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That Time ‘Living Big In a Tiny House’ Came to Visit Our Shipping Containers

Did you see the episode? If not, you can watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZURIKHf6Es&t=7s. Bryce & Rasa condensed our story into 16 minutes better than we could have hoped 🙂

Eek – We Blew Living Big in a Tiny Home Off

I remember that I had received a message request through Instagram early in 2019 from Rasa, Bryce’s partner the gorgeous soul behind the camera. She had asked if we were interested in being featured on their YouTube channel. To be honest, I had never even heard of Living Big in a Tiny Home. We don’t really follow the tiny house movement; we just live our best life every day in our own tiny home. 🙂

So when Rasa sent that first message and a couple of clips of what the video would look like, I have to be truthful when I say, I didn’t even open the links. 😦 I read her messages, told her I would let her know and then forgot about it all. Life was so busy in the early part of 2019 as we had just come out of a long hard winter and were dealing with some issues with a couple of our kiddos.

Thank Goodness Bryce & Rasa are Persistent

Fast forward 6 months, and Rasa reached out to me again. She said that they had just returned to the states and would love to film our home. At this point, I had still not ever watched or heard of Living Big, but I did take the time to click on her links and watch the video clips. Watching what they produce, it seemed surreal that they were reaching out to us. We had never expected anyone to think our house was as amazing as we thought it was 😉

I responded that yes, we would be interested and to please let us know what they were thinking and their time-frame. I didn’t hear from her again for a couple of weeks and so didn’t think much more of it. Like I said, it had seemed too good to be true, so it probably wasn’t true 😉 Later we learned that they actually film or travel to their next filming destination EVERY SINGLE DAY. No wonder she didn’t have time to respond back – Bryce and Rasa are so very busy sharing people’s homes and stories.

Late August, I received another message from Rasa asking if they could come and film our home the first Saturday in September – just 2 weeks away. Dave and I talked about it and said, sure, why not. Let’s do this! knew that I needed to do some homework and research what their show was about and what to expect. I clicked on one of their videos and then told Dave, this is a BIG deal. Look at these videos and these gorgeous houses that they film all over the world. Oh, my goodness. What have we signed ourselves up for?!?!?!

We Are Just Ordinary People

We live in 2 shipping containers that we love, but it really isn’t anything special. After watching just a few more of their videos, I knew that we needed to make sure our windows were washed and the dead lawn mowed and get our home as ready as possible! We tend to keep our home very tidy, but we do live in the woods, so bugs and leaves and spiders and all the dirty things tend to get everywhere all the time.

Is This Really Going To Happen?

Again, I didn’t hear anything from Rasa after we settled on the filming date in September. Dave and I worked to get our home ready, but because of the ‘radio silence’ weren’t even sure if this was really going to happen. We figured if it didn’t, at least our house was spick and span to go into the long winter ahead. 🙂

Saturday morning arrived and so did Bryce & Rasa – we couldn’t even believe that this was really happening! They had driven from their previous shoot in Colorado just two days before. As soon as they got out of the car, we asked how they were doing, and Bryce said, ‘tired.’ Oh, my mama’s heart went out to these two lovely people that had chosen to drive from Colorado to our little town in Washington State to film our home.

Immediately Bryce started asking us questions and soon discovered that our home was more than just a couple shipping containers stacked like legos that we lived in. We had a story. An amazing story of perseverance, joy, love, and hope.

Bryce and Rasa spent the better part of 2 days filming our home and listening to our story. They cared. It was genuine and you could feel it. After the first day of filming, we asked them if we could take them to dinner. We also offered our son’s room for the night as he was away at his grandmas. Bryce & Rasa ended up using our home as a base camp for the better part of a week as they traveled North & South of our home to film other tiny homes & stories.

During their stay with us we talked and laughed and learned so much about the tiny house movement and cooked and built a friendship. Bryce is a permaculture encyclopedia and Dave learned so much from him in a short amount of time. Rasa is an amazing cook and made us the most delicious dinner right out of our garden.

Behind the Scenes of Living Big

Have you thought about how Bryce and Rasa live to travel and shoot so many tiny homes? They literally spend the majority of their time living out of a rental car. They shoot or travel every day of the week for months on end. They edit in the evenings and throughout the night to make their weekly episode deadlines. They shoot hours and hours of footage on each home they visit and condense it into 16 minutes. They own what they can carry in suitcases, for the most part. They seldom get the opportunity to cook home grown meals and rest in a real bed that isn’t a hotel bed. They truly are angels sent to tell all of our stories…

Our Shoot in a Nutshell

I’ve read so many of the comments on the YouTube episode. So many questions and because not everything can be included in 16 minutes, here are the highlights of what you didn’t see:

We found our property on Craigslist from a private party for cheap. When we purchased it, it was a goat trail along the side of the mountain. Dave & I have done all of the landscaping ourselves, mostly by hand. We have rented a small excavator a couple of times and we had an old backhoe that didn’t have brakes and almost killed Dave 5 times, but mostly, we do things the old fashioned way – one rock or shovel scoop at a time. 🙂
We pay for things as we go to continue building out our property. We both still work the same jobs we have worked for years. Dave has been at his job for 29 years and I am an accountant and have worked for the same company for 9 years. When we want to add a rock wall or a greenhouse, we can because we don’t have a mortgage. Because of Dave’s health, our home and property is our stay-vacation destination and we spend so much time enjoying the gorgeous valley we live in!
We intentionally built with only 2 containers because we wanted TO BE MORTGAGE FREE when we completed our build. We accomplished that. We love our home, but yes, building a home out of Shipping Containers is definitely more expensive than a traditional stick built home of the same size. Live and learn 😉
Dave has always wanted a shop – doesn’t every guy wants one? In 2018 we built him his shop so that he can work on his projects and stay busy and active. He has an enormous crane in there that is his pride and joy and everything he needs to keep his creative juices flowing and his mind as healthy as possible. 🙂 We have recently turned the living space in the back of the shop into an Airbnb when our kiddos aren’t home and to create passive income 🙂
Our shoot was in September, so our seasonal creek behind our home was dry. The ‘Ferris wheel’ looking thing is actually a water wheel that plays a ‘not so sweet’ melody during the rainy months. 😉 It is essentially a large piece of garden art made from a pipe reel, galvanized buckets and an old bicycle. Dave loves to create!
I didn’t intentionally do the majority of the talking. Dave talked lots, especially in the beginning when Bryce and Rasa first arrived, but after a couple of hours he was tired and his words weren’t working as well. You don’t see this because the video is actually edits that cut out his stuttering and loss of words and replace it with me explaining a lot of things. When Dave watched the episode, he just kept saying over and over – I am not the same man I used to be. He sees how much he has lost. It is heartbreaking to see the strong man you love and admire and who is a hero in your world be so vulnerable and weak. I am glad that Rasa & Bryce protected Dave from the ugly comments that would have been made had they left all of Dave’s stuttering and difficulty talking in the episode. A lesson to be kind always, because we don’t know what other people are battling.

Angels in Disguise

God gifted us with angels. Angels that were wanted to share our story. Dave and I told Bryce & Rasa, that while we were so honored that they wanted to film our home, it was our story of love and perseverance, even when all seems impossible that we wanted to share. Our prayer was that if by sharing, we could touch just one person’s life, then it was all worth it.

Bryce uses the word amazing a lot. Honestly, it is Bryce & Rasa who are amazing and the work they do to bring tiny homes and their stories to life, are a true testament to their selflessness. Dave and I feel so blessed to have been able to spend a week with them. We were also able to learn how to support them in their journeys just a bit. As a Patreon supporter, we sponsored Bryce & Rasa for $1 per video or an average of $4 per month. Being able to spend time with them and seeing the sacrifices they make personally so that they can share tiny home stories – let’s just say it isn’t all glamorous living out of a rental car and suitcase. You can learn more about being a Patreon here https://www.patreon.com/livingbig. For those of us that love what they do, please consider sponsoring their work – Dave and I thank you, personally!

Thank you, Bryce & Rasa for your love and friendship. Until we meet again…

Beyond Blessed,

Jaimie & Dave

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Building a Wood Box Inside a Metal Shipping Container Box

Finally!!! We were done (enough) with the outside of our shipping container home that we were ready to move inside and start creating a living space inside our cold metal boxes. It was December and icicles hung from the roofs of our containers (literally). Shipping containers transfer condensation, and in our SW Washington location, there is so much moisture in the air, that we knew we were going to have to be very diligent as we built our interior to protect against future moisture and mold problems.

