In a way this book is like a printed version of the Tiny House Blog but with Lloyds great writing ability and layout. Plus he has added many tiny houses that I have never seen. He has pulled together a book I think every tiny house enthusiast will want to own.

I recently visited Lloyd and his team at Shelter Publications and saw where these wonderful books are put together and distributed.

In this book there are some 150 builders who have taken things into their own hands, creating tiny homes (under 500 sq. ft.). Homes on land, homes on wheels, homes on the road, homes on water, even homes in the trees. There are also studios, saunas, garden sheds, and greenhouses.

There are 1,300 photos, showing a rich variety of small homemade shelters, and there are stories (and thoughts and inspirations) of the owner-builders who are on the forefront of this new trend in downsizing and self-sufficiency.

Lloyd just released a new video where he takes you through a two minute walk through of the book and Shelter Publications.

You can purchase the book through Shelter Publications http://www.shelterpub.com/ or at Amazon.

Thank you Lloyd for sharing your talent with this wonderful new book.

The details are below on how you can win your free copy. I will be giving three copies to Tiny House Blog readers and you might just be one. Derek the author of this fantastic book and I will be the judges.

I will email the winners to get your address and mail your copy to you after the selection is made. I will also post an update so everyone knows who won along with their tip. I’ll turn it over to Deek to tell you what is new with this book and how to enter for your chance to win.

Hey Kent,

Here are a few copies of the new edition of “Humble Homes, Simple Shacks“, as promised, to give away to your readers. The book is up on Amazon.com for only $11.25 right now. I suggest you determine the winners through bouts of ultimate fighting, which we can then film for youtube. No, not really, but I have an idea I’ll recommend in a minute….

The new edition is being put out through The Lyons Press (home to work from David and Jeanie Stiles, Shay Solomon, and so on), and has quite a few new aspects to it as compared to the old hand assembled versions out there. PS- if any of you own the green cover version of the old book (only about 30 were made), some wacko bought one off some online seller for almost $100 not that long ago- yeah, stupid, I know….

Anyway, the new, expanded version of the book has….

• 14 New full page cabin designs/small living sketches
• A new 16 page color insert photo section showing some of the things I’ve designed and built, in addition to almost 40 cabins, shacks, and tiny houses that others have completed. A decent chunk of these are photos I’ve personally taken too- so there are a few things no one has seen, blog-wise, before.
• A new chapter called “Tricks Of The Trade” where I interviewed the likes of Lloyd Kahn, Jay Shafer, Mimi Zeiger, Michael Tougias, Cathy Johnson, Alex Pino, Gregory Paul Johnson, Dee Williams, Colin Beavan, Duo Dickinson, Tammy Strobel, and Alex Johnson, for their own tips and ideas on designing with space efficiency, minimalization, and storage in mind.
• Many other new sketches to accompany the text sections
• An intro/foreword written by Author/Architects David and Jeanie Stiles (one of my favorites/influences)

To win – we will select the three best “Tiny House Storage Tips” (Making/Saving Space). Even for those who don’t enter, it might make for a read in the comments section. I’m sure we could all learn something from it. We’re looking for more than just cut and paste links. Please show us applied and tried techniques that most might not have thought of or considered, you know if you want to win and all.

An example: “The space over doorways in homes is often neglected. If you’re looking for an extra storage spot in your small home, toss a simple bracketed bookshelf over a doorway or two, and you’ve created stow-space that otherwise wouldn’t have been used.”

Good luck to all! (Assuming, Kent, that you choose this means over the ultimate fighting one).

Winners will be announced on Tuesday, February 7 so get your tips in NOW!

Thanks Kent- a 2012 workshop is in the works, MANY new episodes of my show too (several have already been filmed, and we shoot three in Seattle soon (our first BIG trip away from MA with the show (well aside from NY, ME, NH, and CT). An episode on Nicolette’s wagon in Germany too. I’ll be teaching some Tumbleweed Courses the first in Miami April 14-15, come and have some fun!

