59. Project Barn

After 14 months of hard work on my barn-workshop conversion I was finally able to pull that tiny-house trailer inside and started preparing it for the tiny house structure. At 7.2 meters long, it’s gonna be a decent size, 18m² tiny house. Total height of 4m.

Working hard every day, sometimes 7 days a week till complete depletion of my energy to do anything else afterwards. Every time I fiddled with the idea of writing something on my blog or make a video I quickly rejected that idea. I was just glad I managed to download all the camera recordings to the hard drives and prepare me some meal after that exhaustingly painful work.

I haven’t even been taking breaks during the shifts. It’s normal to take at least 2 breaks for meals and rest. But I’m not normal. I’ve been getting up early. Usually between 6-7 AM, ate breakfast and drank coffee and then I didn’t stop and sit down for another meal till around 4-5 PM. I’ve worked non stop. No time for taking breaks.

Sustaining this pace I completed all the roof and walls framing, insulation and covered it all with OSB boards. Honestly I thought I’m never gonna finish this. Especially when I was working on the roof’s  insulation, installing the battens and OSBs, climbing up and down the scaffolding for like 3 months straight.

This barn is old, nothing is straight, plumbed or leveled. Every piece of styrofoam block or OSB needed special treatment so it fits. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces and only rarely I made it fit on the first cut. Usually each piece took 2-3 tries, sometimes 4-5, some occasions I lost track of how many times I needed to make adjustments.. And thanks to that climbing up and down the scaffolding with each piece multiple times, this job seemingly took forever.

Constant cutting, hauling materials, moving things from one spot to another, cleaning, hauling leftovers to dumpsites.. Also mixing mud and fixing those existing brick columns. Which after few weeks all cracked again. Well I must admit I’m not a good mason. I hate doing all these jobs. I always have to push myself to get it done. Overcome the utter aversion. With each task is associated  dozen of another tasks.

I’ve been trying to calm myself down.. To not freak out about the time passing by so fast. Just work stoically, systematically every day till I get it done. It doesn’t matter to me how long it takes anymore. I’ve already missed all the boats. I have turned 50 during this project as well, so it’s now an old man talking. I’m not young anymore, I’m realizing that I’m never gonna MAKE IT. So what’s the rush right?

OK so I’ve worked 14 months on this barn only so that I can put the trailer inside and start working on that one now. The purpose of installing all this thermal insulation was to be able to build the tiny houses inside in relative comfortable temperature. I installed 8 radiators inside the barn and connected the plumbing to an existing house heating system.  I also installed new heat pump just on time before the heating season started so I don’t need to worry about wasting time by burning wood in the furnace.

It worked fine till the freezing temperatures came and my electric bill skyrocketed. So just recently I re-opened the furnace’s enormous valve and started burning scrap wood again anyway to lower my heating bill.

The thing is, because of having the power registered under my US company, I’m paying really high rates. So few weeks before Christmas I asked an electrician to stamp me a report for the power utility company so I can apply for special rate for heat pumps, but that guy keeps postponing his visit again. I think I’m cursed with all these contractors. Every time I hire someone, they keep making excuses and keep me waiting. If he’s not gonna show up next week I’m gonna need to call someone else because it’s gonna be over a month since I applied and I don’t wanna be paying all this unnecessary money for heating.

So that’s just the interior of this barn. I still need to finish all the exterior. Soffit, siding, yard work, driveway, lighting. You name it. But because I’m running out of money, that’s gonna need to wait till I actually make some money. So far I’ve been only spending money. And I need to spend some more on the tiny house. I need to build the tiny house fast and sell it before I run out of cash. And then repeat that process at least 10 times this year so I make enough money for that new-build I still don’t have the plans drawing wrapped up and filed with the city for the building permit either.

So this barn is not even my main thing. My main project is the new-built I wanna build. I purchased a little building lot in April 2024 and right after I purchased it I hired this architect guy David to draw my plans, which he never did. I covered this story in my previous posts. Then I hired another planner/architect hoping I’m gonna have the plans and permit soon. But I still don’t have it anyway…

In April 2026 it’s gonna be 2 years since purchasing that lot and the planner still have not even applied for my building permit. And even after he does apply, it’s gonna take another at least 6 months before I can start digging. Everything takes forever and it’s driving me nuts. Sometimes I feel like I’m not even gonna live long enough to build that 1 single new house which I dreamed of since I was a child.

So that’s why I purchased this house with a barn so I can work on something else to fill the void. I need another profitable activity to fill in all the endless waiting. So I figured I’m gonna start building those tiny houses. 

