About Me

Hello,

My name is Jeremy, but most of my friends know me as Munky. I am 35 years old and originally from California. I have had many jobs over the years stemming from a massage therapist and kitchen chef to the Event manager at an arena and a barback. My last job, however,  gave me by far my greatest fulfillment.

About 13 years ago I was working for a local arena in California as an Event staff manager when a traveling show came through one fall. I got talking to one of the vendors and ran into him again the following year when the show had returned. He asked me if I had gotten a raise since the last time we spoke and I told him that I had not. He advised me to come work with him. Me being curious, I asked him what would I be doing and how would I join. He told me that another tour was starting in October and I would need to make my way to St. Louis, Mo. and the company would take care of the rest from there. As for what I would be doing for a job he said, “I don’t know, but I am sure they will have something for you”.

I thought this guy must be crazy. He wanted me to fly halfway across the country to a job that he is not even sure I would have. I wrote down the time and place to meet him anyway and left it at that. Well fast forward 5 months later and after much debate in my mind about this mysterious job, I decided to put in my two weeks notice. Bought a one-way plane ticket, and headed to Missouri.

I work my way from a light vendor selling merchandise in the seats, all the way up to the production stage manager in 12 years. I traveled to 52 countries and visited 396 different cities around the world. I cultivated many positive relationships with people from various ethnic and cultural backgrounds and found myself on a completely eye-opening experience. Along the way, I learned the skills of carpentry, electrics, wardrobe, and props. Most of these skills will come in handy for this tiny home build.

The rest of my home building skills I learned from doing side work with my father. He was a jack of all trades and many family members turned to him when they needed repairs. He and I were close so he would bring me along on jobs for me to assist. I was doing very little, besides meaningless conversations at first, but eventually working my way into a very useful assistant. Especially as he grew older and needed a young buck to do all of the crawl space and floor work, as they were hard on his knees. I ended up learning most of my carpentry and electric skills from him. Along with plumbing, masonry, tiling, roofing and many others.

So that brings us up to about 5 years ago when I met my future wife at an Irish Bar in Turkey (Her parents are still unaware that this is where we met). We fell in love and had a very short dating period before getting married…. 8 months.  I lived in Istanbul for a couple of years and then we decided to move to the US so we can both work to support our family. She ended up getting a transfer through her company and we were off to the races. After two years of being in the States, we decided to try and buy a home and could not find anything we both liked. So we decided to buy a plot and build a home ourselves. This is where the whole Hawaii idea came into play and we decided it was better to move somewhere warm as neither of us is a fan of the cold.

We had been trying for a baby for a while and as luck should have it we find out that we are expecting just before the big build. We analyzed the situation and realized that the only time-frame for me to build this home would be while she is still pregnant. I will be a stay at home dad once the baby arrives and that leaves very little time to slip away to go build. So we knew I needed to be there for the first trimester and last trimester, which left the second trimester as our only option. We changed my flight ticket and redid all of our calculations for the budget.

The sequence for the Vlog takes place from the time I arrived in Hawaii and continues until the day I leave. There will be a part II of the series coming out at a later date after we go to make the big move. I will record and document everything like before (with a better camera this time). I know some of you are annoyed about the iPhone videos, but it was all I had at the time and if I do record a video with it I will make sure it is horizontal and not vertical this time.

Edit: Please do not pay attention to the dates on the side of the posts. The correct dates of events are written in the blogs themselves. These dates correlate when I uploaded them, but I am post-dating them so the oldest one will be on top and can be read in order as you scroll downward.

Please feel free to comment and share this site if you like the website.

We have also set up a Donate button for anyone who would like to contribute to our adventure. The proceeds will either go to help fund this site or to the home directly. The website will only let me make predetermined amounts but I did leave a link to my PayPal account on the page below for anyone who prefers to just do it directly through them.

Thank you all for being here and enjoying this adventure with me. I can’t wait to get started on part II, and I hope you all enjoy the rest of the tale!

• Munky