A Wood Box

Our shipping containers are structurally much stronger than a stick built home, for obvious reasons, and so we were able to use 2 x 4 material instead of standard 2 x 6 material to frame our home. We were building our home to code and it was fully permitted. Our framed wood walls were 16” on center, standard code, but we needed to make sure that they didn’t touch the metal shipping container at any point. To accomplish this, we used the D ring tie downs that are standard in containers and use bailing wire to stand our walls 1” off of our container walls.

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Laying Out Our Tiny Home

Our bathroom walls, and the stairwell framing were critical as we framed the interior. Our cabinets were already purchased and in storage, as was our spiral stairwell. As we framed the bathroom walls, we needed to be very accurate so that the final design matched up to our pre-fabbed design.

This was a challenge, because we had laid out our interior and cut our window openings, installed our windows and frames, purchased our cabinets and fixtures all before Dave’s ICH. Working through the same design 3 months later and checking and rechecking for accuracy was a difficult and time consuming process, but we accomplished it 🙂

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Electrical & Plumbing

Once our walls were framed in, we started installing our roughed in electrical and plumbing. We did all of this ourselves and the reduced wall spaces (2 x 4 instead of 2 x 6) created some challenges, At Least we only had 1 bathroom, a kitchen and a laundry area to plumb in 😉 Our shipping containers sit on a 3’ foundation, so we had plenty of room underneath the house to work on our drains and venting for our plumbing.

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I wanted to make sure that we had plenty of electrical outlets in our home, and they are literally placed about every 5 feet on the interior 🙂 I had personally never done any electrical work, but by the time we were through, I had learned how to drill holes in the studs to chase wire, and installed most of the standard electrical outlets. Dave installed the oven, dryer and hot water heater outlets and was an excellent electrical teacher 😉

There is one thing that we wished we would have known/realized during our rough in, and that is to we wished we have put a recessed electrical box/outlet in for our oven. When we installed our oven during the final phase of the build, it would not sit flush against the wall. This could have been prevented if we had realized and installed a recessed box. Just an FYI for you and something we wished we could have done over.

Spray Foam Insulation

Once our framing, electrical & plumbing were all inspected and we were given the green light to proceed, we were ready for our insulation to be installed. This is something that we couldn’t do ourselves and had to contract it out. Prior to having the insulation installed, we rented an industrial dehumidifier and ran it for a week to dry out the interior of our shipping container. Our wood wall studs were saturated with moisture, just from condensation in the air and we didn’t want that moisture sealed in once the foam was sprayed. Insulation is very expensive, and for our 400 sq ft, we paid $7,000 – ouch! The insulation sealed the space between the metal container and the wood framed walls, and eliminates any moisture or condensation problems that we could have had.

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We did run into 1 issue with our insulation installer – they failed/got lazy and didn’t shoot foam down into the walls space between our 20’er and 40’er. We didn’t initially realize this initially, but once our sheetrock was installed and was drying, there was so much additional moisture inside the containers that the bottom of the walls started to mold within 24 hours. We had to cut out the bottom of the sheet rock and also a 12” area around the perimeter of our bedroom floor to dry the area out. Thankfully, our insulation installer came back and sprayed into those areas. But oh my, it created so much additional work and set us back a couple of weeks as we had to fix their mistake.

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It took us about 12 weeks to frame, rough in our utilities, pass inspections, dry out the interior, insulate and sheetrock. It was a slow and tedious process, but there was such a sense of satisfaction we had from doing 90% of the work ourselves 🙂 Thankfully, Dave was getting better each and every day and our shipping containers were actually starting to look like a home!

Enjoying the journey…

Jaimie & Dave

Creating Outdoor Living Space for Our Shipping Container Home

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We were officially dried in, but still had so many outside projects that we needed to wrap up before we were ready to move inside and start finishing our home.

The Roof

A shipping container doesn’t need a roof, but I wanted a unique roof to create a dry space over both our deck and our front door. We have a 20’r sitting on top of a 40’r, leaving 20’ of deck space off of our master bedroom. We roofed 10 of that space creating one of our favorite places in the entire house – living space right outside our bedroom door – and the view 🙂

2015-10-22 14.16.30 — Friends are the greatest gift!

Dave’s friends came and helped us complete the roofing. Our roofing is called Rusteel and is unique in that it rusts almost immediately upon exposure to the elements. Yes, I paid extra for metal that will rust – Dave still questions my sanity at times 😉

Turning a Ginormous Gravel Pile Into Access

In order to meet code, we had to have access to the front of the house that didn’t exceed certain tolerances. The only thing we had infront of our containers at this point was a huge pile of gravel that had been used to park the crane when we placed our shipping containers.

But Dave and our son, Bryce, got to work and upcycled some 4×4’s that had been salvaged from a project on the Canadian border. He reused the brackets, the boards and designed the large pile of gravel into our home’s approach 🙂

2015-11-11 16.36.39 — Bryce – hardest working little man I’ve ever met 🙂

The Deck

As I’d mentioned before, Dave’s OT set up therapy for Dave. The upstairs deck and exterior stairs were a project that Dave meticulously worked through as part of both his cognitive and functional therapy. From laying out the deck boards, screwing them on (a challenge when he couldn’t feel his right hand), cutting and laying the final stair treads, upcycling and designing the outside stairs and access. All of these steps needed to happen to make our shipping container legal and meet building code.

2015-10-20 12.45.39 — PT 2×2’s to support the deck boards

2015-10-20 10.46.46 — PT 2x4s anchored in place with brackets that Dave created and welded to the railing base

2015-10-28 09.01.14 — Brackets that stabilize the deck runners

2015-10-26 09.37.37 — Outdoor living space being created!

2015-10-29 11.43.05 — Replacing the ‘work’ treads with the final cedar treads

2015-12-28 11.45.03-2 — Building stairs to code, especially after a brain bleed is quite a task!

2015-11-12 09.17.27 — The lower landing was off 1.25″ to meet code, so Dave created a platform over the concrete landing ~ it turned out much better than the ugly concrete 😉

2015-12-28 11.45.02-2 — The lower landing was where Dave’s creativity started to really shine again ~ Gorgeous!

This was a project that would have taken us a couple of weekends before Dave’s ICH. But even working on it 6 days a week for a couple hours a day in the beginning and then longer as he got stronger, it took him almost 6 weeks to finish.

Outdoor Living Space

When Dave had sealed and laid the last board, he was so proud of the deck and stairs – and he should be. I was so proud of him. I had seen him struggle through the processes in a way that tore at my heart, but he preserved. It turned out amazingly gorgeous. The biggest victory was how much he was able to regain his dexterity and skill level during the project. The project may have taken weeks and weeks, but to this day, it is one of the areas of our home we are most proud of!

2015-11-11 16.38.11 — you’ll always have a friend in me…

2015-12-28 11.45.03-4 — Bryce working on the future flower gardens!

2015-11-11 16.40.07 — That is amazing therapy!

Still Persevering!

Jaimie & Dave

The Rush to Winter Proof Our Shipping Container Home

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Winter Was Coming

Dave was finally becoming stable enough that we could start focusing our energies a bit back on our home build. Every single step seemed to take about 4 times as long as it did just weeks ago, but we made a list of the most critical things that needed to get done to get our home weather proof before the winter weather came and focused on those.

And, if winter coming wasn’t enough, Dave had another brain procedure scheduled for mid October. The push was on, but in the middle of all the work, we stopped to have family pictures with our kiddos who had been so helpful during our build. We couldn’t have done it without them 🙂

Family & Friends ~ Our Heros!

We were so blessed to have family and church family step up and help us. It was almost a full time job for me when we were at our property to keep Dave safe. If the family wouldn’t have helped us, we would have ended up with 2 rusted out shipping containers going into spring and not the home that we were able to get dried in before winter came. With our home dried in, our hope was that Dave would be able to continue to work on it as part of his therapy and as he got better and stronger.

Sealing the Crawl Space

We started by finishing up the foundation. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the side walls of the container did not touch the concrete foundation. This was an error on our engineers part, but we problem solved solutions and used cedar shims to wedge between the container I-Beam and the foundation wall. By shimming, we were able to displace the massive weight of the containers. Before shimming, the weight of the containers on our foundation were focused in the 4 corners, causing damage to the back of our foundation. Thankfully, we were able to repair that damage before Dave’s bleed and the foundation continued to fail.

After we shimmed all the way around the foundation, we went along and used a really strong caulk called Volcom and placed a large bead that weather could run off of instead of seeping into the crawl space in the foundation. While the process was tedious and time consuming, it has been worth it. We successfully displaced the weight properly and also have a very dry crawl space under our home. Our foundation has not experienced any settling or cracking since we put the fixes in place almost 4 years ago 🙂

2015-09-04 12.06.46 — My little sister and brother in law – Heros!

