Building The Little Wooden House At Eden Whispers

I’ve always had a sense that the more simple you can make life, the better. I am a creative, full of ideas and inspiration and I have a brain full of images and pictures. From a young age, I always wanted to build my own little wooden house, something really beautiful that I could make to my own design. I kept scrap books of images and things that inspired me, everything from interiors to colours to artists paintings and nature. Being a bit of a hippie at heart, I have never settled in one place for a long time. I didn’t like the idea that I might create a beautiful home and then if I moved from the area where I built it, I would have to leave it there. So I thought why not build a house on wheels! Then if I move, I can take it with me. I like the idea that without the normal foundations, its not a permanent structure tied to the spot, but something movable, a free spirit, after all, I’ve learn’t that nothing material lasts forever.

I found that when you make a decision to follow your dream, your true calling and you throw yourself in to it whole-heartedly, things start to happen.

The journey began with a phone call from, at that time, a complete stranger to me. My phone rang and I said hello. A voice spoke back ‘Are you the girl that wants to build a house on wheels? I replied ‘that’s me’ in a stunned voice! He told me ‘I have an old van base for you.’ I mean wow God is good! We have to listen to the messages, the whispers that we are sent everyday. We have to listen to our hearts and what they are really saying.

So I began, having never built anything before other than a rabbit hutch! I watched quite a lot of YouTube videos on ‘How to build a house on wheels’! I drew my design, being careful to include everything that was important for me to have in my house and then I made a card board model of it to see if the proportions worked. It was quite difficult to include everything in a 5m x2.3m x3.6m space. The things that were most important for me to have were a full size shower, a nice kitchen area, somewhere to sit and eat or work, a good sized double bed and a record player. Outside I designed a fold down terrace that I could use for meditation, playing guitar and writing songs or just being in nature.

Then the next miracle happened. A friend that I had only just been introduced to at that time heard about what I was thinking of doing and said to me, “When you are ready to start building your house, you are welcome to build it on my land in the mountains because there is plenty of spare land that I don’t use.” That blew me away! There was no going back now. I had some land and a battered van base. If that’s not a sign I don’t know what is! I had to do this!

Next other things started appearing. A lot of the materials I found by bins or by the side of the road….it was like God put them there sometimes! I found all the wood for the mezzanine floor neatly stacked by the bins outside my old flat. I found beautiful wooden drawers, which I made in to my main kitchen unit. I used two trees that had fallen down to make the table leg and the porch post, the lanterns on the porch are carved out of gourds (a vegetable that is dried out and turns to a material like wood) I found these on the bottom of the land where my house is. I bought my cooker for 20 euros from a flea market and the big bubble light was 10 euros. The kitchen sink was free from a lady that didn’t want it anymore, as was the stained glass panel in the door. All the windows I found by another bin. Lots of other elements I recycled and up-cycled from pieces of wood or old furniture. Its amazing what you can do when you get creative!

The whole process from having nothing, to a finished home, took 1 year, although for 9 months of that I only worked on building it at weekends because I was working a day job on the Spanish coast in the week. 3 months before the project was completed I lost my job because the company closed and so I made the brave decision to give up my flat by the sea, that I was renting and go to work on my wooden house on wheels full time. It was crazy to not have a job and money coming in but I also saw it as a blessing that pushed me to move away from what I was trying to escape; which was working in a job to pay all my wages over to the rental estate agents. The last 3 months I pretty much worked on it all day every day. There were so many little jobs that took so much longer than I expected, especially doing it all myself…there are only so many hours in a day, although I did work about 16 of them. I wore a head torch at night so I could carry on sawing wood even in the dark! I cant believe that I hammered more than 5000 nails in to the wooden cladding. I used thousands of screws, I insulated, sawed, sanded, routed, hammered, planed…and a whole manner of other things that were all new to me. The whole process was so much harder than I imagined both physically and mentally. There were so many times when I wanted to give up. I faced difficulties, opposition, discouragement and pure fatigue but I finally pushed through it all.

It feels amazing to say that I have an off-grid home that I built myself, away from the confines of society. I’ve learned to keep going, to ignore what other people think and follow my heart, to follow my convictions and trust that there will be a way. My home has absolutely everything I need to live and it allows me to enjoy the more simple, natural life I always dreamed of.

When I had finished I really had no idea that my story would receive so much attention. I was blown away by the comments people left me on my personal Facebook page. It was so encouraging. I know that the story has touched many people and my hope is that it has inspired them to follow their dreams. If I’d have helped just one person, that would have made me so happy…and it seems I have inspired quite a few. I still receive messages now from strangers telling me that I’ve really touched or encouraged them. I want to say this to anyone that reads my story: “I want to encourage you whatever you are facing, however hard it seems, however crazy people think you are…you are stronger, braver and more courageous than you realise and if you have hope, you can achieve whatever you set your mind to. It is okay to follow your heart and not the way of the world. Listen to the whispers. Life is short, don’t be afraid to be you.”

Hope was what kept me going. There was one point near the end of the project where I almost lost it…and quite out of nowhere, again someone I had never met, picked me out of a crowd and said to me “young lady, do not lose hope…hope is the one thing you can’t afford to lose.” That gave me enough hope and focus to finish.