Libby sent me an update on their Contemporary Prairie Schooner and I’ll let Libby tell you about it.
We began construction on our tiny home in March. Now, at the beginning of July, we are living full time in our prairie schooner while we travel cross country. I will be blogging our journey on www.whittleddown.com. Also be sure and read the Grand Tour on our blog that goes more into detail on some of the components of our home.
The schooner has solar electricity, passive solar hot water, a functioning sink, and a camp stove for meal prep. We are using a cooler to refrigerate our food and have a pantry for non-refrigerated items as well. We sleep on a homemade straw mattress and have a handmade couch for lounging. Our cat has an outdoor enclosure for birdwatching.
Our maximum travel speed is 55 mph, so we are taking the scenic route on this journey. We’ll be making our way through the midwest in a north-easterly direction, with Western Massachusetts being our final destination. Our little 4 cylinder Hyundai is handling the extra strain admirably.
The final construction cost of this project is somewhere between $1500 and $2000. We offset the cost by $1000 selling our possessions so that we could fit everything into our new home, making the net cost $500-$1000. We used salvaged materials whenever possible, and we relied heavily on borrowed tools from our local Tool Library.
The only power tool we actually owned was a drill gun with no reverse (our jigsaw broke about 1 month into construction). Because we were working on a deadline, we used more new materials than we would have had we had the luxury of time to scavenge.
Even so, as beginners we were able to build a functioning portable tiny home on a tight budget in 4 months. We’re considering drawing up detailed plans for this project, and we would love to hear from anyone out there who would be interested in such a thing.