most efficient use of your furniture and other fixtures. Here are some great furniture pieces in the video, and you can certainly take the ideas and make them work for you! We don't need to buy all expensive furniture to put in our tiny house, you can build good quality things yourself. Do a good job and you'll surround yourself with things that you love and appreciate. Anyways, here are some ideas:



Anothe place to look is IKEA. Especially in their discount section. You can't always find a deal but you never know what will be there. The nearest Ikea to us is probably in Moncton, there isn't one in Nova Scotia. So we'll be building from scratch. I'll let you know how it goes.

I'm going to feed and water the chicks and then off to the chapel for our weekly craft get together. It's also Steve's birthday today so I'm going to write him a letter. And I'm reading The Hunger Games so I need to finish it and get on to our bookclub selection which is my choice this month. I chose By The Banks Of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Where do we go from here? Nova Scotia!

** Note, this post should pre-date the one about trip plans...sorry for any confusion - Elizabeth***

While our plans of rejuvenating the farm in Hilliers were dashed, we're still optimistic that the future can hold wonderful things in store for our family. The dream is not dead, it's just changed a little.

Here's what our original introduction said about us.

One family learning to be self-sufficient on Canada's beautiful west coast. We hope you enjoy following our story as we turn a run down and seriously neglected little rented farm into a thriving and vital part of our community here in Hilliers, near Qualicum Beach on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. We have a large market garden and raise chickens, turkeys, cows, goats, sheep, alpacas and bees. Oh and let's not forget the most important thing...we raise our family here too.

That all changed with the owner selling and the new owners bulldozing everything.

Despite of all this the motivation to create a vibrant and flourishing small family farm is still there! It just looks like we'll have to start over again somewhere else. So we're looking to get our own place in Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia?!?! What? Isn't that at the opposite side of the country?

Well, yes it is. Infact, from here to there is about 7100km. Since we're planning a few detours to see family, see our beautiful country, and to have fun along the way, it should end up being a bit closer to 7500km. I'll work it out and let you know. Ok, here's the map.


View Directions to Halifax, Nova Scotia in a larger map

So the plan is to take our motorhome, 4 children, the dog, the goat, 2 cats and one trailer and drive 7000+km in search of a place to call our own. We'll need some help along the way I'm sure so we're going to look for some sponsors, sell pretty much everything we have, and we'll keep you posted each step of the way.

Coming soon...a tour of our current home, our Vancouver Island Bucket list, and how to do all sorts of stuff on a budget while travelling.

Trip Plan-Working out the budget and fuel costs

We're working out some things at the moment for the big move namely:

-How to pay for it
-When and where to go
-Where to live once there
-Where to get a job

Here are the maps we're using for planning on Google. You'll notice a number of stops in both BC and Alberta that seem out of the way...we'll post the itinerary so you can see why we're doing a bit of back tracking.

First let's do up a budget of sorts. Obviously these figures will vary as we gauge the Motorhomes actual fuel consumption and decide on stops of interest along the way. I'm making a general assumption of $10 per person per day for food, 10 mpg for the motorhome towing a trailer, gasoline price of $1.35 per litre and $100 per night for stops at campgrounds of which there are not likely to be many. SO here are the numbers:

10 mpg=.235 litres per km so a trip of 7100 km needs 1668 litres at $1.35=$2252 OUCH!!

If we can improve the gas mileage by even a little by simple things like good driving habits, properly inflated tires, a tune-up, keeping a speed of 80-90km/h then we should be able to get a few more mpg. Here, I'll show you how a little can make a difference. Say we can get 3 mpg better...
13mpg=.18 litres per km. x 7100 = 1278 litres at $1.35 = $1725 so we'd save $526.

Of course if the price of fuel goes up even a little it makes a difference too of about $16.68 for every penny increase at the pumps so if gas hits $1.50 then we'll be paying another $250. See how a few simple things can add up quickly? That's why we're going to make and track our budget so we can see where all the money is going.

Budget

$2250 Fuel
$1000 Food
$ 200 Ferry
$ 500 Repairs, upgrades and maintenance of motorhome.
$ 400 Campgrounds
$ 400 Admissions
$ 50 Parking and Tolls
$ 50 Animal food
$ 200 Interior upgrades such as foam and bunkbeds.
$ 500 Used trailer frame or shell
$ 300 Lumber to build trailer and animal pens.
$ 200 Insurance for trailer and motorhome
$ 150 BCAA membership (to cover towing if we need it)
$ 50 Sani-dump fees, propane refill
$ 40 New propane tank
$ 10 Memory card for camera
$ 50 Souvenirs

Total Budget for this expedition $6250. But that is still way cheaper than paying a moving company $8000+ and still paying for the 6 of us to get there which is another $3000 minimum. I know we'll try to cut the budget down as far as possible but your help would be greatly appreciated too. If you'd like to support us financially you can donate using paypal. If you go to our website novaappliance.com you'll see a payments page where you can give. We really appreciate it and we promise to not squander your money. Every dollar makes a difference.

We are also offering advertising space on our trailer. We have both sides available to feature ads up to 16x7 feet. Cost of advertising is $100 per square foot with the signage provided by you. All sponsors and advertisers will be featured both on our blog and our new Youtube channel starting next week and you can use us in your own company promotions.

