An update: we unfortunately had to leave our tiny house. We moved to the mountains of NC. I had to accept full time employment where I could get it, and my husband is considering going back to school in this area. We miss it every day! But it will be there when we somehow save up enough money to go back and finish it properly.
There is still a small section on the exterior (south side) that I have not finished! But the lime has been curing for months now, so it should be ready and waiting when we go back for Christmas break. Unfortunately, after doing more research, I realized that I did not do as good of a job on my lime plaster as I should have. I will likely have to redo the exterior in the future. Mainly, I didn't let the lime cure long enough, and I didn't keep it moist enough while it was drying. Chicken wire is also questionable to use under lime.
That is a valuable lesson I have learned, and I will say it again: NEVER build a house in a hurry!
I promise once I finish the exterior, I will take more pictures and paste my final list of expenditures here. I will also try to write down the number of work days and the preexisting tools we borrowed. Those are "hidden costs" not as easily added up, but every bit as valuable as a dollar when building a "cheap" tiny house.
There is a Tiny House Conference in April in Charlotte! Some of my favorite Tiny House Bloggers will be there. Unfortunately, it is ridiculously expensive and I make minimum wage. I'm disappointed that I will probably not be able to go.
On the mold issue: it turns out it was not the house's fault. I left a bottle of water sitting on a window sill and it started the huge, nasty mold colony which then infested the whole house. I left the water sitting on the window sill because it was catching bees and wasps and all those nasty stinging things! But dead bees in water are going to grow some creepy stuff. It's my fault for being lazy and not dumping it out earlier.
On the bees: they all died. It looks like some sort of tiny insect infested the hive, which weakened them. Something unknown was not right in addition to that. As with a lot of the bees in this country, ours have perished under semi-mysterious circumstances.
