This fall, Jeannie took on the biggest test a tiny house on wheels can endure: Moving.
For the first six months we were building her, Hannah and I heard it from a surprising number of angles: “It looks pretty heavy.” “Are you sure you can tow this thing?” “How much does it weigh?”
The underlying message was, you girls are crazy. Well, maybe we were. The truth is, we had no idea how much weight our tiny house trailer was designed to support, and we still don’t. We have no idea how much our tiny house weighs, though we estimate with the wood stove and solid 2×4 framing, she’s around 6,000-8,000 lbs. What we did know was that the double axles beneath her looked strong, the hitch was rated up to 10,000 lbs, and that if this was really that bad of an idea, something or someone would have stopped us before we got this far.
Still, the seeds of doubt had been planted, so when the opportunity came up for us to move the house a short distance, to a more elbow-roomy place across the property, we grabbed it.
Wellll, to be honest, Hannah grabbed it. I had my doubts. I’d just finished an emotionally demanding summer. We were planning to get married the following week. The easiest thing to do would have been to stay put. Why risk the house exploding, falling over, separating from the hitch, or any number of other disastrous consequences I’d envisioned as a result of us attempting to do what she had been built to do, which was to roll along her merry way to wherever location suits us best?
I was unwilling to indulge Hannah’s crazy ideas by taking time off work, but when I came home one day to find that the porch had been detached and all the stuff stored under the house piled neatly to the side, I knew she was for real. I enlisted my wonderful pal Eleanor and her little red Toyota Tacoma to move all of the stuff to the new location, out in this here pasture.
The destination pasture and our waiting stuff.
Time until wedding: Four days.
The morning of the move, Hannah was at a guitar lesson, so I was solo and scared when our good buddy Matt, a skilled builder and a guy with a few more crazy hairs than us, plus his Toyota T100, pulled up the driveway half an hour early.
With the house parked on grass, not a solid surface, and on a hill to boot, we’d been assuming that we would need the biggest truck we could find to tow it. Maybe even a tractor. But Matt wanted to try with his little – but not quite as little as Eleanor’s Tacoma – Toyota. If he was crazy enough, then so were we.
There was no more putting it off. Together, Matt and I lowered the house down off its blocks, onto the four legs that were originally designed to hold the Airstream that the trailer used to carry. Because of the hill, the house tilted to quite the extreme angle as we lowered the lower side toward the higher side. At one point, I was holding the house up with my arm – not really, but actually putting weight against it with my hand as if I alone could prevent my dream home, my baby, from crashing into the nearby irrigation ditch.
We got it down onto the legs and then began the process of actually putting her on the brand-new tires Hannah had sneakily installed one day while I was out. First, we rested her on the bar that comes down from the tongue of the trailer. Then, with a few quick turns of the speed jack, the legs were up and she was free!
In case you were wondering what a speed jack is, its that metal X in the grass and it attaches to the legs to make them go up and down.
Like a thoughtful mother ripping off the bandaid while the kid is distracted, Matt actually started pulling the house while I was putting the speed jack in a place where I would find it again. In an instant, my fears evaporated. Nothing blew up. The phantom window was flopping around gently because I’d left it open, somehow imagining that morning that the shifting house might shatter the panes and I’d wanted to preserve that one, my favorite.
Hannah arrived at that moment, and I was glad she’d missed the setup for the move. She was more of a nervous wreck than I was, and she just kept yelling “It’s moving! She’s moving! We’re moving!” while scurrying back and forth from one end of the house to the other.
Hannah scurries.
Matt expertly backed our house until she could make the turn around the cherry trees and toward the driveway, and then we were really moving. I walked behind and Hannah walked in front, but my excitement (and, admittedly, picture-taking) prevented me from noticing a low-hanging branch of the walnut tree that soon slammed into our chimney.
Luckily, the damage was minor. In retrospect, this was probably just cosmic justice. At least seven different types of trees were milled to make Jeannie, and who knows the actual tree-body count! Let the walnut take its piece, I say.
On our way out to the new spot, pausing to figure out where the noise is coming from.
Turns out Matt’s truck was great for moving the house, but probably not for long distances. Because he was lower than the house, the tires ended up rubbing against the wheel wells as we rolled along. No big problem to go a few hundred feet, but something to think about when we move again.
Jeannie’s new home (note the charmingly tilted rain cap on the chimney).
All in all, the move took half an hour, but it was a day I’ll never forget. It was the proof I needed that this tiny house idea was not so crazy after all. It reaffirmed my faith in Hannah and her ability to lead us when I am not able to do anything but follow. The next day, we drove to the courthouse and got our license. And three days later, this:
Partying in our great, wide, open new outdoor living room.
That’s Matt just to the right of the cute kid in green, sitting on a stool. You might say he’s pretty satisfied with himself right now. So are we. The doubters may still call us “girls”, may still question our sanity, but we know what’s possible when we put our heads together. Now there’s a reason to celebrate!
October 3rd, 2015
Thanks to all who helped us visualize, build, move and party with Jeannie. Maybe we’ll see you at the next gathering. 😀
The Story of Jeannie 