Painting Our Rusty Boxes

Initially, Dave and I had planned on painting the containers ourselves. We already had our paint colors chosen and in the early summer, this would have taken us a day at best. But with his bleed, this was another project that now seemed completely overwhelming and daunting. Dave would not be able to help much, which would leave the logistics of getting the job done to me. Again, our church family came to our rescue, and during the work week, while Dave sat in his lawn chair and supervised (like he was the boss 😉 ) a painter that our church provided painted the outside of our containers. This paint protected all of our raw metal from rusting and also prepped the containers to install our shear walls and windows.

Side note: Our original paint color was called Intellectual Gray. We have since repainted our containers a bright, sassy orange that we feel represents our personalities and our home much better 😉

2015-09-29 14.50.53 — From 2-tone to SW Intellectual Gray

Installing The Shear Walls

Our shear walls, or walls that sealed off the end of the containers were thankfully completed by a carpenter that our church family hired for us. He framed, sheeted, sided and installed the doors on both the upper and lower containers. Without his help, we would never have gotten this portion done before the rains came. The most challenging part of the shear walls was connecting the wood to the metal container. We used pressure treated, but prior to placing the wood against the metal and securing it with lag bolts, we placed a moisture barrier between the metal and wood to prevent condensation transfer that is common in containers.

Installing The Windows

Our hope had been that the carpenter was going to be able to install our 7 windows also. But unfortunately, the shear walls took him longer than we expected and we had to start the process of installing the windows ourselves. We were up against a time frame; in mid October, Dave was scheduled for another Cerebral Angiogram. We needed to have our home dried and secured prior to this procedure, because as always, when they go into the brain, things can change quickly.

Installing the windows was a major process, but thankfully, our kids helped us out alot on the prep work. First, we had to pre-drill the screw holes into the metal frame that Dave had installed earlier in the summer. This was a time consuming and tough job for me and the kids. Because of the force and exertion it took to drill through the metal, Dave couldn’t do it. It put to much pressure on his head. But, Dave still had high expectations on how he wanted the job completed. We pre-drilled screw holes every 6 inches (overkill in my opinion, but he was the boss 😉 ). Once the holes were completed, we wrapped the entire window frame in moisture barrier tape.

And then, slowly, ever so slowly, Dave, myself a couple of our kiddos, installed the ground floor windows one by one. The windows were screwed from the inside to prevent any additional holes that water could seep into from the outside. Once a window was installed and screwed in, we placed cedar trim around the outside of the window to fill any gap between the window itself and the metal frame. We secured the cedar trim with Volcum instead of fasteners to again, preventing any additional holes for water to enter our home.

It took us almost a day a window to install our 7 windows. We learned the process on the ground floor windows, and then prayerfully installed the three 2nd floor windows. This is where Dave’s sudden Houdini personality was both a blessing and a curse. He had zero fear of standing on the very top of our 12 foot ladder, yes, where it says not to stand, unable to feel his right side and installed those windows like the amazing man he is. I stood inside the container leaning out the window holding onto him and assisting with handing him what he needed to get this process over as quickly as possible.

Dave’s Perseverance and Never Give Up Attitude

Dave had both on a level I had never witnessed or experienced up to this point in my life. 8 shorts weeks ago, he had almost died on our property. On October 14th, he, in complete exhaustion from having worked at his new pace for 6 of the last 8 weeks, smiled his new crooked smile with a sense of accomplishment that neither of us had felt up to this point.

Yes, we had successfully sealed our shipping containers so that they could become a home, but we had done in it in spite of all of the obstacles the past 2 months had thrown at us. Together, we knew that we could accomplish anything. What seemed impossible, was no longer impossible. What seemed improbable, had just been school on what Dave & Jaimie, together can do if we put our minds to it.

We were well on our way to making our containers a home!

Still Adventuring,

Jaimie & Dave

Would an ICH Stop Us From Building our Shipping Container Home?

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Not if Dave had anything to say about it 😉

The Longest Night Of My Life

The ICU is a busy place in the middle of the night. The nurses in and out of the room every 10 minutes, sometimes more often if Dave’s alarm started to go off. There was a constant sound of paging, alarms, and more than once that long night, the sound of someone coding.

I tried to make myself shut my eyes and rest while Dave was resting, but the minute Dave’s alarm, or an alarm in the hall or a code sounded, my eyes flew open to make sure that Dave’s chest was still moving up and down.

At around 2am, I gave up on rest and just sat watching Dave and prayed and prayed and prayed; I begged; I pleaded; I bargained; I negotiated. I would do anything, God. Just please don’t take him from me yet. We aren’t ready. We have so much we still want to do; adventures to take, a home to build, vacations, growing old together and sitting on the deck rocking together. Please God, I will do anything…

And for hours, I repeated this conversation in my head, waiting for the sun to rise and marking off his second huge milestone – living through the night.

Google IS NOT Your Friend For Prognosis

Between the praying and watching Dave sleep, I did the stupidest thing ever – I Googled Intracerebral Hemorrhage. At this point, the doctors hadn’t given us much information or a path forward, or prognosis, or really anything. They were so skeptical and were not expecting a good outcome, and had pretty much stated that, and not much more to this point.

It took me but a minute to find out a whole lot about what ailed Dave – DUMB. There was so much information, and 95% of it was heartbreaking. According to Google, Dave didn’t stand much of a chance either.

Would he wake up? – probably not.

Would he have lost more ability throughout the night? – most definitely, yes.

Would his brain have endured more damage from the hemorrhage? – what was left of the undamaged gray matter.

Would he be better or worse when he woke up? – most definitely worse.

Was he ever going to walk or talk again? – with aids and assistance devices, or even in a wheelchair.

Would he live? – there was less than a 25% chance.

If he lived, what kind of quality of life would he have? – Less than 3% of returning to 90% pre-ICH status.

Never, I repeat, NEVER visit WebMD while your best friend is lying in a bed in ICU and expect any reassuring information. It took me less than an hour to learn my lesson. I put my phone away, and did not ever look again. Going forward, I would let the experts, Dave’s team of neurology surgeons update me on our path forward. I couldn’t stomach finding the information out on my own, because according to Google, there was almost a 0% chance of our life going forward to resemble our life up until this morning.

He Out-Slept The Sun

Dave actually slept pretty well all things considered. He barely responded for his constant monitoring and 3x per hour neurology assessments that were conducted throughout the night. At around 7am, he finally started to rouse into a more wakeful state. The sun had been awake for hours, and for Dave, 7am might as well have been noon for as often as he sleeps in. But considering what his brain and body had endured in the previous 24 hours, he deserved and needed every single minute of that sleep. I was just so thankful to see him waking up.

The minute his eyes opened, he sought me out, making eye contact with me and the look of, ‘This really happened, didn’t it?’ crossed his face and the panic set in almost immediately. I didn’t even know what to say, except that I wasn’t going to leave his side and we were going to be okay. We would fight this together. I squeezed his hand and kissed his dry, cracked lips. 20 hours with nothing but a few ice chips by mouth, really dries a guy lips out.

My Tongue Was Bleeding

From biting it to keep myself from crying. How could I stay strong for him, when I could barely hold myself together? There was a constant prayer in my mind, ‘Please Jesus, keep me strong for him. Please.’

Oh, my sweet boy – I just didn’t have words for the heartbreak I was feeling, not only for myself, but so much heartbreak for my hardworking hero that was now laying ½ paralyzed in a hospital bed. The fear in his eyes, and the panic in which he held my hand with were almost my undoing. Hang in there, sweet man. Don’t give up. We will do this together.

I couldn’t wait for the doctors to make rounds and give us a plan on what going forward looked like. I had so many questions – my first question was going to be what caused this? And second – how do we stop this from ever happening again? All those hours in the middle of the night watching Dave’s quiet breathing gave me lots of time to think and I needed to know why this happened.

I needed to know why and how this happened so that I could do everything in my power to make sure that it never happened to him again. I needed a purpose, a path, a goal – I needed a plan.

A Day Of No Answers

Finally at around 10am, the doctors arrived for rounds. The plan for the day was to take him for a cerebral angiogram and see what was going on in his brain. If there was something there to repair, they would, but it would give them more of a clue as to what happened. As they prepared him for his small surgery, Dave’s anxiety grew. Anytime you go into the brain, there are so many risks, and he was again fearful that he wouldn’t wake up. The surgery was expected to take about 1.5 hours, and I took this time to take a shower and put on clean clothes that my daughters had brought. I am here to tell you, there is nothing that fresh breath and a clean pair of underwear can’t fix. After my shower, I felt much lighter of heart and ready to take on whatever was in front of us.

Finally, they brought Dave back from surgery, and he had to lay completely flat for 6 hours without moving at all. He was already so exhausted from everything going on, that he slept most of the time. About the time that he started to wake up, the surgeon came in to update us on what they had found.

