Dunrobin renos almost complete

While I haven't posted anything for a while, it doesn't mean we haven't been busy in Dunrobin.  The painting has almost been completed, the new floors looking fantastic in the living room and dining room.  Simon has done a great job on the bathroom, which will be finished in a couple of days once the granite top arrives.

Back on Gabriola, work on my house plans advances, and Elisha has promised me that I will receive them soon, which means we are still on track for getting building permits for a February build start.

And in with the new...

Out with the old...

With the painting almost complete, we are moving on to the floor - most of the parquet flooring in the living room and dining room has been removed.  Simon and I have been brainstorming what we might make out of all this parquet flooring - some sort of Christmas crafty sort of thing - in our spare time.  I have had an ad on Kijiji offering it for free, but haven't had any takers.

Kevin is installing the floor, and I am hopeful that I can keep a section of the dining room floor intact that has an interesting pattern on it, with the idea of using it to make a table.  Simon will be building a firebox, so that I can remove all of the logs to the left of the fireplace.  This, combined with cleaning the stone, will make the fireplace even more of a "feature".

The bathroom floor is in poor shape, so we may have to remove it and replace it with a new plywood underlay.  Once that is done, however, it should be fairly quick to install the vinyl flooring I have.

Once these floors are completed I will be able to put my house back in order.  All of the walls are bare, and so I will have to pick a few select pictures to put on the walls.  The curtains have all been laundered or dry-cleaned, and now need ironing before they can be rehung.

I really like the idea of living in a completely new home - something I have never done before.  

Equanimity

e·qua·nim·i·ty

ˌekwəˈnimədē/

noun

1. mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.

   "she accepted both the good and the bad with equanimity"

   synonyms:

   composure, calm, level-headedness, self-possession, coolheadedness, presence of mind.

For the past two weeks I have been moving full speed ahead on preparing my home for staging and selling.  It has been complete chaos, as I have been getting the ceilings painted throughout the house, as well as the walls in the three bedrooms, bathroom and dining room, as well as the stairs to the basement and the basement trim.  I am also removing the flooring in the bathroom, living and dining room in preparation for new hardwood floors and new bathroom flooring.

After another typical crazy day yesterday, last night when I got home I filled the bathtub and added some eucalyptus bubble bath, lit a beeswax candle, poured myself a glass of wine, and turned on some mellow music by Deva Premal and Mittra. The house may be turned upside down, but lying in my tub with the lights out and just the warm glow of the beeswax candle, I felt total calmness and relaxation flow over me, truly equanimity in the midst of a storm.

The tao of staging...

1. Tao (in Chinese philosophy) is the absolute principle underlying the universe, combining within itself the principles of yin and yang and signifying the way, or code of behaviours, that is in harmony with the natural order. The interpretation of Tao in the Tao-te-Ching developed into the philosophical region of Taoism. My stager Anne came through the house and has given me instructions for decluttering and guidelines for highlighting the features of my house. Every time I leave the house now I seem to have another box or piece of furniture that is going to someone. I am excited to have the painting and renovations completed soon so we can get to the fun part of decorating and showcasing my home, which will be happening in a couple of weeks, just in time for Christmas entertaining. While I was sad to lose the vibrant blue walls of my dining room, and cool green tones of my bathroom, I have complete faith in Anne's expertise and knowledge of how to stage a home As we went through each room of my home, I realized how many beautiful objects I have that reflect the story of my life and travels, including: a picture of སྒྲོལ་མ-Tara, a female Bodhisattva in Mahayana Buddhism who appears as a female Buddha in Vajrayana Buddhism. She is known as the "mother of liberation", and represents the virtues of success in work and achievements. I found this at Watt Dhammamonkhol in Bangkok during my meditation retreat to Thailand in 2001.  Phra Virinyang founded this buddhist monastery, and also developed the nine-month meditation course I took at the Dunrobin Thai temple in 2001.   Here is a picture of the huge Buddha that he had sculpted by some Italian artists from a massive chunk of jade that he located in British Columbia while meditating.  It was partly for this reason that he decided to establish various meditation centres across Canada to provide a venue for teaching meditation in English, including the one located in Dunrobin, where he sent several monks to meditate on world peace.  Previously, he had offered his course in Thailand, including teaching meditation to the King of Thailand, and had been looking for a suitable place to teach in English. This magnificent Buddha statue at Wat Dhammamongkol was sculpted from a single 32 ton block of jade found in a Canadian river in BC

