Bára Tide Tiny House

May 2017 Bára Tide Tiny House - rental listing photos

Bára Tide Tiny House was lovingly crafted with lumber from our own acreage, incorporating many reclaimed and recycled building supplies. It sits on the site of a former one room school house across from Chignecto Bay (the southern arm of the Bay of Fundy), and on the traditional unceded lands of the Mi'kmaw and Wolastoquyik (Maliseet) peoples.

"Bára" is the norse origin of tidal bore, and references both the high tides present in the front yard as well as the curved shape of the roof. AirBnB listing is here.

Bára Tide Tiny House on the Bay of Fundy

view from the driveway: Chignecto Bay, the southern arm of the Bay of Fundy

front yard and surrounding fields, with a fire pit in the back

kitchenette with 2 burner induction stovetop and 12" convection oven

table set for dinner

collapsible table can be used for eating or writing

upstairs loft with 5" foam mattress and LED reading lights

hidden storage behind the bookcase for luggage or groceries

a few small adjustments and the dining bench becomes a soft reading nook

an electric fireplace takes the chill off colder evenings

view of the kitchenette

upstairs loft view

upstairs loft railing

curvy staircase

our farmhouse, providing indoor shower and toilet

view of the Bay

view from the kitchen

morning fog

induction stovetop

pots and pans

water jugs

with some rearrangement, you can wake up with yoga

several outbuildings behind the guest house, including an outhouse

dimmable LED strip lights

Welcome Home!

May 2017 Kitchenette, shelving and wi-fi

At the end of April and into May 2017, I was figuring out how to create a kitchen space on the cheap. We have IKEA cabinets in our main house, with many lower drawers, so I sourced a MALM dresser second hand to store pots & pans. I debated doing a concrete parging finish for a countertop but the drying times put me off (still rainy season here!) as well as limited availability in my area of the supplies. A walnut countertop made of the same wood as our ceiling would have looked great, but was outside my skill set. But...I can cut plywood! So in the end I took inspiration from this lovely cottage, which stuck a thick edge on furniture grade plywood, painted it with black chalkboard paint (which I already owned) and sealed it up. All easily within my skill set :)

I thought the grey wood finish of the MALM would look OK, but it was both busy and identifiably IKEA. Ages ago I had purchased some Ebay cup handles for another project but they remained unused...I think I paid $4 for all 6. I removed the MALM handles, filled in the holes, painted the whole thing with chalk paint in the wall colour (I just mixed calcium carbonate with the latex I already had), sealed it with flat/matte polyurethane I got at a discount hardware store on our last road trip to Maine, and installed the cup handles.

I also sourced a second hand bar fridge, but it was sad and yellowed. To the rescue: Rustoleum appliance spray paint in bright white to give it new life. Reviews online suggest that's the only brand to trust.

The LED lights are *very* warm.

Owning a giant, old barn with nearly unlimited supply of barnboard has advantages; I used the same flat poly to seal some boards for the open kitchen shelving. I debated ordering shelf brackets from Old Quebec Hardware but the brackets were already outside my price range AND needed to be shipped. I turned to Kijiji classifieds of course, where I found sizeable, real brass Lee Valley brackets for $10 each. They were in another town, but a friend was visiting and she offered to pick them up on my behalf. The dishware, cutlery, cast iron frying pan and pots were also second hand purchases.

One of the last big expenses, and unknowns, was how to get internet at the Tiny House. I phoned the internet company asking about signal boosters and after considerable confusion, was disappointed to know they had no options except to create a second account entirely. At $90/month, that was not going to happen. Instead we have another option but I'm unsure how it will perform over time.

We shall see!

April 2017 Loft floor, railing, baseboards, and bookcase

The upstairs mattress sits directly on the loft floor and nearly covers the whole thing, so I didn't want to spend much money on the finish nor add weight/additional height to the loft floor. At first I tried to paint the floor but the plywood we used was not great quality and it looked terrible. So I spent some time patching the holes, and glued down a faux leather fabric. The finish turned out really well, and I was pleased with how my $35 investment looked (and felt!). It is much nicer to clean compared to painted plywood as well.

We first installed some LED puck lighting near the beds but found the light too bright and the direction was wrong. So we replaced them with gooseneck LED lights from Ebay that work much better.

The railings had to be very sturdy, so although I liked the idea of clear plexiglass or reclaimed wrought iron, in the end we went with heavy duty hardwood dowels. My husband hung on them to test their strength.

I got a lesson on how to install baseboards, which were purchased used (along with much of the window trim), from a classified ad. I primed and painted them Benjamin Moore's "cloud white", like all of the window & door trim in the tiny house.

"You mean I have to mitre these?!?"

My husband planned and then built the secret storage behind the bookcase. The design originated because we had wanted to put a composting toilet in the jog, and while it had a ton of theoretical storage space, we were weirded out by the prospect of storing coats above poop. So the idea was to access the jog storage from the main room. When I saw the beautiful use of bookcases from Handcrafted Movement in their Artisan Retreat, I was inspired.

Still too cold & wet to paint outside, so this is sitting by our fireplace indoors.

April 2017 Door knobs, LED lights and a backyard

In April of 2017 we continued with finishes like door knobs, LED strip lighting (which was a failure that took us months to trouble shoot. My soldering skills are sub-par) and sourcing electricity to the new location. That last one was hard, as we could not afford the wiring new & the quotes from electricians to hook up directly from the power line were similarly expensive. In the end I found some wire on Kijiji classified ads in a city 3 hours away. We spent one Saturday driving there and back.

The tiny house also got a backyard, because we spent one weekend pulling dozens of alders from the wet ground, and burning them on the spot. Then we moved the electrical shed (which is now going to be a bathroom space), which was tricky and had to be put on hold because of descending darkness.

March 2017 Trucking the tiny house across the field

Our friend arrived one Sunday afternoon (before the winter left the soil completely), with his pick up truck and tow strap.

What followed was 2 hours of tiny house ice skating, with some truck skating thrown in for good measure.

February 2017 Twisty staircase

The staircase design originates from Esk'et Tiny House in BC, but we modified it a bit.

My husband and our trusty canine companion put together the staircase in February 2017.

It was getting painted but the workshop was still below freezing, so we brought it inside to the main house to get painted up (along with the back exterior door).