Tiny House Blog

***Sold*** Syd from British Columbia, Canada recently emailed me about a Cavco Park Model home he needs to sell. Here is what Syd has to say about his home.

I live in Canada and was hoping to put the trailer on my property as an office space and extra storage. But Canada Customs changed the rules re: transporting it here and I have to sell the park model in the States.

2009 Cavco Double Loft Park Model. Drop rear bedroom, interior sheetrock, celestory windows in living room, cold weather package for 80 lb snow load. 30 yr warranty on roof. Hardy Plank exterior w/ 50 yr warranty. 2 skylights in loft. Rear dormer and thermopane windows. Oversized shower/no tub.

In a perfect world, I would trade for a nice Class B or a Westfalia. I paid almost $40K for this thing. I would take $25K or so. Can’t do setup or transportation. Am happy to answer any questions and am willing to listen to just about any deal. The pictures attached are from the dealer and they really are of the actual trailer. My home phone is 250-339-7767 in BC. Thanks!

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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You Can Skimp on Looks, but not on Quality

Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell
www.livinglargeinourlittlehouse.com

We drove down our long, winding driveway in anticipation of viewing the progress the builders made on our dream lake home the previous week.

My husband stopped the truck and we just sat there, staring, not in awe, but in shock.
“What the *$!*?” my husband said. “The back is facing the driveway instead of the lake!”
Only the framing was up, but we could tell by the placement of the holes where doors and windows were to go that our 480-square foot dream was facing the wrong direction!

Like most working people going after their dreams, we were on a tight budget. Halting construction and starting over was possible – but would cost us.

When we did the math, we knew the cost wasn’t worth what we would have to give up – 2×6 construction, the highest rated insulation, energy efficient windows, doors and appliances.

When we built our Little House in the Big Woods, as my sister in law has dubbed it (can you tell she teaches Kindergarten?), we didn’t intend on living there full-time at first, but we knew we wanted a cozy, energy efficient cabin that would keep us cool in the summer and warm during winter retreats.

That decision almost cost us one of our little beloved dogs, Hershey. She was older when we built the cabin and during one of our many trips to the town hardware store when the cabin was first completed, we didn’t realize how airtight our place really was. Turns out, if you don’t shut a door all the way, when you open another, the trapped air will cause the improperly closed door to open. Poor Hershey, nearly blind, stepped out of the backdoor and dropped 4 feet to the ground. We came home and she was wandering around in circles in the yard. Thankfully, she hadn’t been eaten by coyotes and was otherwise all right. We learned our lesson about just how well our cabin was built – and our deck was completed soon after!

Not skimping on construction has also kept us warm and cozy in the winter now that we do live here full time. We only use a small wood burning stove for heat – and many times – we have had to turn it down, as it gets too hot in our little cabin. I would also recommend a wood-burning stove to anyone building any house in the country. We not only used the stove to heat our home during an 8-day power outage last winter caused by the great ice storm that hit several states, but we used it to cook our meals as well.

In the height of summer, we pay about $70 for electricity for the cabin – and that includes running a window air unit. In the winter, we often only have to pay the minimum our electric company requires.

We may have a house situated cockeyed to the lake below, but we have an energy efficient one – and besides, the strange way it’s positioned always makes for interesting conversational ice breakers with first time visitors to the Little House in the Big Woods!

Thank you Kerri for sharing your story. You can follow Kerri’s continuing story at the Living Large in our Little House blog.

by Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell for the (Tiny House Blog)

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Keith from Indiana sent me his story about his little log cabin that he built himself with no prior knowledge. Here is Keith’s story:

I built the cabin in 1990 with the help of a friend, both of us having zero prior knowledge or construction skills.

After reading three main books (Building a Log Cabin From Scratch by Ramsey, The Wilderness Cabin by Rutstrum and How to Build Your Home in the Woods by Angier) I decided the quickest and easiest would be a “trappers tilt” style, where the fat ends of the logs all put one way toward the front form the pitch for the roof as they go up higher.

These were considered temporary in their day and were built directly on the ground, but I used concrete piers and mine has an insulated floor.

I had purchased the wooded land a year before (50 acres) for a bargain price in southern Indiana and spent the year ’90 working every single weekend and any vacation time felling trees, clearing the space and taking bark of of cedars and jack pines.