1. the huge ostrich egg from South Africa, the country I was born in; the antique chest from Madagascar that used to sit in my parents' front hall for as long as I can remember; ཐང་ཀ་ - the gorgeous tangka meticulously painted by Tibetan buddist monks in Nepal, that I found in the night markets of Chang Mai, Thailand; the handwoven basket made from reeds from Lake Peten Itza near Flores, in northern Guatemala near Tikal; the simple handmade mahogany chest that I had commissioned in 1981 in Flores, near Tikal for which I paid a mere $15; momentos from my time in Antigua Guatemala including the hand-painted set of butterflies Seb gave me, a girl's face made out of a coconut shell, a woollen rug, and colourful huipiles made using backstop looms; several priceless quilts that were made by my mother Pamela. a coffee table we acquired while we were living in Judibana, Venezuela; a beaten-up yet still lovely red leather camel footstool purchased in Egypt in the 1950s, another piece that sat in my parents'  living room for more than fifty years; the vibrant orange and brown wall hanging from Zimbabwe; a meditation book from Z.; the hand-woven macrame wall hanging that I found in Colombia and gave as a gift to my mother after my 1975 road trip by jeep with Rafa and Luis to Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador  and Peru, with the highlight being a visit to the stunningly beautiful and spiritual Machu Picchu. My mother gave the hanging back to me several years ago, a short while before she passed away;  Looney-Baloony various water colour paintings of sunflowers and hibiscus from my mother; a hand-turned bowl created by my father; Looney-Balooney, a paper mache creation that my six-year old son Sebastian made me for my 33rd birthday that we celebrated on the island of Montserrat in 1987; a dragon that Peter gave me on our first wedding anniversary in 1991 on which he, Sebastian and I sit perched, wearing the clothes we wore at our wedding, while I am holding Alex as a new-born baby, wrapped in the baby blanket made by his great-grandmother.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Elisha has been working with the draftsman to get my house plans finalized in preparation for applying for building permits.

1. 
   

Where will we stay when we visit you?

Descanso Bay

A few of my friends have expressed concern that my tiny house won't be large enough to accommodate guests. In actual fact, it can sleep six comfortably, and will have two full bathrooms, as well as an outdoor shower and sink.

My loft bedroom will have a queen bed, the yoga studio will have a queen murphy bed, and another two people can sleep in the living room.  I also have room for two in my camper truck, another two in my small tent, and 4-6 people in my large tent.

So I have definitely thought about friends and family in the design of this house.  In the future, I will build a small guest cottage.

Gabriola also has many delightful options including:

Descanso Bay Regional Park for year-round camping

Descanso Bay Regional Camping

Natural Pace Snooze 'n Sail

Two lovely B&Bs with kitchenettes where I have stayed are:

Thru the Grapevine Guest House hosted by Joan and Sam Manson

Twin Beaches B&B hosted by Josephine and Shaun Whelan

And about ten minutes from my place, there is also Page's Resort and Marina for camping and cabin rentals.

Turning furniture into a house for someone else

For quite some time I have thought about helping out with Habitat for Humanity on one of their builds.  I decided that 2016 is the year to do it, and have signed up for a build in Nicaragua in late January.  They still need a few more people to join the team, in case you are interested.

To participate, we need to do our own fundraising, so I have decided that I will put all of the money I get from selling my furniture, snowblower and other things towards my Nicaragua fund.  I already have commitments for over $1000.

