We got the tiny house Sunday, 11-Jun-23 22:07:18 CEST

Tiny house installation was finished Sunday, 25-Jun-23 18:16:28 CEST

Sunday, 18-Jun-23 21:55:55 CEST

Grand birthday party

This was a phenomenally hectic week. We prepared for DD's birthday party, and we held the party on Friday.

Monday 12 June

Today I worked from the office. DW also worked from her office. An IT issue at the office made it difficult to work from the office. Working from home was an option. So I went home, and the systems worked flawlessly from home. After work, I returned to the train station to pick up DW.

Tuesday 13 June

Today DW worked from home, but I went to the office. I could get the workplace to work now, so things are back to normal. After work, I went home. The idea was that the electrician, plumber, and ventilation specialist would come and help us get the tiny house operational.

I was just about to eat dinner when the electrician arrived. I thought I would eat a little later, but I was wrong. We started working on action points. The first thing was dragging the three-phase cable from the tiny house to the main house. The line I put into the jacking pipe broke; it was not strong enough. We put a new line in the pipe with the vacuum cleaner. Luckily that worked flawlessly. This time we use the thin line for dragging in a thicker line. With the thicker wire, getting the cables through the pipe was possible.

DW went to a meeting with the road association. Unfortunately, there were not enough members to reach a quorum. That did not matter because it was a fruitful meeting anyway. The association is collecting the money needed to build the final road, and there was a tiny budget discrepancy. It was decided that those willing to fill this tiny gap could pitch in. We were in on this deal. It will be fantastic with the final road. It is romantic with a dirt road but not for long.

The electrician and I continued working the entire evening. Next, we installed extensions to the fusebox in the utility room. It was a bit tricky to finish the connection on the tiny house because I thought I had the correct plug for connecting the three-phase wire, but that was not the case. I had a male plug, but a female plug was required. We decided to hack the construction and install the cable in the plug. The electrician will be back and install a proper outdoor connection box next week.

Then he installed the water and the sewer pipe. The rainwater pipe follows next week.

It was really late when we were done, but I was pleased it was a successful evening. I decided to take photos of the interior of the house.

	Loft above the living room.
	Loft above the bathroom.
	The bathroom, shower.
	Bathroom, the WC.
	The kitchen.
	The living room.
	Photo from the living room towards the kitchen and bathroom.
	The house from the outside.

 

The tiny house is beautiful. I think this will work very well.

Wednesday 14 June

Today DW had a day off, and I worked a half day in the morning. DW was preparing the dinner party on Friday.

First, I cut the grass on the south part of the property for two reasons. When the sheep have been to an area, we plan to cut the parts they missed to graze. In this case, they were a little afraid of grazing near the road. The second reason was that some guests would set up tents and sleep in this area.

Then I went to the hardware store and bought trestles to build the eight-meter (more than 26 feet) long table. I decided to buy four trestles. That way, I can reuse the trestles for two temporary tables.

I created stairs for the garden doors. I expected we would have the doors open, and people would walk in and out. For this, I cut two pallets into three mini pallets. These I connected to each other with rest planks from the exterior. As a top, I used the plates that were initially designated for the siding of the foundation. We will still use this plate for the siding, but we need to order bigger plates.

The step was placed on a bed of gravel. This is the same material our driveway is made of. We still got a heap of this. It was perhaps between eight and ten barrels.

Thursday 15 June

This was another busy day. DW had regular work, but I had a day off. Today I took the large trailer to the party tent rental company. I picked up two tents and three tables.

The rental company was rigorous in how the thing should be returned. I got instructions on what and where it should be. Since I am precise, I had no problems with this arrangement. It was actually feeling nice to get stuff that was well-ordered. At home, I unloaded the stuff from the rental shop.

Then I went to friends and borrowed chairs. We had an option of borrowing two bench seats, although DD wanted all guests to be seated at individual chairs with back leaning.

When DW finished her regular work, she continued to prepare the food for the party. Around that time, DD arrived with her friend.

DD and DW worked on the food and decorations.

DDs friend and I began to build the tents. We discovered that the tents had minor issues. It was not as well-ordered, clean, and unbroken as anticipated. We got the tents up, but there was a list of defects. It was two tents 3 by 4 meters. We placed them so that we got one big tent of eight meters.

With the tents up, we continued to build the table. For that, we used planks from the scaffold. We combined 5-meter planks with 3-meter planks. The planks got connected to each other. DDs friend worked on that.

In the evening, we had the table and the tents set up. All the chairs were still not in place.

Friday 16 June

This was the big day. Or rather, in the evening the party was planned to start. I prepared chairs. We had two chairs still without seats. These were the chairs we picked up on 15 May 2020. I made seats of scraps from the façade of our house. I liked it! I had also removed the back on one of the chairs earlier, so that chair had to wait.

