The day before he set out to build his tiny home on a mountain in New Mexico, Richard H. Potter Sr. had a question.
The man who’d grown up in suburban Omaha and moved to the small town of Wausau in the mid-1970s had built a home for himself, but he wanted to know if it would hold up to the elements.
“I figured if it doesn’t rain every day, it’s gonna be fine,” Potter told me.
The answer?
It wasn’t.
“The house is a lot more resilient than I thought,” Potter said.
Potter’s story began with a simple one: “I wanted to be a father,” Potter explained to me.
He was about to take on a new challenge, but first he’d have to overcome the obstacles that came with being a man who grew up in the suburbs of Omaha.
After graduating from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1988, Potter and his brother had the chance to live in the foothills of the Willamette Valley, about 20 miles north of Omaha, with their father.
He and his sister moved into a cabin in the Willams Lake area.
“They had a wonderful cabin, a nice place to go on a little lake, and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s really nice,'” Potter said, adding that his mother, Ann, also a retired nurse, had an apartment in the nearby town of Tumwater.
He got a job working for a local newspaper as a copy boy, but his mother didn’t have much money to send him to school.
He worked as a cashier and in the evenings worked at the local gas station.
But he’d always wanted to own his own home.
Potter had his first brush with the idea of owning his own place when his mother died when he was 11.
The next few years were filled with frustration and fear as he struggled to find a way to fund the construction of the tiny house.
“When my mother passed, it was like a giant pothole in my life,” Potter recalled.
“It’s really difficult to come up with money.
“There were some things I thought, ‘Hey, this is a great idea.’ “
” Potter said he decided to take out a loan for the first time in his life, with the help of his uncle, Tom. “
The money came in the form of a mortgage. “
Potter said he decided to take out a loan for the first time in his life, with the help of his uncle, Tom.
“But that house never really got built.” “
He took the money and I took the house,” Potter recounted.
“But that house never really got built.”
The next year, Potter decided to get the idea off his chest.
He told his uncle about the tiny home project, and he encouraged him to start a crowdfunding campaign for the project.
The crowdfunding campaign was a success, and Potter decided that the only way to get it built was to take the money.
“We went into that meeting and I said, ‘Here’s your little dream.’
I was really excited to be the one doing the financing,” Potter, now 59, recalled.
In February 2017, Potter started his own crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
At the time, Potter said the campaign had raised $2,400 of his $10,000 goal.
The campaign was also attracting a new wave of attention.
Potter said his goal for the campaign was to raise $50,000 to build the house.
The crowdfunded project, Potter added, would take six months to complete, but the money would allow him to make some upgrades.
In early April, Potter’s family began receiving calls from people who were eager to buy the tiny houses in the tiny cabin.
“Everyone wants to have a home,” Potter shared with me.
“People want to live with their family.
Potter’s first purchase came in May. “
Every time we go out and do some fundraisers, people are always coming to us with requests.”
Potter’s first purchase came in May.
“That’s when I realized I was doing something very unique,” he said.
So we started researching the houses. “
So we started looking at other homes, like we were looking at an apartment.
So we started researching the houses.
It became clear that it was going to be something really special.
And that’s when we were like, OK, we’re going to build this.”
When the family started looking into the tiny homes, Potter realized that there were many advantages to the tiny-home style.
“What I realized, is that this is one of those things where it’s very different than a traditional house.
You have a small footprint, you have a lot of space and you have some amenities that you might not have with a traditional