I know I’m not re-inventing the wheel, I’m not trying nothing new and there already are number of companies and individuals like me who are trying to get a piece of this pie too. But I’m gonna try a different approach. Cut some costs but still build it right and make these tiny houses more affordable and also more price competitive with the Polish and Turkish manufacturers who import these houses here to Czechia. They also export to all over Europe. I might be able to do that too. So I’m in for some big competition. But I have a feeling that even with all this competition I might be able to pull this off.

So here is the plan for 2026. Because I still don’t have building permit for the new-build I still have plenty of time to at least try to make this happen. I need to build and sell 10-15 tiny houses this year to raise enough money to even be able to build that new house. Because of all these investments I made, I no longer have money available for that new house. So I need to act fast. Starting tomorrow. I even bought new 4 meters long sheet metal bending machine so I can do all the  roofing and siding pieces in-house. So I’m ready. I’m designing those tiny houses in a newest version Archicad 29 which I paid insane money for. I’ll be trying different shapes and sizes too.

Also I need to file my income taxes. The Financial bureau sent reps in person to my house  1 day before Christmas day with a summons to pay income taxes form the sales of the 3 condos. I got little Christmas present. This is serious. I’m suspecting that now that they visited me in person they already have a file on me and will be checking on legibility my tax returns. It’s really stressing me out how this is going to end. Because I don’t have any actual income. Ever since I started working on that 3-condo house in 2019 I’m still in negative balance because I keep re-investing the profits. Hopefully I will somehow sort it out so they don’t investigate me and prosecute me.

You know who else found me? Those debt collectors I’ve been avoiding all this time. They finally found me. But if I didn’t make mistake with providing my shipping address to my bank they would never did. See because my debit card info been stolen and misused in online stores, my bank cancelled that card and needed to issue me new one. And I had to provide them with personal info. At that moment it didn’t hit me, because I completely forgot about my stupid unfair debts. I covered that in my previous posts in detail. 

So thanks to my mistake one of the debt collectors done their job and found my place of residence and came over to impound all my shit. Luckily I wasn’t here at that moment so they dropped me a note in my mail box they will come back later and they will enter my house even without me being present. Funny thing is that that note been sitting in my mail box for a week before I discovered it. I don’t expect any paper mail so I rarely check my mail box. I only check it when I carry out the trash or to dump all the ad flyers. 

So it was sunny but chilly Sunday afternoon and I wanted to go out for a walk but my plans changed in an instant. When I discovered that mail I was in shock. How did they find me? Fuck! That’s fucked up big time. So now they’re gonna come to my house and impound all I own? My life is over! I need to save everything! I need to pack all my tools and valuables, computers.. everything. Load it on my van. I need to load my excavator on my trailer too and leave right now because they might come tomorrow!!!

I panicked like crazy. I even took my flat screen TV off the wall. Running around and loading everything in my van quietely so I don’t disturb neighbors wondering what I’m doing late Sunday night. I didn’t sleep that night. At 6 AM I loaded the excavator on trailer. It was still dark and I drove away to drop it off somewhere. Then I still needed to get a Bolt (Uber) to come back and get my BMW. Fuck. Now what?

So after 7 years successfully avoiding this to happen it finally happened. I didn’t want it to happen like this. I wanted it to happen on my own terms. I was gonna pay the ridiculously unfair debts when the right time comes and I won’t be missing the money which would interfere with my plans. Unfortunately it turned out differently. So I spent the rest of that Monday making phone calls and paying off debts so they don’t fucking come to my house and be labeling my stuff for collection. That would be lot more pricey than to just pay it off. And then I drove all my vehicles back, unloaded everything, put everything back as it was like nothing happened and went straight to bed.

With one of the collectors I was in the end able to get some discount agreement which helped significantly but now I’m still missing the money I needed for my business.

As soon as I paid off these 2 debts I learned I had another new debt from current years. And yet again it was from a vehicle insurance payment which I didn’t know about. So I paid it off right away. And then few weeks later I received another debt collection notice yet from another vehicle insurance missed payment I didn’t know about either so I paid it off right away too. All pissed, not understand how all this is possible, they take me to court without me unaware about it ultimately always ending in this situation. It fucking pisses me off. I only hope that now I’m debt free and there is no other mysterious debts I didn’t know about.

I totally condemn this system that can totally ruin your life’s work. It can destroy your life. And there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country dealing with this downward spiral and can never get out. It wasn’t my case. I had money. But I just needed to pay it off when it’s safe for me to avoid any unnecessary complications. Well here we go. Now I have them anyway. I only hope it’s all gonna work out.

Peace.