Low Rent Livaboard in Expensive San Francisco Bay
It was nice having Kirsten Dirksen of faircompanies.com in the area last summer and she picked up quite a few stories of people living small in Northern California. This video is about Fiver Brown.
Fiver Brown is a musician and the kind of guy who has worked as a rodeo clown, a sushi photographer and a pirate, so he couldn’t really afford to buy a home in his current hometown of Sausalito with an average home price of 2.2 million dollars. Instead, he bought a boat. Technically, he bought a floating home. It’s a former WWII lifeboat that had been converted into a small home and docked at one of the town’s historic houseboat communities.
It’s only 13 ft by 37 ft (481 sq ft), but the views are unbeatable. He watches stingrays and birds from the galley/kitchen and from his lofted bed he can peer down at his floating neighbors and the hills of Sausalito above.
His home is paid off though he still pays a monthly slip rental as part of the Galilee Harbor Coop and he’s living right where he wants to be, in a town known for its arts scene.
In this video, Fiver shows us his digs, including a walk-in closet and bathroom renovation in-progress, and performs one of his recent songs aboard his gently rocking maritime crib.
The Nutmeg of Consolation – Studio on a Lifeboat
Benjamin Wheeler brought to my attention Tom Dolby’s blog and his restoration of on ships lifeboat that he has converted into a music studio over in England. Though not used as a tiny house there is absolutely no reason that it couldn’t be converted into one.
I’ll let Tom Dolby tell you a little bit about the boat and you can use your imagination to see where you could take a boat like this.
She was built in the 1930′s as one of a pair of ship’s lifeboats aboard the SS Queen Ann, a British merchant vessel serving in the South Seas. If you look at the red stripe down the side, this was her original gunwale: the deck was added in the 1960′s and we built the wheelhouse this year. In the 30?s she would have had a sail, oars and small paraffin engine. It’s carved on her bowpost that she could hold up to 99 souls. Continue Reading »