-Derek “Deek” Diedricksen
Relaxshacks.com
Host of “Tiny Yellow House” TV

The drawback is for those with slow internet connections as you will not be able to watch it. Simply click on the graphic below and it will take you to the Tumbleweed sales page, there you will learn how to build a backyard cottage Tumbleweed Style. Okay here goes, it’s not perfect so be kind to me

I recently received Ross Chapin’s new book called Pocket Neighborhoods to review and share with you. This is a beautiful coffee table style hard bound book written by Ross Chapin. Ross Chapin is an architect and long-time advocate for sensibly sized houses and vibrant neighborhoods. He leads an architectural and planning firm on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, Washington, where he has lived and worked since 1982.

This book covers modern day pocket neighborhoods across the country and includes the fascinating history of this type of neighborhood which Ross Chapin discovered while researching the book. The book is published by The Taunton Press in 2011.

What is a pocket neighborhood? Pocket neighborhoods are clustered groups of neighboring houses or apartments gathered around some sort of shared open space — a garden courtyard, a pedestrian street, a series of joined backyards, or a reclaimed alley — all of which have a clear sense of territory and shared stewardship. They can be in urban, suburban or rural areas.

These are settings where nearby neighbors can easily know one another, where empty nesters and single householders with far-flung families can find friendship or a helping hand nearby, and where children can have shirttail aunties and uncles just beyond their front gate.

Photo Credit: Ross Chapin

What Kind of People are interested in Pocket Neighborhoods? All kinds! Singles, Empty-Nester Couples, Families, the ‘Great Generation’, Baby Boomers, Gen-X and Y, Millennials — anyone who wants to live in a close, tight-knit neighborhood.

Photo Credit Ross Chapin

Is zoning an issue for pocket neighborhoods? Most towns and cities have zoning regulations that limit housing to detached, single family homes on large private lots with a street out front. Forward-thinking planners are seeing pocket neighborhoods as a way to increase housing options and limit sprawl, while preserving the character of existing neighborhoods.

Photo Credit Ross Chapin

From my perspective as the editor of the Tiny House Blog I see this as an option for a tiny house community. Ross Chapin has built several pocket neighborhoods using small cottages and I see this as an opportunity for a similar situation using tiny homes. Can you imagine a community built with Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny Houses nestled in a corner of a town or in a more rural setting beside a lake? Or how about a cluster of Scott Stewart’s Slabtown Custom Homes in a similar situation in Arkansas? Something to think about…

You can learn more about Ross Chapin and his work at his website called Ross Chapin. He has also opened a new website and blog dedicated to Pocket Neighborhoods with a lot more information that covers many questions regarding this great idea.

I highly recommend Ross Chapin’s book and it is available at Amazon at a very great price. The list price is $30 and is available at Amazon for $18.66.

Photo Credit Ross Chapin

Photo Credit Grey Crawford

Photo Credit Ross Chapin

Written with a naturalist’s hand, Gnomes is a guide to the life of the little woodland and garden creatures. It covers everything from courtship and marriage, children, food gathering, handicrafts, and the building and care of the gnome’s tiny underground house.

According to the book, the male gnome begins to build his little house about 15-20 years before his marriage (gnomes can live up to 400 years), and meticulously takes into consideration the location and the direction that the house will face. Secret underground tunnels, polecat traps and escape routes are built into the home’s infrastructure as well as a chimney for the Large Stove, a boot room which houses the Watch-Cricket, and an elegant bathroom.

As a craftsman, the gnome’s artistic flair can be seen in the beautiful carvings on the doors, the handmade furniture, and even the colorful toilet. His wife and children also take pride in their tiny home as they enjoy their nightly chores, sleep in cozy alcoves built into the home’s walls and play with their pet field mice.

The book has recently been printed again for its 30th anniversary and the gnomes’ natural building techniques, knowledge of sustainability and natural energy, and kindness to animals will hopefully be enjoyed by today’s generation.

“To my amazement I have heard that there are people who have never seen a gnome. I can’t help pitying these people. I am certain there must be something wrong with their eyesight.”

~ Axel Munthe, Swedish psychiatrist, 1857-1949

Illustrations courtesy of the book Gnomes (which I still have after 30 years).

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

Greg and Anne lived a very busy life and Greg served for twenty years as a pastor in The United Methodist Church in Washington DC. As they neared retirement Greg and Anne decided to make some drastic changes in their lives. Greg had roots in Nova Scotia and they started researching real estate in Nova Scotia.