Sitting up for the first time 🙂

Finding JOY in the pain!

Nothing?

They could see nothing because of the size of the blood clot taking up so much of the inside left quadrant of Dave’s brain, which means that they couldn’t tell us much at all. They couldn’t see if there was a malformation in the brain that had caused the bleed, they didn’t see any weekend vessels that could have caused it. There was no explanation for why my boy was laying flat in an ICU, with no feeling on his right side, unable to speak legibly. After the doctors explained this all to us, they said that we would continue to watch and wait for the next 72 hours and keep Dave in the ICU, because they didn’t think the clot was stable and wanted to be prepared in case he started to re-bleed.

I’d wanted answers – why this had happened and how to prevent it from happening again. And the doctors had no answers. They didn’t know why it had happened in the first place, and they didn’t know how to prevent it from happening again. I can’t lie, in that moment, I was angry with God. No answers – just a spontaneous bleed. This wasn’t fair.

Watch and Wait

And so we did what they said to do – we spent the next 3 days in the ICU, watching Dave and waiting for him to re-bleed. Literally, that was what they were waiting for. During that time, they came in to talk with us about what Dave’s aftercare with discharge was going to look like. Did we have a safe place that would accommodate his new limitations for him to go home to. We were so fortunate that while Dave had no feeling on his right side, he was able to stand, bare weight and walk. He had maintained his strength on his right side, but no feeling. Another thing that they couldn’t explain, but we were so thankful for the small victory.

I clearly remember a comment that the Therapist Coordinator said to me on the second day of Dave’s ICU stay – he said, ‘You are going to advocate for Dave’s life, for his therapy, for his recovery, for his quality. If you don’t advocate, his future is grim at best.’

Wow, powerful words, but words that shot straight to my heart. I might not have a reason why this had happened, but I had a goal and focus that I could work towards to help Dave recover the best quality of life that was possible for him and us.

Finally, after 4 long days in the ICU, they discharged us to the stroke floor for 2 more days of observation. It was while on this floor that Dave got terribly sick and they took him in for another emergency CT scan, hoping that he hadn’t dislodged the clot and started to re-bleed. Thankfully, the clot was stable, and his body was just rebelling from all the trauma that it had been put through.

I’ll Never Leave Your Side

Through this entire time, I never left Dave’s side, sleeping in his bed with him at night, holding him. The nurses brought me food, and except for when he was taken aback for a procedure or scan, I was with him around the clock for his entire hospital stay. His nurses loved me because I took care of him, fed him, bathed him, making sure he was as comfortable as possible.

Finally, after 5 long days in the hospital, his neurologist decided that he would be okay to go home, since the sights and sounds of the stroke floor where causing him severe anxiety and making him physically ill. All of a sudden, the reality of the journey that lay before us overtook me and the fear that I wouldn’t be able to give him the quality of care he deserved and needed caused me to pause. And then this still small voice reminded me – I am Dave’s biggest advocate. If I don’t work hard to get him the therapy and help he needs, he won’t have the life he deserves going forward. That small voice was all the reminder I needed that while I felt completely inadequate and ill prepared to become Dave’s primary caregiver, this was the job that God had given me in this season of our lives. I had a goal and a purpose – that my hero would talk, walk and feel again.

2015-08-24 10.51.59 — Escape ~ finally, even if it was in disposable scrubs!

We arrived home on a Tuesday afternoon. Dave didn’t even have any clothes to travel in, so one of the nurses found some disposable scrubs for him to escape the joint in 😉 We arrived home and he settled himself into the chair to rest while I started his shower and lay out his clean clothes. Our shower was upstairs, and this was our first attempt at stairs, but thankfully because he still had the strength, we were able to climb the stairs together and get him refreshed and rested. The reality of the monumental task that lay before us became very clear.

2015-08-24 14.59.26 — Poking fun at himself ~ because sometimes the only option is to laugh, or you will just cry 🙂

Just Call Me General Advocate

Tuesday, while Dave rested, I spent the day on the phone scheduling speech, occupational and physical therapy appointments for Dave. The therapy started on Wednesday, because I believed that if we didn’t get right into therapy, there was a greater chance that Dave’s brain would struggle with regaining what had been lost. And so we started therapy, 3-5 times per week every week for 3 months. I was with him for every single appointment since he couldn’t drive, and pushed him hard during those sessions. I researched home therapy that we could do in addition to the clinic therapies, and Dave spent no less than 8 hours a day working his brain and body.

2015-08-31 18.23.04 — Therapy games ~ making his brain think

2015-08-25 09.35.40 — Therapy comes in all sorts of ways 😉

2015-08-25 11.12.22 — Choosing the right bolts for his dexterity therapy

Getting better was his full time job. Speech was, and still is the most difficult for him. His brain struggles to put words together, to remember words that he has commonly used before his bleed, and still stutters when his is tired or stressed. We read, we played games, we wrote lists, we spent hours and hours working on his speech therapy. We also spent hours and hours stimulating the nerves in the right side of his body with sensation therapy so that he could regain feeling again.

His occupational therapist was amazing and actually used projects at our home as part of Dave’s therapy. When he was strong enough and well enough, laying out our deck, installing with a screw gun the deck boards and stair treads was a huge piece of Dave’s therapy. What once would have taken him for a weekend, took him almost 8 weeks, working 6 days a week at it to complete. Because he couldn’t feel his right hand, he had to watch so carefully everything he was doing. His brain was also struggled with managing and thinking through the next steps of what he needed to do. But he never gave up, even when it was so overwhelming, he persevered, and slowly but surely, he had a huge victory when he completed that project, almost 3 months after his bleed.

No Fear

A side effect of Dave’s bleed was that it affected the portion of his brain that regulates fear. Situations Dave would have never put himself in prior to his bleed, things he would never of done were all of a sudden common everyday occurrences. For months, it felt like it was my full time job to keep him alive, and not just because of his bleed, but because he became a daredevil. I couldn’t keep him down, and he would badger the kids into driving him to the property when I was at work. This pattern started just a week after his bleed. He wouldn’t rest, but was so restless to get on with his life, with our home build that he would get angry if we tried to keep him from the property. This made me so worried and anxious, but I just had to give him to God, and prayed constantly, God, please keep him alive today. 🙂

A couple of weekends after Dave got home from the hospital, my sister and her husband had come over to help me prime our metal deck railing and roof so that we could get it painted before the rain started and it rusted. It was a slow tedious process, because we were doing it by hand, with paint brushes. This was driving Dave crazy as he looked on, but I didn’t know how else I could accomplish this task. It took us all weekend just to get the railing’s primed, and had planned on painting it next weekend.

Well, on Monday, while I was at work and just 2 week’s after Dave’s bleed, my daughter told me that Dave had asked her to drive him to the property, but she had to go to work so couldn’t stay with him. When I got off of work, I went and checked on him. I pulled up and he was STANDING on the top of a 12 foot ladder painting the railing and deck roof, with a paint sprayer. Not only had he drug out his ginormous air compressor, figured out the tubing, located his spray gun, but he had taken it upon himself to complete in 1 day, what would have taken my sister and I another full weekend. He was so proud of himself that he had gotten it all accomplished. I was so angry at him for doing it. Not that I didn’t appreciate that I wasn’t going to have to, but because he could have easily hurt himself, falling as he could not feel the right side of his body at all still and he was standing on the top of a tall ladder. I messaged my sister immediately and said, ‘Well, deck railing and roof metal are painted, and Dave isn’t dead – so good news, all in all!’ We laugh about it now, but I still remember clearly the panic I felt when I pulled into our driveway and there perched my husband, 12 feet in the air, painting away.

The Day the Seizures Started

Almost 3 weeks from the day of Dave’s initial bleed, while at Occupational Therapy, Dave had his first seizure. It was terrifying, to say the least. Another ambulance ride, another CT scan, so many medications. The trauma to his brain, the ongoing injury was just to much for him and his brain was done. The start of the seizures was actually harder for us both than the initial bleed. Managing them, listening to his body, keeping him calm, trying to keep him from overdoing it. That was the hardest part because he had a goal to finish our home and in his word’s, “I don’t have time to die or seize out. I have a home to build.”

2015-09-08 18.00.04 — In the hospital after his initial seizure. Always trying to find the Joy!

God was and to this day continues to watch over and protect Dave. While his self regulation for dangerous situations has tapered off in the years since his bleed, it is still something that I have to regularly remind him to be watchful of. He is a much better sport about it now, where as before it would make him so angry that I was ‘bossing’ him around. He now knows that I am not and was not trying to boss him around, I was just trying to keep him alive. He depends on me now, more than ever, to gently remind him to be safe, because sometimes, he just forgets.