I also sell beeswax candles, and from now until I leave in January, will be putting all money received (all money, not just the profits) towards my build fund.  Last weekend my yogi friends bought $320 worth of candles which was greatly appreciated as a good start to my fundraising.

Decluttering, downsizing, and getting ready for home renovations

Moving to a tiny house is a process of reducing.  As a first step I am finding new homes for most of my furniture and belongings.  Already I have found places for my canoe, kayak, wind surfer, snow blower, water bed, coffee table, wicker chair, curtains, and bedroom side table.  The canoe was a gift from Margaret, who I have mentioned before, when she moved to Salt Spring Island.

A Cornerstone volunteer who is a student is just starting out and needed furniture and kitchen stuff; another friend is leaving her husband and also needs things for her new life - so my Champion Juicer that I never ever thought I would let go of, my bread maker, two desks, my laser printer, my blender, and my food dryer have all moved on.

I have researched smaller appliances and purchased a slightly smaller printer that can also scan and copy, a smaller bread maker, and a small mini prep food processor to replace the blender, which I found half price at the Bay and is red.

I have also started to create a mental list of things I plan on bringing with me:

• hammocks
• bed frame (but not the old not-so-comfortable mattress)
• small chest of drawers for clothes
• large mahogany trunk I inherited, an antique from Madagascar
• hand carved four panelled Indian screen (which I hope to have made into doors in the new home)
• my secretary's desk
• six square floor cushions that when covered with a mattress cover create a comfortable double bed
• my hand woven basket from Guatemala
• my books on yoga and art

• my paintings
• my glow-in-the-dark poster of the Milky Way
• the silk curtains from the dining room
• a couple of carpets
• my chain saw
• three very large ceramic pots for flowers to put on the deck of my new place
• two solitary bee's nests

• my leather couch and spinning chair
• my outdoor couch and chair
• a black bamboo coffee table for the deck from Venezuela
• three stools for the kitchen eating peninsula
• several beautiful quilts made by my mother
• my macbook, iPad and iPhone
• TV, cd player and cd collection and a couple of records
• kitchen things, probably about half of what I currently have in the kitchen
• yoga mats, blankets, blocks and bolsters
• my singing bowl collection
• my little hot tub

Tiny house design ready - house plans being drafted...

Last week I waited to hear back from Elisha with the final design.  On Friday afternoon, I drove down to Stillpoint Yoga Retreat Centre near Picton, for a reunion weekend of yoga with sister yoginis and brother yogis . We spent a very special year back in 2000-2001 doing yoga teacher training together with Glenn.  This was our 15th year reunion, and there were sixteen of us - only missing a few from our original group.  A couple of people couldn't come, and then there was Lori, for whom we had held a memorial retreat last year.

I checked my phone frequently to see if Elisha had sent me the design, but was not able to get a signal where we were.  I slept comfortably both nights in my truck, but Saturday evening the temperature dropped quite a bit.  I woke early, feeling cold, and decided to get up.
Like me, Glenn is an early riser, and was up, so he offered me a delicious cappuccino.  Where else could I find such special treatment at 4 a.m.!  I also realized that he had wireless internet, so I checked and discovered that Elisha had sent me the design Friday afternoon after I left Ottawa.

Here is the more or less final design.  I originally had the yoga room with a separate outside entrance and not connected to the rest of the house, which was a mistake, so we changed the yoga/guest bathroom to have two doors, one from the kitchen, the other from the yoga studio.  Although this design doesn't show it, this change means that we will move the stairs out a bit, giving slightly more room in the kitchen and reducing the overall size of the living room slightly.

Remote Controlled Smart Toilet

Very recently I discovered this amazing toilet on www.costco.ca. This morning, when I looked at it again, it was already sold out.

This smart toilet combines the best features of a conventional high quality ceramic toilet with the innovations of a modern advanced toilet with such decadent features as heated seating, warm flowing water and air drying.  Ecologically and sanitarily advanced, this toilet eliminates almost all need for toilet paper or wet wipes as the jets included are the most efficient option currently on the market.

