From A Desk In My Tiny Kitchen…
A reflection on what I’m doing and how I got here. The launch of the tiny cabin compound, and the vision for its future.
It’s a rainy Sunday morning, and I’m sipping coffee at my desk, trying to come up with something witty to write. This is my domain… my battleground… my territory, blessing, and curse.
I write in my kitchen. It’s a freestanding building on my tiny home property, and the only place with enough free space right now to keep a desk that a laptop can fit on. It’s also a central hub of activity for our property, whether that’s because of its function as a kitchen and laundry space, or because I’m in it, I’m not exactly sure.
I spend the majority of my day in this building, visited throughout by a stream of family members, and sometimes friends that are passing through the area. My mail carrier pulls up to the building and honks for me when she has packages or needs a signature. It’s the first building our neighbors come to when they need to borrow a tool or ask a question.
The three living quarter cabins all have a designated kitchenette space… a spot to store cold drinks, make coffee and keep a few snacks, but nothing more than that. For the real meals, everyone comes to the kitchen at will. Every day at 5pm I make a dinner in this kitchen, even though everyone is grown and half of them grab fast food on their way home from work. It’s just part of the rhythm of the hilltop. They come and go for cleaning supplies, to do their laundry, and to ask me where I last saw that thing that’s probably right under their nose.
If I’m mid-sprint on an article, it can be pretty frustrating to be interrupted several times each hour. There are days I wish with all my heart to have a secret little shack in the woods that is solely dedicated to isolated research, reflection, and revising my 2 a.m. drafts. More often are the days when I am grateful that this is my lot in life.
This property is slowly becoming the dream I had envisioned so many years ago. A launching and landing pad for our many grown children. A creative hub for ourselves and our friends. A place to grow old away from the never-ending hustle culture we left behind. Both a foundation and an escape.
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We moved from Phoenix to the Ozark foothills in the summer of 2009 amidst the sub-prime-mortgage collapse and the rise of social media as a common staple, when spotty DSL internet was our only internet option, and a cell phone signal was a pipe dream. Within my first week here in the woods a neighbor asked me “Do you get that Craigs List?” in response to my search for a local tree trimmer.
I had already been blogging and affiliate marketing for five years at this point, so the culture shock was major to say the very least. A welcome shock though as the kids immediately grew wings and flew all over this hilltop we had settled on. I could see us building something really special here once we got our bearings, not knowing how long that would take.
I always knew the kids would eventually get older and rebel against the small town life. We took them back to Phoenix and traveled to other cities often, and they were raised with a foot in each world. City mice AND country mice all at once. But I also knew in my bones how hard starting out and maintaining life as an adult would be, so a plan started to form.
I wanted to give our children a type of generational wealth that was within my grasp, a safety net against the hardships of life. The reassurance that they could aim as far and wide as they want in this life, knowing that if it doesn’t work out they can always come home. The opportunity came when our neighbor to the south decided he wanted to sell his adjoining property and move west. We bought his lot up in a hurry before he could change his mind or raise the price. This was in 2011, and we used that extra space for many years to garden, plot and plan until the time was right.
Fast forward to 2019. Ad revenue for our independent country music sites was up, the finances were looking solid, the youngest kids were entering their senior year of high school, and it was time to get out from under the ever-increasing mortgage we had taken on in a hurry when we first moved here. We drew up plans and broke ground on what we would affectionately nickname “Baron Hill Summer Camp”. The goal; to build a master cabin for the parents, a ladies cabin, a gentleman’s cabin, and a freestanding kitchen/laundry for all to use. We also wanted to do this on a cash-only basis. No loans.
In the first few months we got the infrastructure handled, getting the raw buildings in place, installing a septic, running electricity and water, all while living in the main house that we knew we were going to get rid of when the tiny homes were done. We did most of the labor ourselves, and things were moving along at a steady clip until March of 2020.
One day the world just stopped, and with it, our income. Live music, our bread and butter, was at a complete standstill. You know… you were there too. And thanks to the way our work was structured, we didn’t qualify for any of the nifty loans and grants that helped other businesses stay afloat, so we were on our own… it became crunch time.
