The Tiny House

When Martin and Paula moved from Buenos Aires to Portland, Oregon, for Martin's new job, they found that renting an apartment cost almost half of their salary. Paula, a graphic designer who could work from anywhere, had an idea. She had been watching videos about tiny houses: small, simple homes of twenty or thirty square meters, often built on wheels. "We could buy some land outside the city and have one built," she said. "It would be cheaper, and we could live closer to nature."

They bought a small piece of land near a forest, forty minutes from the city, and found a builder online called Rick. His website was full of beautiful photos, and he promised that the house would be ready in three months. They had the plans drawn up by an architect friend: a living room with a big window facing the trees, a tiny kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom upstairs under the roof, which you reached by a ladder.

Nothing went as planned. First, Rick's team arrived two weeks late, because they were finishing another job. Then it rained for most of October, and the land turned into a sea of mud. They had to have the ground leveled twice and get a gravel path made so that the trucks could reach the site. In November, Paula went to check the work and discovered that the big window had been put in the bathroom, facing the road, instead of in the living room, facing the forest.

"It's the same size," Rick said, scratching his head. "Does it really matter?" It mattered. They had the window moved, which cost them another two weeks and eight hundred dollars. In December, the roof leaked during the first storm, so they had to get it repaired. Then they discovered that nobody had connected the water. Martin spent his weekends on the phone with plumbers, and Paula started to wonder if the whole thing had been a terrible mistake.

Meanwhile, they were still paying for the expensive apartment in the city, and their savings were disappearing fast. One evening in January, Martin did the math. The tiny house had already cost them thirty percent more than they had planned. "In Buenos Aires," he said, "we used to complain about our landlord. I think I miss him." Paula laughed, but she was close to tears.

Finally, in March, six months after the work had started, the house was finished. They had the walls painted a soft green, got the stove and the fridge delivered, and moved in on a cold, sunny Saturday. That first night, they sat on the floor, because they didn't have a sofa yet, and ate empanadas that Paula had made in the tiny kitchen. Through the big window, which was now in the right place, they could see the dark trees and, above them, more stars than they had ever seen in the city.

"Was it worth it?" Martin asked. Paula thought about the mud, the leaking roof and the bathroom window. "Ask me in a year," she said. But a year later, when some friends from Argentina came to visit and asked the same question, she didn't need to think about it at all.