The Ove Tuva Smart Toilet connects directly to the water supply, eliminating the need for a tank, and includes a remote control.

Cooking with the Jetsons

As I mentioned earlier, I am looking at getting a speed oven for my kitchen. Speed ovens combine a microwave and an oven as one appliance.

You can use the microwave for reheating, defrosting and cooking, while the convection oven is used for browning, baking and roasting. They can be used separately or can combine the features of both. These ovens really excel by combining the speed of the microwave with the baking quality of the convection feature.

The top selling speed ovens are manufactured by Jenn-Air and Miele, with Miele's version being the most expensive non-commercial speed oven on the market.

What sets Miele's MasterChef speed oven apart is that essentially it is a self-setting cookbook in your appliance. You pick what you are cooking and how you want it cooked. Then voila, the oven sets itself to the perfect cooking temperature and time. 

Jenn-Air until recently only offered their speed oven as part of a combo micro/wall oven unit, but now it is available as a separate unit. I was able to look at this one at a local appliance store.  This was exciting.  I asked the salesperson how it was possible that I hadn't heard about this and why didn't everyone have one.  His response - it is not big enough to roast a turkey in it.  Ahh, that makes sense, but is completely irrelevant to a vegetarian.  What I could see is that it has two racks, so that it would be possible to bake a two layer cake, or a casserole and something else at the same time, while basically taking up no more space that the average microwave.

We do have the incredibly good fortune of having a commercial grade speed oven in the kitchen where I volunteer at an assisted living residence for about forty formerly homeless women.  This high end oven was provided by a generous donor, and it elevates high speed cooking to an art form.

How it works is that it is built with holes to spin the air and focus it onto food in concentrated bursts. To put things in perspective, the average oven takes about 18 minutes to cook chicken strips while a speed cooking oven can achieve the same result in 90 seconds.  On the safety side, the oven has a built-in catalytic converter that removes harmful vapours, smoke and odours, eliminating any need for an exhaust hood.

The controls on speed ovens are intuitive and precise, letting users find their ideal settings and know that they'll taste the same delicious results. Temperature, airflow, cooking time, and many other parameters can be selected from one touchscreen, which displays picture-based icons of various foods.  Users can store up to 100 unique programs - each with its own cooking, holding and time instructions. Visual and auditory alarms can also be set to ring when food is ready to serve. Finally, a front-panel USB port gives users the power to save and transfer recipe data, just in case they would like to have an extra backup.

The Jetsons was first shown on TV fifty years ago.  Move over Jetsons, I have an amazing speed oven too!

Treehouse would also be an interesting guest cottage...

Spirit Sphere - a cool option for guest cottage

Tentative Dates

We will be getting the house plans drafted up this month, with an engineer's input regarding the roof line, and start the process to get the necessary permits to dig the foundation in January 2016.

We will be building the shell of the house first, and are optimistic that at least my yoga room/guest bedroom and functional bathroom and kitchen will be in place in time for mid June arrival on Gabriola.

We will have to remove and take apart the existing deck, which means that I can design a more interesting shape for it.

The revised layout will be posted later this week.

Meanwhile back in Ottawa I have starting taking up the flooring in the living room and dining room in preparation for a new bamboo hardwood floor, and have hired a handyman who is my neighbour to help finish off some of the things on my checklist before selling the house.

Curiously enough, a friend who is living in BC is contemplating moving to Ottawa and has been asking for information about my place.  Serendipitous - anything is possible!

Sleepless in Dunrobin...

Elisha and I have exchanged a few preliminary plans and I am now waiting for his revisions before I can share our latest design here, which I am confident is getting very close.  We will also need to hire an engineer to review the design.

The house has expanded to a massive 700 square feet, so technically speaking it is no longer a tiny house.  Perhaps we could say that it is a huge tiny house.  We are still playing with the layout of the bathrooms.

