Initially, I had big plans for building a community in Austin. I wanted to buy two acres of land and sell off pieces of it to friends. When I talked to a developer about the idea, he scoffed and asked, “Do you know how hard it is to develop land in Austin?” (due to all the regulations, added expense of bringing utilities and water to the houses, etc.). That’s when I started thinking about the “N Street” model of cohousing where adjacent neighbors start tearing down their fences (although in my modified version, we would buy and build upon adjacent lots).

During that time, I met a man who had

It’s been a while since I’ve shared an update on how my effort to build a pocket community in Austin is going. Last I mentioned, we had our sights set on seven adjacent lots in a pre-existing neighborhood. Three of the lots weren’t buildable, due to floodplain issues, but we would have been able to use them for gardening. The lots back up to 30 acres of City of Austin park land (with a proposed hike-and-bike trail running through it!). The neighborhood is only three miles east of downtown. A huge neighborhood park (with a public swimming pool) is right around the corner.

The coolest part is that we even

I wrote this post a while back about how we purchased inexpensive shower board from a home improvement store, asked them to cut it to our specifications, and then used removable wall adhesive strips to secure it to our bathroom wall.

I’d like to report that the removal process went pretty smoothly. The only negative consequence was some slight discoloration on the door where the adhesive strips had been for so long.

We decided to hang our “whiteboard” at our new house because it’s so useful to have a centralized place to record family-related things. We opted for the kitchen this time. Right now, we’ve been using to record our