Finally I have a person to finish this house for by making it adorably livable for a tiny lady in her 70s who will join us in Salvage, Texas for her final decades.
Yes, it has been a while since the operations were put into mothballs, and I went on my sabbatical from business life. Finally, I am inspired to move on and clear up the mess of my past life as a millionaire entrepreneur intent on leaving a great legacy for his son. That goal ended with his life in 2011, and soon after, I shut down the operations of building Tiny Texas Houses and let all the workers go on to their next workplace. I thought I was done being an employer for the next seven years. It has turned into more, and I have no desire to rerun a big business. Hence, the solution is to dissolve what is left: 100,000 sf of warehouses full of 500 tiny houses worth of materials awaiting assembly that may never happen.
This is a large version of a tiny house, a real house that will loophole around being taxed as a house and slip by as a portable building, thus reducing the liability for taxes by 75% during the owner’s lifetime. Furthermore, she can depreciate it by over ten years instead of 28 years and thus pay fewer taxes. Ultimately, the idea behind building homes with salvaged materials is to save costs on the environment by saving energy, not cutting down trees, and creating a home that will last a hundred years or more if cared for right. The new tiny mobile home class of structures that have been the predominant tiny houses on wheels is doomed to decay in ten years, lose nearly all value, and likely make the people who bought the new unhealthy and unwealthy by the time they finally move out of it and trash what is left.
Real wood and handblown glass saves the world the cost of creating new glass at 1,000 calories of heat per square inch to melt sand to form glass. Most of the metal for the hardware is not mined anew but was made a hundred years ago by kids who drug coal from mines while barefooted and stoked the furnaces that melted the metal to form the hardware long ago. This is the advantage of working with salvage: the savings of so much energy and trees, the longevity of new construction, and the beauty of natural building materials salvaged from a time of abundance and high quality. This produced the best of the houses offered during the 16-year-long Tiny Houses on Wheels fad that is crashing as resale values plummet for what is effectively an RV, not a home.
It’s not coffin lofts for me, but a place I can walk with my hat on freely and yet have the space count as storage, not living space, for the tax rolls. Yes, the loophole is in the average ceiling height, the lower wall being under 5’6”, and the stairs to it are thus allowed to break convention as there is no code on a tiny portable house.
Originally, I was putting in full AC electricity in the wall like modern homes, but with solar power, DC electricity is more of the future of home electric systems. Hence, I am no a fan of the wiring for AC that causes Electromagnetic Frequencies that pollute the home environment and cause fires, and it is not needed anymore to have a house operate with AC. Still, it is easier, so I do both in this house. My master suite, which is my home, does not have any AC electric to it, but for that matter, no electricity is wired in as I use DC batteries on the fan by my bed and need no other to be happy when I go home to rest.
Here is an example of the small version of the office area in the house for bills. I can move the doors that will form the wall back. These are just for displaying the layouts. Using doors for walls saves dramatically on dead space wasted inside walls, usually, as all space is valuable in a tiny house.
The upstairs area has two bedrooms and will have a balcony outside that extended window area. The far side is the master suite area, and there will likely be a half bath in the far corner. Closets, storage, a king-size bed possible, and a separate area as an office or second guest bedroom. This is a large upstairs compared to the houses that live on tires that rot and cost a grand to replace when you decide to move one day down the road. Rubber tires have a 5-year life; even if they are never run down the road, the rubber dries out and rots.
This is the bigger office area version with a smaller bathroom area. One of the options for laying out the house to suit the new owner as we make plans for her arrival and becoming one of the permanent residents in Salvage, Texas. This is intended to be a place Wii can live in till wii die… even in dementia or hospice level. Our goal is to show how this can be done to mix elders with the younger people to help raise the kids. Transfer, somehow download the wisdom of the elders into the kids of tomorrow through homeschooling and teaching the children how to question, think, and grow to be the most amazing people possible to lead others in the future when so many will be dumbed down by their smartphones and dependency on them for knowledge.
This will provide for a shower, sink, and commode and be set up so it is handicapped accessible in case the owner needs the handles and assistance later. It will be big enough for a helper if needed but not so big that getting around in it will be an issue if the owner is handicapped a bit by aging and time.