I am so thankful that my boy lived, that we were able to continue on with our dream of building our home and most importantly, that we get to live every single day so intentionally. Not everyone does that, but really, it is the only way to live!

Still adventuring…

Jaimie & Dave

The Brain Bleed That Re-Routed Our Shipping Container Home Adventure

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The Miracles Keep Coming

Dave’s wave and attempt at a smile sustained me during the drive to the larger hospital 40 minutes away. As the life flight helicopter took off and raced my boy south for emergency brain surgery to stop the bleeding in his brain and stabilize him, I stood for a moment on the top of the hospital roof and just asked God for peace. And I felt it, immediately.

By that time, my sister, Shannon, was by my side, holding my hand and said she would drive me to the new hospital as I didn’t have a car. As we drove, I called my children and our elder and asked to be placed on the prayer chain. Dave was being lifted up within the hour by hundreds of people and the peace I felt about the new, unexpected journey that Dave and I were now on, was surreal. I didn’t know how this day was going to end, much less the new path we were on, but I knew that somehow, we were going to be okay.

Defying All Odds

I made it to the hospital in record time and rushed inside to check on his status, expecting him to be in surgery. To my amazement and surprise, they directed me to an emergency room and when I walked in, there, my fighting man sat, in the bed as the doctors and nurses continued to monitor his neurological status and vitals. A doctor introduced himself as head of neurology and said that while Dave was in critical condition, he was already stabilizing and they had not seen any increased signs of distress in the brain since he had arrived. He was not sure why Dave was was awake and not declining, or what the next 30 minutes or even the hour held, but at that moment, they were going to wait on brain surgery and fall into a watch and wait pattern. Thank you, Jesus. It had been a little less than 2 hours since Dave had called me in distress, and now he sat here, amazing the doctors with his status. Dave was not well, but he was alive – another miracle!

Reality Check

The doctor then pulled up the CT scan of Dave’s brain – the one taken in the last 30 minutes, Dave’s second of the day, on the imaging board in Dave’s room and showed us what we were dealing with. I am not going to lie; seeing the size of the blood pool in Dave’s brain was terrifying. Hearing the doctor say that he shouldn’t even be alive, much less awake and coherent, was nothing he could explain. He was hopefully optimistic that Dave would continue to stabilize and that the bleed would not progress beyond it’s current borders. It was currently almost 2” x 2” and laying deep in the left side of his brain.

As I looked down at my best friend, and then back to the image of his brain, tears pooled in my eyes. Dave could still hardly speak, he had no feeling on his right side, his brain had an active bleed, but against all odds, I felt him squeeze my hand with his right one and say, I love you. It was more like a pained whisper and the faintest of squeezes, but he was speaking, attempting to make his right side work, awake and so very alive!

Dave was stationed directly outside the nurse’s station in the Emergency room of the new hospital. There was so much activity in and out of his room as they waited on pins and needles for him to take the turn for the worse that the doctors were all expecting. But, Dave refused to give in to the sleepiness that called his name. He held my hand with his strong left one like it was his lifeline. He sat in that bed and refused to give up – to him, closing his eyes and going to sleep, even though he was so very tired, felt like giving up. He refused to leave me!

After almost 5 hours of monitoring him every 10 minutes, accessing neurological function, another repeat CT scan and so much lab work trying to figure out what was going on and why this had happened, they notified us that they were once again going to be transferring Dave to another hospital – the 3rd one that day. His insurance was Kaiser, and so they wanted to get him to the nearest Kaiser facility to continue monitoring him. Thankfully, this time they were willing to transport him via ambulance and we got to ride together 🙂

Expecting Another Miracle

We arrived at the Kaiser hospital and they admitted him directly to ICU to give him one on one nursing care as his condition was still so unstable and very critical. Within a few minutes of arriving in the ICU, the neurosurgeon arrived and assessed Dave’s current status. Dave had not shown any signs of decline in the past 5 hours but the size of bleed that he had experienced in the location of the brain that it had occurred was very much life threatening.

The doctor gave it to us straight. He didn’t understand why Dave was even conscious, much less coherent. In his experience, these types of bleeds had a very small survival rate. If Dave made it through the night, we would re-access in the morning and do an exploratory brain operation to see if they could identify the source of the bleed. If there was a sudden turn for the worse in the night, they would proceed with the emergency brain surgery, that thankfully had been postponed for more than 8 hours at this point.

Because of the paralysis that Dave was experiencing on his right side, he wasn’t allowed any food or drink. They needed to do a swallow study and have the feeding therapist evaluate him to minimize the chances that he would choke on anything orally. Also, because he may have surgery at any moment, they needed him prepared and ready to go under anesthesia.

It was going to be a long night, but I pulled a chair up right next to my best friend, grabbed his hand and we settled in to watch and wait and pray. Finally, after almost 14 hours since he had first called me, Dave let himself rest. I didn’t sleep at all that night – praying constantly that Dave made it through the night and defied the odds that the doctors were putting on him. ‘Please, God, let Dave live.’ That was my prayer and the miracle I was expecting. I didn’t even care at that point that he ever walked again, I just couldn’t imagine life without him.

New Adventures Ahead

I had no idea what the future held as I sat in that hard hospital chair and held Dave’s hand throughout the night. The home we were building, the future we had envisioned, the dreams we were chasing – that all seemed so distant as I looked around at the multitude of machines monitoring Dave’s every breath and heartbeat. I didn’t know what this new adventure looked like, but I knew that we were going to experience it together…

Still adventuring…

Jaimie & Dave

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‘The Rebar Is Cut Wrong’ – Part #8

‘The Rebar Is Cut Wrong’

Those are the words my best friend whispered to me as they prepared him to be life flighted for emergency brain surgery. The doctors told us he was dying, and his chances of surviving were very small. But, the moment he whispered those words to me, I knew that my Dave wasn’t going to die that day or the next, if he had anything to say about it. He had a house to build, and I obviously couldn’t be trusted to cut the rebar correctly 😉 .

Hickle (54 of 62) — ‘That Rebar, Though’

The First Thursday of the Rest of Our Lives

It was August 18th, 2015 and like most days that summer, the sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was hotter than normal. Dave had been taking off every Thursday from his regular 4 day a week job, to work on the house, giving him 4 days a week to make some forward progress. It had been a tough couple of days and the stress of the build was starting to take its toll on us. We’d had a disagreement that morning before I left for work, and it was weighing heavily on my heart. Around 10:45 I messaged him and told him I was sorry, that I loved him and that there was no one else I’d rather do this life with. He messaged back the same, and the weight was lifted from both of us.

Dave is a creature of habit, and his lunch is always at 11:30 during his work week, and so at 11:30, he sent me his normal daily lunch check-in message telling me he was working on the rebar for the railing and that he loved me. All is well with him.

Miracle #1

At 11:48am I received a phone call from Dave – not typical of him to call me, and even if he does, I rarely answer my phone when I am at work. But something told me to pick it up, and so I did. The moment I heard his voice, I knew that something wasn’t right. He, barely audible, said that there was something wrong with his arm and he couldn’t hold onto his phone. He said he kept dropping it. I told him to just hold on, that I was on my way. My heart dropped – with my limited knowledge, I was sure he had had a heart attack based on the way he sounded and that he couldn’t feel his arm. He was just 46, how could this be happening?

I rushed from my office, calling my employer on the way, telling him that something was wrong with Dave and I had to go check on him. He asked me if I had called 911 and I said, ‘no, but I will right now.’ Thankfully he instructed me to do that, because in my panic, I hadn’t even thought that far. I dialed 911 as I raced towards our home, which is about 10 minutes away from my work on a normal day – that day it took me about 5 minutes. I told the operator that my fiance had just called me and he couldn’t feel his arm and said he didn’t feel good. They said that they would send an emergency vehicle immediately, and asked me to stay on the line with them until I got to Dave.

Miracle #2

The crazy thing is, we don’t have cell phone service the majority of the way to our home. There is a huge dead zone, but I never dropped that call. The 911 operator was with me the entire time as I raced through the valley and up our long gravel driveway, trying to stay the panic that was threatening to wash over me, praying silently to make it in time. I could already hear the emergency vehicle in the background and I knew that they were only a minute or 2 behind me; the benefit of living in a small town.

Miracle #3

I flew down our hill, as fast as my car would allow and pulled into our driveway. The sight that met me was worse than I had imagined. There stood my boy, in the driveway, with his pants unbuckled, struggling to get them closed. When he heard me, which seemed to be a very delayed response, he looked up and I knew – I knew that something was terribly, terribly wrong, much worse than a heart attack.

The entire right side of his face was completely drooped – his right eye almost sagged shut, his mouth hanging drooping, his right arm hanging limply at his side. His right leg half a step behind his left and at a funny angle. He didn’t even seem aware that his body was betraying him.