When the two-week shutdown turned into 2 months with no real end in sight, we made the hard decision to just let go of the main house early. Mortgage payments would get in the way of construction, and we were burning through what savings we had at an alarming rate. We hustled to get the new cabins at least as habitable as a hard-shell tent and watched as the old house sold off. Luckily we had already stockpiled a small hardware store’s worth of building materials, so while the rest of the world wore PPE and lathered in hand sanitizer to provide essential services, we wore work gloves and learned about pex plumbing and how to do drywall. I kept writing about country music too.
Over the pandemic I watched as a lot of publications I saw as peers fizzled out and folded. I saw some of them pivot into other topics, or consolidate with larger publications only to get laid off after the merger was complete. I just wrote about live-streams and living room recordings, and I swung a hammer, hit a nail, and hoped for the best. I am absolutely certain that if we weren’t independent, we would have folded too. I was fortunate to still have this audience and this creative outlet to keep me company when we felt more isolated than ever.
By the end of the second year of the shutdown we were out of savings and out of building supplies, looking forward to the resurgence of live music and ad spends. It’s been slow going since then as the economy of the entertainment business has changed a lot in that time and we’ve worked hard to evolve with it, but the progress on our tiny compound has been steady and impressive.
The vision is now clear to anyone who looks closely enough instead of just being inside my own head. We still have a long way to go, and maybe one day I will have a dedicated writing space, but for now I am grateful for my little desk in my tiny kitchen with the never-ending pass-through of family and friends, and I’m grateful to have the kind of work that allows me the freedom to be available and build a little on it every day.
The Tiny Compound Vision…
These images are the screensavers on every TV on the property and serve as a reminder of the vision we are all working towards. Some of these visions have already become reality while others are still a little ways off, but the way I see it we have our whole lives to build this dream, so why rush it?
The main cabin is for the parents here. It’s the only living quarters without lofts, starting from a 16’x30’ TDS building with approximately 480 square feet of living space. The taste is rustic cabin with an emphasis on instruments and books and general self-soothing tools of our trade. We’re building this one with old age in mind, meaning wider doorways, and spacious rooms that will accommodate eventual handrails or mobility aids. It is currently about 80% complete.
The vibe in the lady’s cabin is cottage-core spa escape. We’re chasing love, light and relaxation in this 12’x40’ deluxe lofted Derksen shell. With a downstairs bedroom, two 10’ x 12′ deep sleeping lofts, and a sizable bathroom footprint, we’ve got about 600 square feet of livable space that will sleep up to 6 people comfortably. The plan is to dress it out in soft fabrics, large windows, and a gorgeous vintage cast iron soaking tub we found as the highlight of the cabin. It’s about 30% compete at this point making it the most unfinished building on the property, but we’re taking our time to make sure we can finish it out with the most high-end fixtures, furniture and features.
*Disclaimer: There’s not a single sponsored link in this post… but there COULD be.
The name of the game in the gentleman’s cabin is multimedia entertainment. A veritable man-cave if you will. Rustic finishes and utilitarian hardware with a large open floorplan make this 12’x40’ Derksen deluxe lofted shell a hideout for the serious gamer, movie buff or musician. The lofts will be the most dedicated sleeping space, accommodating either a pair of twin beds each OR a queen in each, with the ground floor left as flexible space for whatever needs come up. This is another 600 square feet of living space, and it’s approximately 75% finished at this point.
The heart and hearth of the homestead (and where my desk is at the moment)… our kitchen and laundry building has actually been on our property since 2010, moved around a few times and put to various purposes over time. It’s a 12’x24’ TDS building that has served as an office, a gym, a craft room, a studio apartment, and a band practice space, and now its’ final function will be that of a camp kitchen. It’s designed so that anyone can walk in, look around, and find exactly what they need at 3am or 3pm, without disturbing anyone else on the property. The vibe is a country kitchen with commercial equipment, set to serve the needs of everyone on the hill without having to lose precious square footage in the living quarters. One kitchen to rule them all (at about 80% completion right now).
The outdoor areas are set up to serve as the communal “living room” if you will, with fire pits, hammocks, playground equipment, tables, party lights, garden areas, and of course, the chicken coop. Eventually there will be a large deck and walkway connecting all the cabins together, but for now we dine on the tiny deck between the two center buildings and enjoy the simplicity of the life we’re building here.
It’s not much, but at the same time it’s everything, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Reading: “This Ain’t No Disco: The Story of CBGB” by Roman Kozak
Listening to: Baron Hill Summer Camp playlist on Spotify