My last but one design had four bathrooms for my tiny house!  Two mini bathrooms of under 4 feet square each with a toilet and small sink, one spa bathroom with a tub and sauna, and one outdoor shower with sink.  However, it didn't really work for the layout.

So the next version will have two full bathrooms and an outdoor shower.  The sauna will be in a separate little building, perhaps in the woods somewhere, rather than in the house.  My bathroom will have a luxury tub with handheld shower.  The guest bedroom will have a spacious shower.

Also, originally I had envisioned a built-in bench along one wall of the yoga room, topped with six cushions and drawers for storage, that would convert to a queen sized bed.  However, now I feel that a murphy bed will look better, and provide a more comfortable sleeping solution. That way I can have bookshelves on either side of the fold-up bed to accommodate my large collection of books on yoga, shamanism, and Buddhism.

I still have to figure out how to incorporate the six floor cushions into my tiny home.  I have been using these cushions instead of chairs around my low dining room table, Tibetan style.  In my new place I won't have a dining room, just stools around my kitchen peninsula, and table and chairs on the deck for eating outside.  So I am working on a design for a small couch the size of a loveseat for my living room.  The six cushions, when covered with a thin foam mattress and mattress cover, covert into a comfy double bed, which may also be what I sleep on in my truck when I go camping.

For my loft bedroom, I am thinking of cutting my chest of drawers in half so they can be installed along one of the low side walls, and would then have built-in bookshelves for the rest of my book collection.  While I have been doing an extensive culling of books, I still have a wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling bookcase full of books.  These days I do most of my reading on e-books, but I don't want to give away all of my books, because many are quite special and are probably not available as e-books. Those books I can't give away to family and friends will be put up for sale on Alibris.

It is incredible how much a person accumulates in their lifetime.  I decided that it was probably time to throw out my first bikini, the one that my Mexican boyfriend Pedro bought for me in Acapulco when I was eighteen.

I am also going to go through my record collection and select a very few special records, before taking the collection and record player to a place that sells old record players.  This record player was my first big purchase - it cost about $400 in the early seventies, which was a large amount of money for a student at that time, and it still works perfectly.  And I still have my record collection from that era, about 200 records, a combination of rock, jazz, classical and new age music.  I left Montreal in 1976, at which time I stopped buying records, and went to live in Latin America for a few years.  My collection is like a weird time warp from 1970-1976, and includes classics from the Moody Blues, Janis Joplin, Donovan, Elton John, King Crimson, Ken Hensley, Simon and Garfunkel, Dire Straits, Rick Wakeman, Cat Stevens, Michael Jackson, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Mighty Arrow and Jimmy Cliff, to name a few.

To help with my trouble sleeping these days, my yoga teacher Eliot has recommended more meditation.  While I have no trouble falling asleep, I find myself waking in the early hours and unable to go back to sleep as I contemplate with excitement the amazing changes that are evolving in my life.

Preparing for the big move...

Last week my real estate agent came out to look at my house.  As soon as I complete the projects left - uograding the floor in the dining room and living room, minor improvements to the kitchen and downstairs bathroom, upgrading the upstairs bathroom, plus repainting the bedrooms and ceilings - we will list the property, probably in January.  Ideally, my house will have found a new owner by June, when I will be heading west.

Last Sunday I took a train to Montreal to look at a small used pick-up, and ended up buying it and driving it home the same day. Am now looking for a buyer for my lovely Mazda 3 with moon roof.  My very first truck!  It is a beautiful little blue Mazda B-4000, with camper top, roof rack, and trailer hitch so that I can bring my furniture west.  I never would have imagined that I would be driving a truck.  Next week I am going to a weekend yoga retreat and will try sleeping in it on a futon.  And have plans to install some pretty floral curtains to clearly show it is a no macho truck!

