Marc and Regina Bartholomew are southern Maine filmmakers who recently upgraded their really tiny house to just a regular tiny house (it’s 320 square feet) in Bowdoin. Here’s how they did it, and why.
What made you decide to live in a tiny house?
We were supporting our own recording studio business in Portland, and between business expenses and relatively high rents in town, we decided to look into alternative means of housing. We started with a hand-me-down RV from Gina’s father, and lived in that for three years. We found amenable friends that would let us live in the RV in their driveways, eventually settling down for the last year and a half of that time in a driveway in New Gloucester. The RV was a 28’ Pace Arrow, with a broken engine and not near enough insulation for Maine.
Between that and the mold that started to grow in the walls, we decided to build our own tiny house.
We bought a 1960s single-axle camper trailer, with the intention of just fixing it up. The camper had its own share of mold problems, and a giant ant nest living in the floor. We ended up tearing it apart down to the metal trailer frame and built an 8’x10’ box on top. We’ve lived in that for the last three years.
Our original intention with building and living in a tiny house was to be able to save enough money to eventually buy our own land to park it on. Then, to live in the tiny house while we built a more permanent structure. Ultimately we recently bought some land, but it has no driveway to get the tiny house onto it. The land already had a very unfinished summer cabin on it, 16’x20’, so we decided to sell the tiny house and invest the money into turning the new cabin into a four-season, one-room tiny house.
What’s the hardest thing about it?
In our case, not having a normal bathroom is hard, but eventually you get used to it. It’s at least nice to know that you’re using a tiny percentage of water that a normal household would use. There’s no room for storage. Downsizing our belongings took a while; we had stuff stored all over the place. Just getting some new clothes can mean a major re-arranging.
What advice do you have for people looking to build or buy their own tiny house?
The biggest problem we had was not planning for good air exchange. Two people, two dogs and a cat generate a lot of moisture in the air in the winter when the windows are closed. The moisture condenses on any reasonably cold surface inside, eventually creating the potential for mold and mildew. Research your R-values, dew points, and vapor barriers carefully.