While I was busy with this project, a neighbor offered us to lend their chairs. That was actually very convenient. Now the chairs were complete. The food was almost finished.

I went to my home office and prepared music for the DJ set in the evening. I moved the sound system and the DJ table to the living room when the music was prepared. From my part, all was finished. There was only one thing left. I still had unbearing long hair. DW cut my hair!

The first people arrived seconds after DW finished cutting my hair. Now the party could start! I put on a chill music mix. The idea was to gradually build up the energy of the music throughout the evening.

The guest got to create flower wreaths. This is a common tradition for midsummer in Sweden, and it was a great starter activity for the party.

Although everything was ready, there were still many little things to do. Arrange for the opening drink. Bring food to the buffet table, and so on.

Do you know the feeling you have been rushing to reach a finish line on time? Then you reach it, but you are still stressed. Unfortunately, that was my feeling, and it stayed with me throughout the evening. That does not mean I did not enjoy the party; it was fantastic! DW even tried to relax more, but it was challenging to stop feeling something because there were always new things to do. I also kept an eye on the dishwasher. I ran dishes so we would not build an enormous mountain of dishes.

The beamer came to use! DD had to settle a "dispute" with an arm-wrestling match, and I think DD won. There were some competitive guests as well; that was evident.

At this time, DW went to bed. I liked having her around for another hour, but so be it. She had worked hard to make this a success, so she was tired.

It was time for the DJ set when all speeches and presentations were done. I started the set with "The Class of 99" by Bas Luhrman as my speech for DD. She appreciated it!

The song originates from a piece by Mary Schmich published in Chicago Tribune in 1997. In 1999, Baz let a voice actor record the piece and remixed it into The Sunscreen song.

The sunscreen song is running at 90 BPM, so I had difficulty increasing the BPM speed to the more common 120 BPM, where my regular music library lives. I had a great time. I had placed the turn table on a little dresser. Unfortunately, it was too low, so I got a backache, not much, but enough to annoy me. I don't think anyone noticed this aspect, though.

People asked me to play the tune "Build that house," and I did! It was playing at 128 BPM, so I had to accelerate. From then on, I played a couple of 128 BPM tunes, but the dancefloor got quieter when I did, so I decided to lower the tempo a bit, and then people got more enthusiastic again. That was great. This crowd was happy, around 122 to 124 BPM.

To my surprise, people got tired sooner than I had expected. Around half past twelve, people started to drop off to go to bed. I danced a little with DD and her friend. We were happy that the party had become a success. DD and her friend went to bed, and I chatted with one of the guests, a music producer. It was great to talk to someone with the same passion for music.

When the music producer went to bed, I reloaded the dishwasher a final time for the day. It was early in the morning, but you get the gist. I was the last person to go to bed.

Saturday 17 June

It was a beautiful morning. I opened the garden doors. The first guest sat reading a book outside. I offered her a cup of tea. There were three tents in the garden. People were also sleeping in the tiny house. The tent people were earlier because the morning sun warmed the tents and woke up people. The people in the tiny house kept on sleeping.

DW and I arranged breakfast for all our guests. I went to the grocery store to pick up the usual things to eat for breakfast. Eggs, bread, yogurt, marmalade, orange juice, and müsli. We served breakfast on the buffet table with coffee and tea.

The atmosphere among our guests was fantastic. They were happy, enjoyed their breakfast, and talked to each other in small groups. We encouraged people to pick fresh strawberries and chives from our garden.

It was so special to create this relaxed feeling among our guests.

When the guests finished breakfast, they said goodbye. I brought the last guests to the train station at noon. We disassembled the party tents and prepared them to be brought back to the rental.

DW decorated our runner bean scaffold with leftover flower wreaths.

We rested the rest of the day and did almost "nothing." Looked after the vegetable gardens etc.

DS decided to try to sleep in the tiny house. We had mosquitos in the regular house, which annoyed him mildly. For the last couple of days, the garden doors have been wide open for long periods. The tiny house had insect-repelling nets at all windows, which was a better place for him.

Sunday 18 June

Today we went to the city and did old-fashioned shopping. It was the first time since the pandemic that we did this here, much had changed. DS bought two pans and a cooking pan. He also got a vacuum cleaner. We got a wifi access point for the tiny house. When we got home, I started installing the access point. The UTP cable we had for the tiny house turned out to be broken. I had to replace it with a new cable. That succeeded, and in the afternoon, DS could log on to the Internet from the tiny house.

Here ends this week's blog. It has been hectic, fun, and very satisfying.