I raced to him and the words he stuttered to me, shook my world and broke my heart simultaneously, but where yet another miracle. He leaned against me, flung his good arm around me, with his pants still hanging around his hips and said, ‘I’m glad you made it. I was waiting for you before I went to sleep.’

Miracle #4

I put my arms around him and helped him struggle to a lawn chair we had set up nearby. I eased him down, and prayed silently that the ambulance would hurry, because he was deteriorating before my eyes, and I didn’t even know what was wrong, but I suspected he’d had a stroke. I held him, buckled up his pants (he had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t figure out why his arm wouldn’t work to buckled back up his pants.) He struggled to say that he couldn’t hold onto his phone, and he didn’t know where it was. I looked down our hill slightly, and there it was, on the ground where it had fallen out of his hand that he could no longer feel. I am not sure how he was able to hold onto it to call me, except sheer will power, and another miracle!

I leaned into him as he sat in that chair, fading quickly, whispering words of encouragement, wrapping my arms around him, comforting him, reassuring him that I was here now and I wouldn’t be leaving him. His left eye was glazed over with fear, his right eye, barely open. His speech was getting worse; he could barely whisper to me. He kept saying over and over, thank you, thank you, thank you. I thanked him for waiting for me. I held him until the emergency vehicles pulled into our driveway. It was only a couple of minutes, but to me, holding my best friend as he faded so quickly before my eyes, it seemed like an eternity.

Miracle #5

The EMT immediately started evaluating Dave, and transferred him to a gurney and within a couple of minutes, we were racing down the road. They put me in the front seat of the ambulance, not telling me anything. The driver again asked me the timeline and what had happened. By this time, we were about 12 minutes from the time that Dave initially called me. How could 12 minutes feel like 12 hours? I tried to relay what I knew, Dave’s health status – healthy as a horse, no pre-existing conditions, no high blood pressure, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, very active. We were building this house, working 100 plus hours a week – I am not sure you get more active than that. The ambulance raced towards the small hospital that was in the next town over, about a 10 minute drive. I could hear that the EMT’s in the back were calling in details to the waiting emergency room, but the driver kept trying to make small talk with me, distracting me, I am sure and I couldn’t tell what they were saying about Dave.

When we pulled up to the emergency room, there were doctors and nurses waiting for us. I looked over and the Chaplin was opening my door and helping me out – and that was the minute that I knew. That was the exact instant that I realized that this was way more serious than I had even imagined in the past 20 minutes. The Chaplin took me to the side while the emergency personal evaluated Dave and started to rush him inside the ER. But then, the emergency vehicle driver asked for a signature for the patient, and my strong Dave caught my eye and I knew that he wanted to sign. Time felt like it stood still as the attendant walked over to Dave and Dave, took the pen and every so slowly, in his long hand signature form, wrote out his name. It seemed like it took forever, but in that moment, I knew my boy was going to fight as hard as he could to not leave me. He was fighting to sign that form the same way he had fought to stay awake until I had arrived at our home, just a short while ago. You see, Dave had heard what they were saying in the back of the ambulance – he knew how serious he was, even though at that time I didn’t. And because my Dave is the strongest and most stubborn man alive, during that ride, he made a decision that he wasn’t going to sleep. He was afraid that if he went to sleep, he wouldn’t wake up. He realized, even as his body completely gave up on him, that his will was stronger than his body. And so, he showed his will to survive in that signature. Once he was done, he handed back the pen and they proceeded to rush him through the doors of the ER.

Miracle #6

The Chaplin didn’t leave my side as the nurses got as much information from me as they could about Dave. His age (I accidentally aged him 10 years by giving them the wrong year of birth, whoopsy 😉 ), health status – they ask the same questions, over and over. I just kept asking them if I could see him and to please tell me what was going on. After what seemed like forever, but was probably less than 10 minutes, a doctor came to me and the Chaplin grabbed my hand – I still thought that was weird. The doctor then in a quiet calm voice told me that they had just completed a CT scan on Dave and that he had suffered an Intracranial Hemorrhage, a bleed, deep within his brain that was still bleeding and he needed to have emergency surgery. Unfortunately, they aren’t equipped for that kind of surgery at that small hospital, so he then told me that they would be life flying him to Portland immediately for the surgery. It took all of 30 seconds for the doctor to give me that life altering news, and then he rushed back into Dave’s room. I stood there, all alone, except for the Chaplin that was holding my hand still. She asked if there was anyone that I would like her to call, and I told her my sister, Shannon. She asked for her number and I gave it to her and she immediately turned away to make the call. I stood there in the hallway, holding back the panic, holding back the fear, holding back the terror that was rushing through me. How can this be happening? He is healthy – this doesn’t happen to 46 year old healthy people. The Chaplin returned within a minute and said that my sister was on her way. I asked her if I could see Dave and she asked and then took me to his room. There were machines and lights and people everywhere, but he was sitting up and as soon as I walked in the room, he looked to me and I could see that the terror I felt, was matched only by the terror he was feeling. I walked over to him, leaned in close because by this time, he could barely talk and he whispered to me – ‘The rebar is cut wrong.’

What did you just say to me, dear man that is lying in a hospital room, dying??!? Oh, my heart sang – he wasn’t done fighting, he wasn’t done living, he didn’t care what they were saying, he wasn’t done. He whispered, ‘I don’t have time to die, I have a house to finish.’ That is right, my hero, we have a house to finish, and you aren’t going to die. We are going to fight together and make sure of it. He then whispered, ‘I need you to be in charge.’

Miracle #7

We weren’t married, and so his next of kin, his mother would be relied upon to make all of his medical decisions, if Dave became incapable of making them himself, and Dave didn’t want that. He wanted me to – and so, I looked to the Chaplin that was standing at my elbow and told her what Dave had said, and how can we make this happen? I needed to be his medical power of attorney. She told us to hold on, she would be right back and rushed from the room. Probably, she should have said that there was nothing that could be done, because Dave’s brain was already compromised, but she didn’t. She saw what we had together, even in the few short minutes that she stood there observing us. And so that sweet Chaplin moved heaven and earth for us in the 5 minutes that we had before life flight arrived to airlift my boy to brain surgery in a hospital an hour away. She was back in minutes with the forms, and a witness. She asked us to sign and again, Dave slowly and painstakingly signed his signature in his beautiful script long hand. The life flight crew was standing behind us waiting at that time, waiting for Dave and me to finish this important detail. The detail that gave him peace of mind that I would move heaven and earth for him too – that I would do everything in my power to get him the very best care possible.

Miracle #8

I looked him in his eyes and told him I would be waiting for him in Portland, leaned in and kissed him for what may have been the very last time and stepped aside for the flight crew to place him in a flight bag, strap him to the gurney and whisk him to the roof. By this time, my sister had arrived, although I don’t remember, just realized that she was at my side on the elevator ride to the roof. They let me follow and Dave never took his eyes off mine. In the last 30 minutes they had told us that Dave may not live through the surgery, they made me sign releases for the liability of the life flight (yes, he could crash and die on the way), they told us that his prognosis was very poor. But, looking into his eyes, I knew that if he had anything to do with it, he would survive and thrive. With my eyes, I told him the same thing – if I had anything to do with what happens next, he would not only survive, but he would thrive.

I watched with tears streaming down my face as they loaded him into that helicopter, knowing by this time, that it may be the last time I saw him alive – there are no words for that depth of fear and pain I felt in that moment. My only peace came from my constant prayer for the last 35 minutes, ‘Please Jesus, save him. Please.’

And then, with the same fighting spirit that Dave had shown in the last 35 minutes, he looked out the window of the helicopter as it started, lifted his hand and blew me a kiss. Be still my beating heart!

2015-08-20 14.01.42 — Waving Goodbye to My Best Friend

Miracle #9

We later learned that had Dave succumbed to the sleep that was calling his name, the chances he would have woken up, were about 15%. If he had woken up, the chances he would have had the recovery that he has experienced over the past 4 years, less than 3%. The long term survival rate for the type of bleed that Dave had is less than 13%, and that is a recovered survival rate, that is just the survival rate. There are no studies past 7 years, because there are very few survivors.

It would have been so easy for my boy to just go to sleep because that was his initial thought, that he was so tired and maybe he would just lay down in our 5th wheel that was parked at the property and take a little nap. Later, I also learned that he didn’t want to bother me at work, so he didn’t initially call me. He called both our daughters first, but as they were in class, they didn’t answer his call.

HE ALMOST DIDN’T CALL ME – HE ALMOST JUST WENT TO SLEEP WITHOUT ME. This is the most amazing miracle of all – that he waited for me. For as long as I live I will never forget him uttering those words to me as he fell into my arms. Even now, as I am writing this, tears are on my cheeks as I remember the memories and feelings of that day.

