When "Delivered" Doesn't Mean What You Think it Means | Week 34 Post-layoff

We had it all planned out. Video of our tiny house rolling down the highway. Drone footage and multiple cameras positioned to capture its grand entrance into our community. A smooth delivery followed by a celebratory first walk-through. Instead, we found ourselves speed-walking 550 yards to catch up to our own house that had been dropped off on the side of our community road and leaning into a ditch.

The Fantasy vs. The Reality

Our master plan included a heads-up call when the house was en route, camping out at the community entrance the morning of delivery with cameras ready, following the delivery truck to our lot like some kind of tiny house parade, and documenting a smooth, orchestrated arrival that would make perfect content.

What actually unfolded was quite different. On delivery day, we still hadn't received confirmation that it was actually going to be delivered that day. We checked in with the office around 9:20 a.m. and there was no news, so Bryan came back to the tiny rental to make his morning coffee when our phone rang. No advance notice, no dramatic buildup. Just "Your house just pulled into the community and is heading to your lot!" We grabbed our cameras and literally chased our home down the road, arriving to find it already disconnected from the delivery truck and sitting somewhat forlornly on the side of the community street.

Even when you think you've planned for everything, real life operates on its own timeline.

The Cascade Nobody Warns You About

Here's what we learned about tiny house delivery: "delivered" is just the first domino in a long chain of dependencies that each have their own timeline.

The delivery domino effect looks like this: delivery doesn't mean positioned, positioned doesn't mean level, level doesn't mean ready for utilities, utilities don't mean ready to occupy, and ready to occupy doesn't mean you have stairs to actually get inside.

Our actual timeline looked like this:

Monday: House delivered and positioned (after hours of waiting for the positioning equipment)

Tuesday: Leveling and hurricane strapping (supposed to happen same day as delivery)

Wednesday: No workers showed up (surprise!)

Thursday: Electric service rescheduled to next week to coordinate with crew availability

Friday: Propane and internet followed the same adjusted schedule

Saturday: Plot twist! Crew appeared and dug trenches, in the pouring rain, and completed house utility connections for rescheduled Tuesday utility activations

Next week: Stairs construction (maybe?)

And even after utilities are activated and stairs are built, our journey continues. We're still waiting for our carport and concrete pad, shed, and pet fencing to be completed. All of this while we get the inside organized and make the outside look like home rather than a construction zone. This journey definitely won't fit in a neat and tidy 60-minute TV show.

With more rain forecasted for today, after a really dry several months of summer, we aren't sure how the weather might continue to adjust the timeline.

We're used to corporate deadlines that actually mean something. In tiny house world, "today" might mean "this week" and "this week" might mean "when we can get to it."

The McMansion Moment

Standing there looking at our house for the first time, my immediate reaction was "It looks like a giant beluga whale." Not exactly the poetic first impression I'd imagined.

But honestly, the neighbors were right when they kept commenting, "Wow, it's BIG and so beautiful." With the ten-foot porch on one end and twelve-foot porch on the other, we're definitely feeling like the McMansion of the tiny house community. There's irony in downsizing to a "tiny" house that looks giant in the landscape around it when it's being towed in.

Sometimes downsizing still means you're the biggest thing on the block.

Patience as a Forced Curriculum

The waiting periods became their own education. Hours in Texas heat waiting for positioning equipment that may or may not arrive on schedule. Days wondering if work crews will show up. Weeks until actual move-in becomes remotely possible.

This experience reinforced the recurring lesson we've been learning throughout this journey: major life transitions aren't events—they're processes. Messy, unpredictable processes that require patience we didn't know we'd need to develop.

Coming from careers where fast pace and strict deadlines ruled our days, this has been a masterclass in surrendering control. "Figuring it out as we go" isn't just a cute phrase for us—it's become the actual process of redesigning our lives.

Redefining "Home"

As I write this on Sunday morning, our house has been "delivered" for six days. But delivered doesn't mean livable. We're still sleeping in our tiny rental, doing laundry at the laundromat, and working off TV trays while we wait for stairs to be built, utilities to be turned on (Tuesday, hopefully), and basic repairs like fixing the broken doorknob and porch door issues.

Home isn't the moment of delivery. It's not even the moment you get the keys. It's the gradual process of making a space work for your actual life, one solved problem at a time.

Embracing the Mess

Next week's goal: actually moving some things into our own space. But if this week reinforced anything, it's that tiny house life will set its own timeline, and we'll just have to keep adapting.

The weight we felt lifted when we sold most of our possessions? That relief is being replaced by a different kind of freedom—the freedom from expecting everything to go according to plan.

Want the behind-the-scenes updates as they happen? Our Tuesday newsletter shares the real-time moments between blog posts - like the frantic phone calls, the waiting periods, and the small victories that don't make it into the weekly posts.

If you want to see the actual delivery chaos unfold—the positioning drama, the "Holy Moly" moments, and yes, me calling our house a giant beluga whale—check out this week's YouTube video. Sometimes the visual story captures what words can't quite convey.

What's your biggest "delivered doesn't mean ready" experience? We'd love to hear about other times when completion turned out to be just the beginning.

Until next week (when we'll hopefully have stairs and won't still be writing from our tiny rental),

-Kathy & Bryan