Please e-mail us at fairesfamily@gmail.com for more info.

Have a fantastic day! We're off to Chamainus to finish the reno's at a friends place so her family can move tomorrow.

Boxes

We're still packing and in fact bit the bullet and actually paid money for boxes. Lots of our previous boxes have been damp out in the garage, crushed or otherwise damaged, so we decided it was time to get some new ones and there don't seem to be any available online for free or cheap. We've found that it's a bit easier to find things if the boxes look the same and have a label on them all in the same place. And it's also easier and more efficient to pack them tightly together if they are all the same size.

There is a local U-Haul dealer near us and they as a company have loads of really nifty moving aids like funky boxes, foam packing materials, tacos to hold open your box, really more than anyone could need. The only draw back is expense and the fact that when I got to the local dealer they carried about 5% of what's available online. So I just stuck to a wardrobe box, a dish barrel (both of these are double walled boxes) and 10 book boxes plus some foam sheets and packing paper. I got the packing paper just because I hate having to re-wash everything once you unpack to try and get the newsprint off. Then I checked my receipt and saw that they had charged me for small boxes instead of book boxes so they owed me $7. Fair enough. We headed out to work and then we decided to stop by Home Depot to get some 2x4's that Steve needs to make and finish the trim on his trailer. I checked out lights and boxes too. We managed to get 2 flush mount light fixtures for the trailer for $5 each (a smokin' deal) and the boxes are $1.29 each for small, $1.99 for medium and $2.49 for large. So of course I stocked up. I got 10 small, 4 meduim and 4 large plus a pack of their paper which was $4 (not the $12.50 U-Haul charges) for a grand total of $35. I went back to U-Haul to return the 10 small boxes and discovered that they can't make a refund on a debit card purchase and wouldn't give me cash so after haggling for a while they finally wrote me a cheque for $39 and change. All in all I spent the same amount of money but got 4 medium and 4 large boxes extra by shopping at Home Depot, and since we were going there anyways it wasn't too bad gas wise. Oh and I shouldn't forget...as much as I loathe those stick on lino tiles, you know the ones....they had some white ones on for $15 per box clearance for 45 sq.ft. so that works out way way cheaper than lino for the floor of the tent trailer plus I need 45 feet and this will mean less waste hopefully. Saves me a little bit in my budget too.

Now I just have to get the boxes filled and figure out the best way to pack my wedding gown and actually get some more sorting done. we are almost at an impass. The garage is full of a nearly completed trailer so I don't have any room to sort things out. The house if full of packed and semi-packed boxes and garage sale items. I can't work on the tent trailer yet because of the rain which is pouring down for days and it's windy too, but I can't put it in the garage to work on it until the other trailer is out of there. Hopefully by the end of this weekend the trailer will be finished, the paint will have cured enough to be waterproof and we can move it outside and start using it for either storage or as a utility trailer.

Details on building the trailer will follow soon too.

BIG NEWS!!

After a 4 month hiatus... we're back with news!

First off our daughter Nicole's new book is officially out today. It's selling so well already that it looks like she's going to get 2 more book deals out of it so YAY for them! And great for us readers!

The book is great. Go have a look at Amazon

Here's our big news.

It is with heavy hearts that our branch of the Faires Family announces the following... we're moving. We're excited too but there are so many unknowns and so much work to do that it's a bit nerve wracking. I hate moving. And we are still looking for a new place to call home.

Where are we going you might ask? Well, it looks like the choices are narrowed to the maritimes of Canada or somewhere here on Vancouver Island. We would like to stay around here because of the ease, costs of moving, established business, kids in school etc. but that will largely depend on finding a suitable home that's affordable. This property we're on sold for the greatly discounted price of $470k. Buying it in New Brunswick or Nova Scotia it would have cost about $80-$130k I would imagine. Maybe less. Since we want to settle down and NEVER MOVE AGAIN we are looking to start over with our own place. Even if it means you get another year of following my blog through the start up phase from building a travel trailer to breaking ground on a home or root cellar, we hope you'll stick around and let us know what you think about the whole thing.

You might also be wondering why on earth we would move after doing so much work here for a year and a half. And the simple answer is that the owner of this property has sold it. Yes, after saying that we could stay for 10 years he up and listed it, sold it, and now we're moving. What I didn't mention were the problems with him killing livestock and other destructive behaviours.

Living here has been 'the best of times and the worst of times'. But we are sorry to see so much hard work and planning go down the tubes. Still, we did learn an awful lot and practical experience is a valuable thing in this day and age when we think that reading something in a book or online means that now we know how to do it. These amazing tools we have should be there to guide and inspire us, not just give us an inflated sense of our own skills and resourcefulness.

Ok enough of the rant. I should nip it in the bud and get out my roll of packing tape and garbage bags. Our over stuffed house, garage and workshop have to be essentially paired down to the point that everything will fit into a 12x8x6'6 trailer just in case we find the perfect place and do move east. This is going to be the mother of all garage sales, the likes of which Hilliers has never seen!

We'll let you know how our winter projects shape up, namely building a trailer, finding a new home, and de-cluttering the house.