PSA

Our brains are like very complex computers, and like a computer when you shut it down when it has a bad virus, it doesn’t always boot back up. Because Dave never let his ‘computer’ shut down, his brain started to make alternative routes of communication around the bleed and the damage that the bleed was causing. These alternative connections/rewiring of his brain started to happen almost immediately. The brain is an amazing organ, and when stimulated correctly, can do amazing things. If it is even a possibility, don’t go to sleep when you think you might have experienced a stroke or brain bleed. Try not to let your ‘computer shut off’, but instead allow your brain to start rewiring itself. This rewiring can start to happen within as little as 20 minutes of injury.

Our Journey

I know this is a long, emotional post and there is much more to our story and build, but for myself, I need to get this part of our story documented. Dave is my hero. Our story is hard, complex, and full of joy, hope and love. So much has changed for us since that sunny day in August 4 years ago, but I am not sure we would change any of it. It has molded us into the people we are today. His bleed has defined our journey and build in a way nothing else could have. His bleed allowed us to see and recognize miracle after miracle taking place, not just that day, but every single day since. God saved Dave’s life and our shipping container home build have him a reason to get up every day and fight to regain our life back. Our journey and Dave’s bleed allowed us to let love shine, to let perseverance prevail and let hope take flight ~

To be continued…

All our love,

Jaimie & Dave

Permitting A Shipping Container Home, Part #5

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The Rejection

They already knew us; we had been talking for weeks. They had assisted in some critical design pieces. So, when the BIG day came and we headed to Building & Planning and attempted to submit our design and supporting documents to build our shipping container home and were told NO, we were shocked. They had ‘dropped a surprise bombshell’ on us. To cover themselves, I am sure, they were requiring a structural engineer to provide calculations on the strength of our sheer walls and container. They wanted to know if they would be strong enough to be a home. Hello, they are metal boxes!!! Of course they are strong enough.

Seriously?!?!?

Why hadn’t they mentioned this before? Would it have deterred us from our goal? Probably not, but still – nothing like last minute notice and a huge delay. Couldn’t they tell we were beyond ready to start building our shipping container home?

This was our first real lesson in the expense of building an unconventional home. This is when people & the internet say, ‘It’s cheaper and more cost effective’ didn’t really feel cheaper or more cost effective. Thankfully, Google was already my friend and had gotten me out of a jam on the spiral stairs, so I knew Google had my back 😉

I immediately started researching an engineer who had taken on other similar projects – none were to be found within a 60 mile radius of our home. I dug deeper. Google’s game was strong. What I found was a couple of news articles about an structural engineer who had taken on an impossible ‘Tree House’ project in our county and gotten it to pass through B&P.

Within days of being told that we needed an engineer, I contacted his firm and shared with him our dream. He graciously agreed to take on our project, even though his schedule was full. The only hiccup – he wanted a small fortune. Now remember, I already had the entire home designed to the inch, I just needed the calculations. He initially informed me that it would be $9,500 for the calculations and design. I countered that I only needed the calculations on my design. He finally lowered his price to $5k – for the 4 structural points, the 8’ wide sheer walls and the foundation. The bare minimums that the county was requiring. If we weren’t already so emotionally invested in our home build, this would have been a good time to run for the hills. But wait, we already had rocky, goat trailed hills that we owned – we owned the hills 😉

In reality, the engineer took a real fascination to our build – probably, because once again, we built rapport with him and he liked us 🙂 Told you, it never hurts. He advised us to purchase (1) trip containers for our home -meaning that they had only made (1) trip across the ocean. This helped to ensure that the containers where in as new as condition as possible, validating his calculations. While this wasn’t an expense that we were expecting, purchasing containers that were very structurally sound, with little or no dents is something we have never regretted. (1) trip containers cost more than 2x as much as multiple trip containers and so we paid almost $10,000 for our home’s outer metal shell.

My Homes Stronger Than Your Home

The truth, according to my very expensive engineers calculations, is that our home is almost 5 times stronger than a wood built home. Not sure why B&P doubted 😉 My baby sister showed up shortly after we had our containers delivered and said – ‘your house is rusting (there was a rust line on the side from metal welded to the top)’ I responded with ‘your house is rotting and I guarantee that your house won’t still be standing in 100 years, and mine will still be standing in 500 :)” Our home is strong and really will be standing right where it is today, long after we are gone. Those ridiculous and expensive calculations just proved it.

The foundation Design

The engineer designed our foundation based on our input. We wanted room underneath to work on and install the utilities. We ended up with a 3 foot foundation that our containers sit on, leaving a large crawl space under them where all of our plumbing and venting are located.

Side note – What the engineer didn’t take into account, and what we never told B&P because we fixed it before it was inspected, was that the foundation was inadequate for our containers. A container does not have the weight dispersed evenly along all four sides. There are 4 feet, one in each corner that hold all the weight. When our container was placed upon our foundation, instead of the weight being dispersed along the length of our foundation, it was centralized in the four corners. The front of our foundation has a 4’ x 8’ x 3’ concrete slab that helped to support the front of the container weight on the front 2 feet. But in the back, where there was no additional slab and the weight of the 20’ container was also placed on the back 2 feet – our foundation failed. Within a week of placing our containers, the back of our foundation was cracking and settling.

But, we are problem solvers – especially my husband. So he went to work fabricating a corner support for both the inside of the foundation and the outside. It looked like something right out of the movie, Mad Max. He then drilled and inserted rebar into the foundation at the back corners and built a grid of rebar around his metal support. Once this was completed, he formed it in and we re-enforced our foundation with an additional yard of concrete at each corner. Additionally, we installed wedges or spacers along the entire length of the container that filled in the void and placed positive pressure between the concrete footing and the metal I-beam.

Another hard lesson learned, but thankfully we were able to isolate and fix the problem before B&P discovered it. They would have forced us to remove our containers and re-engineer and

Securing The Containers To The Foundation

Unlike a traditional wood home, there is no ‘sill’ plate when placing shipping containers on a foundation. A sill plate is the mechanism that is used to secure a stick built home to a traditional foundation. In order to secure our bottom container to the foundation, our engineer called out for (4) 4″ x 2″ x 1/4″ flat plates, bent and welded to a piece of #5 rebar. One for each corner. The rebar was to be placed inside the foundation prior to being poured. Once the foundation was poured, the plate would be welded to the 4 corner tabs of the bottom container. To attach the upper shipping container to the bottom shipping container, the same size tabs (excluding the rebar) were to be welded in the 4 corners of the 20′ container. Obviously, they needed to feel confident that the containers were not going to move, but sheer weight alone will hold them in place 🙂 I am not sure the small pieces of plate are doing much good, but at least everyone at B&P could feel better about our build.

The Exterior Stairs

Totally overkill – ridiculously large, heavy and expensive. But the engineer added them to our exterior design as additional structural support and we fell in love. They are fabricated from a solid piece of 12″ C-Channel. Dave & I spent 3 days of his vacation in July building those stairs at his job. His employer is awesome for letting us fab them there – because they were entirely too large to fab them on our hillside. Once we had the frame constructed, we loaded them with a crane and hauled them home on our triple axle trailer. On the day the huge crane lifted our shipping containers in place, it also ‘flew’ our stairs across the skyline and set them on the custom slab built for their mammoth weight. Complete overkill – and one of our favorite features to the exterior of the home 😉

Second Attempt & Another No; WABO Certification

Our engineer’s firm was awesome and fast-tracked our calculations. Within 2 weeks of contacting his office, we had our structurally engineered plans in hand. All of the requirements that B&P had requested were addressed. Calculations, foundation and securing the shipping containers to the foundation. We were ready to try again for our building permit. So back we went… But you guessed it – rejection 😦

Our welding had to be done by a WABO certified welder. That was the other curveball they threw at us. Would the curve balls ever stop? Lucky for us, my husband had been welding for over 25 years and once upon a time, he had been WABO certified. The job he was currently doing and had done for the previous 5 years didn’t’ require that qualification. But, again, refusing to give up, Dave got to practicing and after a couple weeks of 1” thick vertical test plates, we arranged for him to take his WABO exam at our local college. SUCCESS!!! On the first attempt – the man really is my hero 🙂 Dave was officially WABO certified, again – yet another obstacle removed!

Third Time’s The Charm – Or Not; Third Party Inspection

Seriously, would the crazy requirements ever stop. It seemed that each time that we went back into our planning department with the previous requirement met, they handed us anther. The newest one – we would have to have all of our structural welds inspected by a certified 3rd party welding Inspector. Not to be deterred, Google will forever be my friend. Thankfully, I found a local Certified Inspector who was also an instructor at the college. He agreed to inspect our welds for the County per their request for a nominal feel. Take that B&P – Nothing is going to stop us from reaching our dream of building a shipping container home!!!