It was under roof by October 1st and I’ve been using spare time since to finish out the inside when the mood strikes. The first four courses of logs are cedar with the remainder in jack pine. We used spray foam between the logs and then put PermaChink on top of that.

The roof is very low, anyone over 5 foot 9 has problems with the middle log rafter! Since I’m only 5 foot 6, I don’t worry about it. I had a shed roof on it but it started to deteriorate and about 9 years ago I put a galvanized steel roof over that. It’s never leaked and the only problem I have is mice once in a while.

The stove was the smallest I could find but it sweats you out pretty quick if a window is not left open. However, one occasion it was 30 below and it took nearly 4 hours for the place to get up to only 50 degrees, even the oil lamp fuel was frozen!

The floor is parquet oak over standard subfloor plywood. It’s a pretty cozy place as long as it’s just me or one additional person. Any more than that and it’s crowded! Storage is at a minimum, so we pack light.

We only used cedars (which are plentiful and grow like weeds) or man-planted jack pines and used every bit of them that we could. I also later built an outhouse by my self. No pictures of it, but it’s not much to look at, regular stick-style and has a 5 foot deep shaft. It was built before they changed the laws against them and is now grandfathered in. It’s located as to not interfere with any water source and we use hydrated lime when we visit. It has a steel roof as well. It never smells very bad, even in the summer.

My only regret is not putting a few more courses of logs or not simply making a 12/12 pitch roof with a sleeping/storage loft. But I was a lot younger and wasn’t thinking as long term as I should have. Now, at 50, I can see more clearly what should have been done. However, we were lucky to get it as finished as we did because it’s three hours away from where I live and very remote with no power or running water. Ask me how much I like tent camping – I still am not fond of it after doing it every weekend for nearly a year. And this is coming from a guy who used to love camping more than anything!

Here is an entertaining video Keith put together that shows the interior. Thanks Keith for sharing your story with us.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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Brent from Hillsboro, Oregon and Logan from Sacramento, California both sent me a link to this article yesterday and I wanted to share it with you.

Brian Campbell is a homeless inventor who lives in Portland, Oregon who has built himself a “mortorhome” that is powered by manpower.

This is the second incarnation of Brian’s invention, as his first one was ruined. The BikePortland readers raised a $1,000 to help Brian fund his new home. Jonathan Maus editor of BikePortland let Brian build his new and improved home in his front yard.

Brian has built several more of these for customers in the last couple of years. Unfortunately, there is not enough business to keep Brian off the street.

Brian is looking for work at a bike shop and he hopes to get some steady income. He dreams of building bike homes for others in hopes of a fully human-powered future.

Read the article on the BikePortland website. Check out another cool bike trailer house on the Tiny House Design site.

Photo Credits: BikePortland

Brian Campbell

Brian and his Bike Motorhome

Bike Motorhome Interior

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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Chris recently emailed me about a shed conversion his dad made in Denmark and he wanted to share pictures and tell us more about it:

My dad in Denmark recently converted a shed he originally built for his tools into a ‘real’ tiny house, complete with insulation and electricity. No plumbing though.

It contains a sofa bed, two Ikea chairs, two tables and two paintings my dad also did. This could also make for a nice office shed.

Here’s some more info:

• Size is about 2,70m x 3,30m to keep below 10 square meters, which is the largest size you can build in Denmark without a permit.
• Price was around 17,000 Danish Kroner (around $3,275 USD) – my dad did all the work himself though (except some of the electricity) and some materials he got for free (lofts, insulation, some metal stuff etc.) due to his connections in the construction business. The biggest expenses were the floor and the square window.
• He made the upper row of windows himself.

Thanks Chris for sharing this neat project. If you have an old shed in your back yard maybe it has potential for a tiny house too.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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Michael spent the last two days working in the Tiny Free House and got the other window lowered about 8 inches to clear the eaves and finished adding pallet boards to the roof.

It was very slow going screwing all those boards to the trusses. Michael used an extension ladder from the outside for the lower boards and did the peak from the inside by coming up through the framing.

See more pictures and read his complete post here. Michael is hoping to get the tiny free house inclosed before the rains start so stay tuned with his blog for updates.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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