The kitchen will actually extend through the door to the pantry and secondary storage area for the kitchen. The porch will wrap around to the front of the house, adding over 200 square feet of living space screened in till tax man leaves, then glassed in for the hot and cold seasons but not have it count as living space for tax purposes… all legal.
Can you imagine the open porch on this end by the big door entrance and then a closed-in porch that you enter through a door to have an outdoor living area, extra guest bedroom area, or just a place to store more stuff? All together, this will give about 825 square feet of living areas heated and cooled if desired but only have 326 sf count as living space, thus getting it under the 400 sf to be valued at $400 an sf as high-houses built of the same quality but instead show up as a storage building valuation based on a value determined by what the appraisal district is told it is valued at though because it is a portable building, it is not considered attached to the real estate and thus saves the owner much in taxes each year, in this case, likely saving $3,000 a year in property tax, our Texas Income Tax.
I have all the materials to create 300 more houses like this in storage from when I had the business operating with 20 employees. I will never do that again after savoring the last few years without the stress of payroll, taxes, liability for employees, and the drama of having workers constantly trying to get over on me because I am the boss, the man who supposedly could afford all the employees who stole, cheated on time, and took time off without regard to the demand for timely completion of projects to get the draws to pay them. They really did not care how much Hell I had to go through to make payroll and keep the business going when they screwed off and put us behind schedule, drew, or just failed to build right the first time and therefore had to tear it apart and do it right to make me happy, but at my expense. I shut it down with no heir left to give this legacy, too. Mentoring kids was not working, as they all left as soon as they got the training to go off on their own. The days of apprenticeship and loyalty are past. Now, there is no loyalty or obligation to repay for what is taken, such as mentoring, which amounts to paying someone to learn how to do what I took years to learn these days, only to see the people leave once I have paid to train them and not yet gotten the work back from them to pay for my investment into their skills and future. Bullshit. So I quite.
I have lived in my Tantra Temple, the name of my home, for over eleven years now, and it has truly given me the best rest of my life. It is my peaceful master suite that I go to at night and seldom see during the day. My place to get away, no TV, office, or work on display, just peace and tranquility to dream in as I float on my hanging bed each night. Truly I have experienced it, attest to what it has done for me, and I do believe it will do the same for others who choose to build organic healthy houses that will last for lifetimes instead of the coffins full of poisons to breath in that some call tiny houses on wheels, or worse.
There are four houses left to complete. One will go to Trinity, another to become one of the houses to use for the BnB, or another person may move here. We are shutting down the BnB operations and looking to put people into the houses who want to help create the example of Salvage, Texas, to prove what can be done to recreate the world after others have trashed it. From an industrial waste dump to a paradise with beavers, otters, fish, and fowl, Salvage, Texas, is not to be matched for its potential to prove wii can create a village and a future from the best of our past by salvaging it and reusing it instead of toxic new imports and building materials that are also more expensive and will not last as long as the materials I am using to create houses that will be energy efficient from before you move in saving the cost of all the materials that would need to be created and cause pollution, transport, and marketing costs that do not need to be included in your home.
I hope you will like and follow us as Wii put the finishing touches on this great example of salvage building and then tows it out and positions it on one of the ponds with the front porch extended over the water edge and trees all about with birds, critters, and trees to share the rest of her time on Earth with. Truly, this is the best way to live. Still, few can or will here as Wii will keep the population in Salvage limited to perhaps 40-50 people on the 18 acres remaining that will hopefully become the Embassy for Pure Salvage Living that others can learn from and perhaps replicate in other places once the methodology is clear. This is a path to solutions the world needs, but the question is, do the people care about the world and environment to do what should be done, or will they stay in the disposable toxic housing mode as they have been trained to do?
As I hit 69 years old and face my 70s with the hope of being my best self yet, I hope you will share the path to healthy living, practice it if you still can, and reclaim your youthfulness into your
The 80s instead of aging out early. Wii have so much potential if wii takes action and does what needs to be done with passion and a positive mental attitude. Truly, that helps make the world an incredible place regardless of what is happening elsewhere. Savor the moments and create a future of your dreams by acting now to chase and catch the dreams you still hold in your heart and mind. It is never too late until you are dead.