Fourth Time & Finally, Success!!!

After jumping through their design hoops for our stairs, paying $5,000 for a Structural Engineer, WABO certification and finally retaining a Certified Welding Inspector, Building & Planning accepted our permit fee and our plans. In our County at the time, it was taking on average 60 days to receive a building permit. Maybe making friends with the county helped, maybe it was sympathy for all the obstacles they put in our path that we refused to succumb to… regardless, our B&P came through for us and within 3 weeks we had our building permit in hand and were ready to start. The time had come to make our dream a reality.

To be continued…

Chasing our dreams,

Jaimie & Dave

Choosing Forever on the Deck of Our Shipping Container Home

A Simple Proposal

On a sunny, winter afternoon in February, on a wooden plank laid across two pieces of log, overlooking our valley and as we took a lunch break from working on our home, Dave asked me to be his wife. It wasn’t fancy, the ring wasn’t huge, he didn’t get down on one knee. He grabbed my hand and looking at our valley, he asked me if I would be willing to spend the rest of my life with him. It was that simple.

20160115_140728 — He was going to be mine FOREVER!!!

We had been through so much, and we were still in the battle, but we knew we were meant to be together forever. Even if I wasn’t Dave’s wife and Dave wasn’t my husband, we were so much better together than apart. As we looked over our valley together, I said yes, I would be honored to be his wife.

A Home Complete

We both knew that we wanted a simple ceremony, and we wanted to be married on our property. What better place than on our deck, overlooking the very same valley that started it all? When Dave asked me to be his wife, we were about 8 weeks from being completed with our home, if nothing went wrong. We knew we needed to work even harder than we already were to make sure that we had a final inspection on April 8th, because on April 9th, we were going to unite our futures forever on our deck. No pressure ~ but we accomplished our goal and met our timeline! 🙂

DSCN1776 — Our County Building Inspector ~ He was our biggest advocate!

After 10 months of construction, a brain hemorrhage, hundreds of hours of therapy, and blessings beyond measure, we were awarded final occupancy on April 8th, 2016. We moved most of our household items in that day, but didn’t move in our bed. We wanted our first night in our new home as husband and wife.

Choosing Forever

Never in a lifetime of dreaming did I imagine that I was going to meet a man as hard working and tenacious as Dave. Never did I imagine that I would not only help build, but live in a shipping container home in a valley that brings peace to my soul. Never did I imagine what my future would hold when I said, yes, let’s build a shipping container home. Never, in this lifetime or the next would I change the past 5 years. We have been so blessed and we have grown in ways that would not have been possible if we were still chasing the ‘Jones.’

As we exchanged vows on our deck with our children present as witnesses, little did we know that our story wasn’t over, but really just beginning. That the challenges and trials ahead would be almost as difficult as the ones that we had already overcome in the past 10 months. Dave and I would learn that Joy was our only hope.

Choosing Joy

Joy is not always present. You have to choose joy in the midst of the trial. Joy is a choice. That is the biggest lesson that Dave & I learned over the last 5 years. When you choose joy, life is not nearly the struggle that it could be. Yes, life is still hard. There are still so many hard things that we have to face every single day. But together, choosing joy, we are better.

4 years later, we are together, in our tiny shipping container home of 406sq ft, looking over our valley, feeling more blessed than we ever thought was possible.

I’ve come to the end of our build story, but our story really just began with that Certificate of Occupancy awarded to us on April 8, 2016. It was only after we began our life in our valley together did we discover the real joy of That Tiny Life Love!

Still Choosing Joy

Jaimie & Dave

The Home Stretch – Transforming a Shipping Container into a Home

As we came down the final stretch of converting 2 cold, ugly, metal boxes into a legal home, I (Jaimie) knew we needed to be on our A game and get organized. To stay on schedule for a move in date of the 2nd weekend in April, I reverted to my old friend, Excel to help keep us on task 😉 .

2016-02-24 20.45.12

When I emailed Dave my spreadsheet with everything organized by task and weekend/date to complete said task, he laughed initially, followed immediately with an, ‘Oh My.’ But, he quickly realized how valuable our schedule was so that we could efficiently use our time to finish up the required interior elements of our home of our home by the 8th of April.

Together Forever

In February of 2016, 8 months into our build and 6 months after Dave’s brain hemorrhage, he asked me to be his wife. I will share more on that in the next blog 😉

We knew that if we were going to get married, we wanted it to be on the deck of our home. We decided that we were going to put a date on the calendar and knew that we HAD TO HAVE THE HOUSE finished by then so we could start our forever together.

Transforming a Box into a Home

The foundation was poured, the containers were placed, the welding was done, the walls were framed, plumbing and electrical were in, insulation was sprayed, sheet rock was hung. It was time for the final transformation of 2 metal boxes into our home.

And as I usually do, here is our creation in pictures 😉 Enjoy!

Our dream was becoming a reality ~ and we were on schedule for our together forever date of April 9, 2016.

Together Forever,

Jaimie & Dave

The BEST Day Of Building Our Shipping Container Home – part #7

The Logistics of Placing our ‘Legos’

Well, the foundation was poured, the containers were prepped – it was time to put our home together. Prior to this, I had spent weeks trying to figure out the best way to set our containers in place. Our original thought is that we would rent a crane and set the containers ourselves. One of our close friends was a rigger and said he would help and the confident DIYers that we were, we were sure we could make this happen; and we probably could have except that I couldn’t find an insurance company to insure the equipment to lift our shipping containers. And so, after a hard look at mitigating our risk, I contacted a local crane company and hired them to place our shipping containers. They were willing to work on a Saturday and gave us a discount for paying cash – always ask if there is a ‘cash’ discount. When the dust settled, it actually cost us just about the same amount to hire a professional crane company as it would have if we had done it ourselves, oh and the move was insured!

D-Day

Saturday, the 18th of July, the crane showed up bright and early. Our close friends and family were there and ready to help us put our home together. The crane moved into position and Dave, with the use of his 75 year old Dozer, pushed our 40’er into position so that it could be rigged up and ready to lift. Within 1 hour, our first container was in place – and honestly, it was one of the most nerve racking parts of the build. The smaller, 20’ container was then moved into position to be rigged up and was soon lifted by the crane – and that is when the operator said those words no one wants to hear – this isn’t going to happen because the reach is outside the tolerance of the crane and I can’t override the system.

WHAT?!?!?!? The container is half the size of the one you already place – how can this be? Well, it turns out that because he had to extend his reach to the very back of our 40’er to place the 20’er, the picking point was right at the tipping point of the crane. At that moment, I was so thankful that we had hired a professional to place our containers, because I am not sure we would have handled the situation correctly if we were operating a rented crane ourselves.

Good thing we surround ourselves with brilliant and my hubby is pretty smart too 😉 To solve this problem, they adjusted the rigging a bit, reset the crane slightly and were just able to extend enough to place the 20’er right where it was meant to be, without even an inch to spare on the tolerance of the crane. Thank you, Jesus!

Once the containers were set, my husband pulled the stairs that we had previously fabricated at his workplace into position and rigged those up to get ‘flown’ to the other side of the containers and set on the large concrete pad that had already been created for them. These stairs are made with a 12” piece of C-channel; definitely overkill, but we love them!

I have to admit, the moment those containers were in place, both this sense of Oh – My – Goodness, this is amazing, and also Oh – My – Goodness, we are really doing this were colliding inside of me. It all became so real – we were actually building our home out of shipping containers, and the hardest part was already done – the containers were in place and it wasn’t even noon 😉 Time to spend the rest of the afternoon rafting the local river!

All The Welding

Once the containers were in place, it was time to weld all the parts and pieces that allowed us to be legal and meet the code. Initially, I was going to write about all of these steps, but seriously, boring. And so I will leave you with this picture blog 🙂

If you would like more information about the welding process and how we did it – please drop a comment and we will be more than happy to try and answer the specifics.

It was during this phase of our welding, when we were 90% done, that our world took a sharp right turn. While we were installing the pickets for our railing, the last portion of the welding that needed to take place, my husband suffered a life threatening brain bleed, which I have mentioned before. Thank goodness, the structural portion of our project was completed, since he was our WABO welder and we needed his skill and expertise to finish our build. I will share the details of that frightful day in the next post.

Our take away – Life is not promised; today isn’t promised; tomorrow isn’t promised. Work hard, play hard, dream big, realize that you are made for more and above all else, love with your entire heart – don’t leave anything on the table. When we get to heaven, Dave and I aren’t going to arrive sweetly at the door, we are going to come in hot, just the way we live our life!

Live your best life, my friends!

Until next time,

Jaimie & Dave