In April 2024, my wife and I sold our 4,000 square foot home in the small town of Concrete, Washington.
We then moved into a 23-foot trailer on my in-laws' property with our teenage son, three English bulldogs, and a territorial iguana named Rour.
This wasn't some dreamy escape into the minimalist #vanlife trend. In fact, we desperately wanted to be mortgage free and wanted live closer to your in-laws so we can help them as they age.
Although our concrete home once seemed full of character and potential for endless renovations, it has become a burden due to ever-increasing property taxes and insurance costs.
So we made a plan: use the proceeds from the sale of the house to build a modest home. detached accessory dwelling unit (DADU) on my in-laws' 5 acre property in Arlington, Washington.
So we can finally live in a house without a mortgage.
During construction, we simply stayed in a Forest River Evo trailer that we bought a few years ago to use for camping. We thought that for just a few months, four at the most, this looked like a great setup.
However, this project started over 16 months ago and we are still not home.
Delays began to accumulate almost immediately
Our plan was to live in our 23' trailer until our house was completed. Sean Lentz
We bought a ready-made house with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, which is within our county's 1,200 square foot DADU.
It turns out that buying a house couldn't be easier.
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After that, we still had a lot of work to do: apply for a permit, schedule a wetlands survey of the area where we planned to build, test a nearby well for contaminants, design a septic system, and much more.
Despite some help from the contractor and other subcontractors, we felt we received a lot of mixed messages about what needed to be done and in what order.
In the end, we had to figure out a lot on our own. During the process, we became very familiar with local regulations and the building permit process in our county.
We encountered a lot of delays throughout the process. Sean Lentz
However, progress seemed to move at a glacial pace, from dealing with delays from our septic designer to waiting for electrical, water and septic system inspections.
However, the biggest delay in installing our manufactured home was the discovery of a new wetland on the property that became subject to regulation.
We needed to make corrections and changes before resubmitting the permit, which itself delayed our project by five months.
Meanwhile, living in our trailer turned out to be more difficult than expected.
We shared this place with our dogs. Sean Lentz
While all this was happening, we were living in a tin can.
The small trailer has a pull-out shelf for extra breathing room, but space is still tight. Installing very high baby gates to stop our dogs from fighting only made the situation worse.
We basically have to pole vault back and forth on things to get around the trailer.
We try to spread out when we can. Sean Lentz
Our son's “room” is a coffin-sized bottom bunk, and Rohr loves the top bunk with a view. The dinette doubles as my desk, but is now mostly occupied by our son's gaming computer.
The dinette area is sometimes used by us and our pets. Sean Lentz
My poor wife was forced to stay in bed for everything from dinner to downtime.
Cooking becomes interesting. We choose between microwave, air fry or slow cooker.
Our cooking space is also quite compact. Sean Lentz
Precariously balanced plates on the tiny edges of the counter or on top of the coffee pot make small stakes interesting. Will our dinner fall to the ground? How long will it take the dogs to eat it? In many cases, it's easier to just walk out.
However, we have adjusted to endless work in a trailer, glitchy Wi-Fi, mentally disabled dogs and everything in between.
We're finally starting to see progress on the house – and we've learned a lot
Despite the difficulties, we still chase the dream of a simpler life. Sean Lentz
Our house was completed at the end of June. Its two halves are now joined together and reinforced with concrete blocks.
Septic, electrical and interior work is underway, and water will soon be installed to the existing well.
There is still a lot of work to be done before it is completely move-in ready. However, over $275,000 later, we can finally see the shape of what lies ahead.
What's a few more months in the trailer? This long camping trip tested our marriage more than anything else in our 12 years of marriage.
We shouted at the Gods. We shouted at each other. We almost became the Torrance family in The Shining.
If we had to do it again (never in a million years), we would give ourselves a year or two. We will also be willing to cover additional, unknown costs, such as county registration fees and septic system monitoring, above and beyond the total estimate provided by our contractor.
However, we hold on to the dream of simplifying our lives and full ownership of our home.
Looking across the property at our unfinished house is torture. But we hope that when the work is completed, the nightmare we went through will be worth it.
However, time will tell if we will ever be able to go camping again.
