From late October 2018 to May 2019, I lived in a barn. Actually, it was more of a big “shed” than a barn – the real barn was just across the drive. I’d met my future landlady while doing handyman work for her at her horse boarding farm. While we were chatting one day, she mentioned that several folks had stayed for a period of time in the loft of the shed over the years. She offered to let me stay there, should I find myself in need of a place to stay. It got the wheels turning, and I thought it would be an interesting “experiment” in frugal living. So I wrote up a little contract, offering an exchange of labor in lieu of rent-although she had made it clear that she was offering the space rent-free.
The Lair
This is the shop building where I stayed during my “hobo” phase. There’s a loft in the upper right 1/3 of the shop building. It’s about 13×13 with some really narrow steep stairs. The lower room is about 14×24…it goes from the window to the right-hand corner. That’s the main entry door to the left of the black barrel. I found a really big, sturdy pallet behind Cousin Stan’s shop and put it in front of it as a little porch. There’s another walk door on the northeast corner of the shop – on the wall behind the van…facing the other way. I used it to skirt the muddy driveway and get to the privy. (The privy was a little bit behind where the van is parked in the picture.)
My cooking setup was in the lower room and there was a good old fridge that I cleaned up and used. The picture is from after I cleaned and restacked a lot of the stuff in there – it was a piled-up mess….in the picture, it’s just a “mess”. That’s a Jackson Tupelo that I bought while I was there – and there’s red 9′ Rogue in the left hand lower part of the picture. I was always a little bit leery of that Tupelo while I was cooking. Half-expected it to drop on my head, but the Goodwill-sourced kayak lift never let me down. There were also a couple of nice sawhorses and my original “Little Giant” ladder in the picture ($75 at a moving sale…that was CHEAP!) Sadly, I got rid of those right before I left. Sure would have liked to have kept that ladder. It was HEAVY, had to be an old original model.
For heat in the loft, my main heat source was an old Pelonis electric “ceramic” heater that I got from Salvation Army for $5. It kept it 70 degrees plus until it got around 30 or below, then I supplemented with the propane heater or burped the diesel heat for a bit. I used a “Kill-A-Watt” to estimate the power it used and chipped in a few bucks on the electric bill when I got paid for a gig.
If the electric heater wouldn’t keep up, I used a Mr. Heater “Buddy” propane heater – it’s the kind with a radiant heat panel and it is indoor safe. Trust me, I researched this part…they’ve been making them for decades and not killed anyone yet. The pilot light will shut off if it cuts the oxygen down too low (not an issue in this drafty place!)
This view is from the loft window – I could see Mt. Hood on a clear morning. It would have been a better view if I’d taken out some scrubby little trees. The property next door grows grass for seed, so it was pretty and green.
The downstairs room had a huge old oil-fired heater that worked fine at first, then screwed up. I fiddled with it for a couple of weeks, and finally figured out that it needed a new orifice – not easy to find there, “oil” (diesel) heaters are pretty uncommon…finally got a local guy to order me one for like $8 and it worked like a charm. Didn’t use it a lot of the time, just to knock the chill in the mornings. It burned a LOT of diesel. Picture is of the injector/ignitor assembly.
My water supply was on the southwest corner of the shop. It’s a frost-proof faucet (throwback to my youth). It was well water and not softened. I didn’t drink it – it had lots of minerals and was kind of stinky at times. I hauled drinking/cooking water from town when I went in to visit the relatives, do laundry, and take a proper shower. I found a water cooler on Craigslist for $10 (the kind that holds those 5-gallon jugs) and bought two new 5-gallon cooler jugs from WinCo…and had 5 gallon and 7 gallon square jugs, too.
To rig a shower/bath setup, I got a propane-fired water heater (camp shower type) off Amazon, and a 120v water pump. I considered a 12v pump so I could use it in my van later, but figured I could just run it at 120v off the inverter. Checking Craigslist, I found a like-new 100-gallon Rubbermaid plastic stock tank for $50 locally. I was about to get it jammed through the door when the landlady saw me – and offered to buy it from me for the horses on the spot. Told her that I was planning on using it for a shower/bathtub, but she could certainly just have it when I left. I made a passable shower/tub setup with it. Found a couple rolls of the white RV hookup hoses at Walmart for cheap and rigged it up with water from the shop faucet. I ended up using the 120v pump to empty the tub after my shower/baths.
The shop had rain barrels on the corners, and big drain pipes from the rain barrel overflows. Pretty sure those went into a dry well, or ran off into a drain field of some sort. I never saw them fill up and used the one by the door for my sink/washer/shower drain.
I liked the loft space, it was really cozy. When I was first moving in – it had horrible brown dirty carpet that I ripped up…found some commercial carpet squares at Habitat for Humanity for a buck apiece and put them down – worked out great!
That wall with the cheap window in it opens into the shop building. No insulation and OSB on the other side of it. It was a bit “drafty.” On a visit to my cousin’s tint shop, I found a TON of big cardboard boxes in the dumpsters behind their shop. I loaded them up, and trimmed them down to fit in between the studs. Only covered about 1/2 of them, but it helped a bunch – got one of those temperature laser things and it was 5 degrees warmer on the cardboard than on the OSB. I could have used fiberglass, but it’s expensive and really needs to be covered pretty soon after it’s installed or the fibers can get all over the place.
That air bed is from an REI Garage Sale ($10!) and is awesome! I patched two little holes in it with Seam Grip – that stuff is amazing! Still in great shape, I used it for two months solid. It was a little bit chilly, though.
I found a massive LoveSac bean bag at Habitat for Humanity in Hillsboro for $25 – it was great for reading and watching TV, but it was really hard to stay awake. I slept in it several nights, curled up.
When Cousin Duggan got a new bed, I snagged his old one (Thanks, Duggan!) – it was a queen-size memory foam Walmart special and it was awesome! Getting it up those narrow, steep stairs by myself was a challenge, though!
I splurged on an electric blanket and nice sheets from Costco. I slept a lot better after I got that bed…it’s nice to sit on the edge of the bed to get dressed, too.
In May of 2019, it was finally time to move on, and for now that meant going back “home” to Tennessee. Other than the mud for about 90% of the time I was there, it was awesome! And I did get finally get used to the mud – I had my trusty Muck boots and a pair of Hunter wellies that I scored for $10 at a local thrift.
While I was there, I had sourced quite a few things to make my stay more pleasant – shelving, bed, tv, massive bean bag, etc. I sold or gave away most everything I couldn’t pack in the van and a little U-Haul trailer on Craigslist and headed southeast, once again. I like to think I left the place a lot better than it was when I got there.
Fun read!
Thank goodness for Cousin Stan is right!