ADU, Travel, Community
Lina Menard
Maui, Hawaii

After A Week Long Send Off, My Round the World Trip kicked off with eight days in Maui visiting my sister Sarah who has split her time between Hawaii and Alaska for many years. What an epic way to start this adventure! There was mist falling when my sister greeted me at the Kahului airport on Maui a week ago, so she teased me about bringing the rain from the mainland. We headed straight for Paia where she presented me with a young coconut and a lei, accompanied by the chant for the gifting-of-a-lei.

Maui, Hawaii
Tiny House, Travel, Planning
Lina Menard
Lucky Penny Moves to Walla Walla

A number of circumstances collided recently to compel me to move the Lucky Penny to my property in Walla Walla where I have a ground bound small house called Valencia Cottage. So on Tuesday trusted tiny house movers Linh and Stephanie Pham helped me move the Lucky Penny safely from Portland to my place in Walla Walla.

Lucky Penny Moves to Walla Walla
Minimalism, Workshop
Lina Menard
Downsizing Tune Up

As I packed up recently in preparation to travel cross country in my Honda Fit, I did some downsizing… It was harder than it had been during my last couple of moves because this time I had more stuff. I’d been living in a bigger space…My apartment was a studio, but it was still about 6 times bigger than the Lucky Penny! I talked with several people about the experience and a handful of them said “oh my goodness, I need to do more of that!” So I’ve decided to offer a 6-week Downsizing Tune Up…

Downsizing Tune Up

Justin Kramer

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Cabinets & Built-Ins Class at Yestermorrow

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2015-07-14 17.38.31 Whew! What a busy couple weeks it's been! A week ago I wrapped up my role as Project Engineer & Sustainability Coordinator for the Breathe Building and presented our owner, Chris Calarco, with a stack of Operations & Maintenance Manuals. The heap of materials was so huge I offered it up via hand truck. It's been a true pleasure working with Chris' team and I look forward to visiting the building when I return to the west coast in a few weeks! Until then, I wish them all the best wrapping up final details so Yoga Union, Prema Health, and Fern Kitchen can get settled in and open for business.

Then I kicked off My Summer Adventures with My Annual Pilgrimage to the Oregon Country Fair. It was splendid to have quality time with my fairy godfamily in Corvallis, OR and to share this experience with two of my landies, Karin and Isha. Saturday night we drove back up to Portland and my landies dropped me off at the airport for a red eye flight to Vermont.

So I'm Home Again at Yestermorrow and this time I get to stay for three whole weeks! The past four days I've been taking a Cabinets & Built-Ins class. Our instructor, Justin Kramer, is a fabulous teacher and he's done a great job providing a huge skill set in manageable doses, answering approximately a bazillion questions, sharing lots of tricks and tips, and letting us make and learn from little mistakes (while helping us avoid the big ones). We've been building a cabinet which will be used in Yestermorrow's South Studio.

On the first day we got a thorough woodshop orientation, familiarized ourselves with the plans for the cabinet, and built the "carcasses" for our cabinet out of 3/4" cherry plywood, using pocket screws. The second day the team I was on milled down bass wood for the face frames and attached them to the carcass with biscuits while the other team routed out the backs of the cabinets and installed the plywood backs. I'd never milled wood before so this was a great experience! Yesterday we prepared the wood for our pine drawer boxes and built the cherry doors for the cabinet, using dominoes to secure the frames and inserting cherry plywood panels. Today we practiced joinery techniques on our drawer boxes, using three different methods (fingerjoints, dovetails, and pocket screws) and installed our doors on their hinges. We also created a plinth for the cabinet to sit on, built shelves which sit on pins, and started building the web frame for our drawers. Tomorrow we'll continue with the drawers and finalize our cabinet. It's been a great project and I'm more excited than ever to get back to the woodshop at Simply Home Community!

Next week I'll be teaching the Summer 2015 Tiny House Design-Build course. Stay tuned for updates. Meanwhile, if you'd like to read up on what it's like, you can read the day-by-day account of the 2013 Tiny House Design-Build class.