My friend Linda is planning to join me on our Canada-wide trip, and we are having fun planning our destinations.  We will be taking my canoe to its new home - my son in Calgary - and en route plan to use it to explore some of our beautiful parks, such as Pukaswa on Lake Superior and do some canoe-in camping.  We will possibly head south of the border to visit a friend in Ely, Minnesota, and then stay at a couple of farm or ranch B&Bs on the Prairies.  Departure date will be May 29th, and our final destination will be Gabriola Island.

Idea for a Guest Cottage

Pacific Domes in Ashland, Oregon makes these appealing looking geodesic domes.

Who would have guessed that toilets could be so interesting?

Clearly, having only one bedroom is fine for one person, but could create problems when guests are around.

So I decided to remove the toilet from the bathroom, leaving space to put in a two-person sauna. I then created two new small rectangular bathrooms for the sink/toilet combo, one accessed from the kitchen, the other from the yoga room.

Here is a picture of the Caroma sink/toilet combo:

Then I was told that a sink over toilet looks like a jail toilet, and I read that you have to straddle the toilet to use the sink.  Clearly not ideal.

Here is another interesting solution by Sink Positive, a company in Greensboro, North Carolina which is a retrofit you can use to turn the toilet lid into a sink, delivering a clean, environmentally friendly, and touch-free hand wash with every flush.  This currently retails for US$139.  Compact, yes, but with the same drawbacks as the Caroma.

And for an ultramodern look, there is this option manufactured by Roca in Spain which has galleries in Madrid and Barcelona.

My solution will be to use either a corner toilet or compact toilet, with a tiny sink to one side of it, and change the room to a 36" to 42" square room.  A corner vanity could complete the bathroom.

Here is a compact toilet:

and small vessel sink I am considering from the Montreal-based company Bath Depot.

And my wish list includes an outdoor shower, for which I found a great plan with pictures.

Tiny House Kitchen and Bathroom

Designing a tiny house kitchen and bathroom requires a fair bit of creativity and research.

First, I did extensive research into small appliances and fireplaces, both online by visiting various stores and came up with a preliminary list and budget.  I discovered that it is very difficult to find much in between the tiny half fridges (not big enough) and the average fridges, which are too large.  

After a long look at all options, my initial list includes:

Kitchen:

•  a small 9 cubic foot fridge sourced at Costco
• a two burner electric glass cooktop from Home Depot
• a speed oven (combo oven, convection oven and microwave in one small unit the size of a wall oven), 
• and an all-in-one washer and dryer combination.  Since the tiny house can be built so economically, it makes it feasible to get higher end appliances.

Bathroom

• a combined sink/toilet from an Australian manufacturer called Carcoma
• a designer soaker tub with handheld shower

The idea was to have a single bathroom with two doors, one from the kitchen, and the other from the yoga room.

Design Phase

To help me with the design and provide an initial estimate, I contacted a tiny house company located in Fernie, BC, and a local builder on Gabriola.  Basing my design on the Jay Shaefer’s Marmara house, I created my first rough draft of a tiny house plan. 

This is a picture of the Marmara house and layout.

The idea would be to sleep in a double-bed sized loft that was 4 1/2 feet high in the middle, and to use the downstairs bedroom (also the size of a double bed) as a tiny yoga studio.  I would add double French doors to the living room area to open out onto my deck.

Once I discovered that I was not obligated to build the tiny house on wheels, and could legally put it on my property, I started working on the design of something a bit more appealing that did not have to be long and skinny.

And on Friday, October 23^rd, I sent my tiny house plan, version 2.0, to my builder, Elisha Bandel, who agreed to prepare a professional plan.  I made the house L-shaped, decided to only have a loft on one side, increased the size of the rooms, gave the yoga room/guest bedroom an outside entrance, and added a carport.  This is what the layout looks like:

But after thinking more about it, I made a few changes to include an outdoor shower, indoor sauna, and two separate mini bathrooms with toilets and sinks, one off the kitchen, and the other off the yoga room.

Here is Version 2.1: