From Plot To Dot To Our Spot - Adventures In Affordable Shelters

The top photo is the bare land we bought. We paid it off before we did anything else. The owner carried the contract for us and we did without many things to pay it off in 3 years. It was one of the few times in our lives that we sold silver.

When we moved to the land, we camped in our boat for the first couple of nights then got our RV moved up. We found a really good deal on an old one in the Boise area. The dealer was afraid of propane appliances so he had not tested anything. We talked him way down since he could not guarantee anything worked. It turned out EVERYTHING worked including the onboard 5.0 KW generator. We paid $2400 for it. That made life pretty comfortable for us that first summer. It housed us for two summers and our son and his wife and kids for two winters. All the critical parts still work and we could house people in it in an emergency.

We had a well put in as soon as the land was ours. For a wellhouse we fulfilled a lifelong dream: We built a little dome of our own. Here are some shots of construction and a fun little coincidence... The person who this video is dedicated to was the first person @fishyculture connected with on steemit, @libertyteeth! The couple pictured helping us are also on steemit although not very active yet. They have Irish triplets and are sort of busy... The dome is adequate emergency housing and we are about $1800 into it. The local recycling center allowed us to take shredded paper - a bale of it - to make the papercrete and it was mixed 5 gallons at a time with a paint mixer on a drill and applied with a stucco sprayer. We expect to use the sprayer on several other projects and it is included in the total price. We also still have a $1000 air compressor we bought for the papercrete part of the project. That was used again this summer painting the house on the top property already, among other random jobs.

With an RV and camp-able dome on site, we were ready to try to get a real home started. That is about the time our neighbor, @warpedweaver, made us an offer to do a life estate with her property. For the past several years we have been living with her and trying to get that house shored up. It is a charming old house but sort of falling apart at the seams. It cannot be insured it has so many issues but it is a sturdy roof and functioning infrastructure. We have added a real bathroom, a barn, and sealed the porous walls to try to make it more comfortable living quarters. This winter was pretty cozy! It split our time and resources but it doubled our property and made an instant ally in animal care and such. It gave her the little extra income she needed and gave us more livable housing for $400 a month. She will live here as long as she desires, we can leave it to our kids and / or grandkids. In the meantime, we kept plunking away on our property.

We got a big break when a couple neighbors made a deal on a little old funky trailer on a lot around the corner from us. We got in on the negotiations and soon it was our little old funky trailer. We literally had only about a mile of gravel road to move it, and @warpedweaver knew just the man to drive it down the road. The hardest part was getting it onto our property, there is a culvert and creek on one side and a little spring / pond ditch on the other. He had to thread a needle with a trailer but he nailed it. We paid $1000 for this little unit. We have put a lot of elbow grease in to cleaning it up and we do have to completely re-do the bathroom so that will require several hundred dollars more. That is how we got shelters on our land for just over $5000 so far. We hope to finish the trailer house very soon but we have learned not to put timelines on things because that just tempts the universe to jack with our plans...

Thanks for reading! I hope this gives you some ideas on how to get the shelters you need put together at an affordable price.