Building Small Home on My in-Laws’ Property Has Been Tough; Surprising

In April 2024, my wife and I sold our 4,000-square-foot home in the small town of Concrete, Washington.

Then, we moved into the 23-foot trailer on my in-laws’ property with our teenage son, three English bulldogs, and a territorial iguana named Rawr.

This wasn’t some dreamy escape into the minimalist #vanlife trend. In reality, we were desperate to be free from a mortgage, and we wanted to live closer to my in-laws so we could assist them as they age.

Though our Concrete house once felt full of character and potential for endless renovations, it had become a burden, with ever-rising property taxes and insurance costs.

So, we made a plan: Use the funds from selling our house to build a modest detached accessory dwelling unit (DADU) on my in-laws’ 5-acre property in Arlington, Washington.

This way, we’d finally be able to live in a home mortgage-free.

During construction, we’d simply stay in the Forest River Evo trailer we’d bought a few years ago to use for camping trips. It seemed like a perfectly fine setup for just a few months, maybe four maximum, we thought.

However, this project began over 16 months ago, and we’re still not in our house.

The delays started piling up almost immediately

We purchased a manufactured home with three bedrooms and two bathrooms that falls within our county’s 1,200-square-foot DADU limit.

It turns out that buying the house was the easy part.

From there, we still had a lot of work to do — applying for a permit, scheduling a wetland survey of where we planned to build, testing the nearby well for contaminants, designing a septic system, and more.

Though we had some help from a contractor and other subcontractors, we felt like we got a lot of mixed messages about what needed to be done and in what order.

Ultimately, we had a lot to figure out on our own. Throughout the process, we became very familiar with local rules and the approval process for building in our county.

Still, progress seemed to move at a glacial pace, from dealing with delays from our septic designer to waiting for inspections for electrical, water, and the septic system.

However, the biggest hold-up to installing our manufactured home was the discovery of a new wetland on the property that became subject to regulation.

We needed to make corrections and changes before re-filing our permit, which alone delayed our project by five months.

Meanwhile, living in our trailer has been tougher than anticipated

While all of this was happening, we’ve been living in a tin can.

The small trailer has a slide-out for extra breathing room, but the space is still tight. Adding an extra-tall baby gate to keep our dogs from fighting only made it worse.

We have to basically pole vault back and forth over the things to move around the trailer.

Our son’s “room” is the casket-sized bottom bunk, while Rawr enjoys the upper tier with a view. The dining nook doubles as my writing workspace, but is now mostly taken up by our son’s gaming computer.

My poor wife has been relegated to the bed for everything from dinner to downtime.

Cooking gets interesting. We choose between microwaving, air-frying, or using the crockpot.

Precariously balancing plates on tiny counter edges or on top of the coffee pot makes for fun little wagers. Will our dinner hit the ground? How long will it take for the dogs to gobble it up? Many times it’s easier to just go out.

Regardless, we’ve adapted to never-ending trailer chores, glitchy WiFi, mentally defeated dogs, and all the rest.

We’re finally starting to see progress on the house — and we’ve learned so much

Our house was delivered in late June. Its two halves are now married together and stabilized with concrete blocks.

Septic, electrical, and interior work are underway, and the water line will soon be run to the existing well.

There’s still a lot of work to be done before it’s completely move-in-ready. However, over $275,000 later, we can finally see the shape of what’s ahead.

And what’s a few more months in the trailer? This extended camping experience has tested our marriage more than anything else in our 12 years together.

We’ve screamed at the Gods. We’ve shouted at each other. We’ve nearly become the Torrance family in “The Shining.”

If we had to do it again (never in a million years), we’d give ourselves a timeline of a year or two. We’d also be prepared to cover additional, unknown costs, like county recording fees and septic-system monitoring, beyond the general estimate provided by our contractor.

Still, we’re holding on to the dream of simplifying our lives and owning our home outright.

Staring across the property at our unfinished house is torture. But, we’re hopeful that when it’s complete, this nightmare we’ve been through will have been worth it.

Time will tell if we’ll ever be able to go camping again, though.