Discovering property on McNutt’s Island with a home that needed restoring it seemed like the perfect place to use Greg’s passion for restoration and a nice quiet place to call home.

The book covers their first year on the island as they learn how little they know about life on an island. They discover new challenges that come along with island living. Meet Skipper and Radar, lobstermen who become Anne and Greg’s teachers and guides. Discover the ongoing battle of the Zulu Spruce that grows like weeds on the island.

Meet the wild sheep that they thought were a romantic part of the island but have some very different sides to  their character also. Discover the difficulty of dealing with garbage and making the crossing to the mainland in fog and stormy weather. Learn about some of the ghosts of the island haunting past. Learn about the lighthouse and the history of pirates. See how Anne and Greg divide the daily labour to keep life going on the island. Join in the festivities of the First Annual McNutt’s Island Pirate Festival and enjoy the wild raspberries scattered across the island.

This is a book for dreaming and relaxing and sharing a simpler life. I highly recommend it and you can purchase the book from Nimbus Publishing for $19.95. Thanks Greg and Anne for sharing your story with us. Stay up to date with their daily life with Anne’s blog here.

Featuring shedworkers and shedbuilders from around the world who are leading the alternative workplace revolution, Shedworking looks at why having a shed office is a greener way of working, improves the work-life balance, and accelerates one’s productivity.

Below are a couple of videos of Alex introducing his new book.

Learn more at Amazon.com: Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution

“Our simple living journey has taught me that less is more. Having less stuff and no car in my life has helped me establish the priorities of building solid relationships, being debt free and living with less stress.

Success is not defined by whether or not you own a car. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. The intended function of cars is comfort and convenience. However, cars represent an enormous amount of time and money. Because of the work stress I endured to maintain this depreciating investment, I felt inconvenienced by my cars. By selling the cars, I have more time and money. A surprising side effect of selling our cars was becoming debt-free.”

Five years ago, we lived the “normal middle class” suburban lifestyle. We were newlyweds with flashy rings, living in a two-bedroom apartment, driving two cars, commuting long distances to work and living well beyond our means. The idea of living without a car didn’t seem possible.

By changing our perspective and planning small steps, we learned lessons that simplified our lives and got us out of debt. Going car-free was part of our downsizing process and was one of our first big goals toward living intentionally.

Click here to view more details

I felt so compelled to merge with “Deek” Diedricksen’s uber building gene, after reading his self-published book, that I got out my highlighter pens and helped him out by adding some color to the cover.

Printed at a local Ma and Pa printshop, then assembled by hand with a garage sale velo binder, this is a true Do It Yourself venture in bookmaking, financed, he points out, by dumpster diving the trash of others to sell stuff people were too lazy to fix. The marketing he leaves to us micro housing enthusiasts for there is a growing population of would-be tiny home dwellers who can’t get enough of this under the wire lifestyle.

Thus Deek’s book is important not so much because it is another entertaining zine produced by an overly creative young person, but because he is both fed by a movement and contributing a large chunk to it with his mind bending, Houdini like acts of radically small, home-built shelters.

The casual observer might have suspected that there was a backlash to the decades of MacMansioning, embodied by the books of Sarah Sussanka and her Not So Big House concept, but on closer inspection I was personally aghast that most of these books were about living well in less than 2,500 sq. ft. I beat a hasty path back to books published 20 and 30 years ago for it was there, in the wake of the counter culture movement, that I was first informed of the idea that what held people enslaved to corporate jobs were their mortgages. Thus the path to freedom lay in finding a way to live without one.

The live-lightly-on-the-earth simplicity movement revived this concept, most popularly exemplified by Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed, a tiny house on wheels making the rounds of eco minded publications and fairs. And while Jay argues that $150 per square foot is justified in light of the quality of materials used in his beautiful handmade house, the $10,000 to $30,000 cost of materials, plus copious amounts of time aspiring to such perfection, imposes restrictions on the mind that, practically speaking, have more in common with a mortgage.

Freedom being as much about where the mind can go as how one actually manages to escape the shackles of one’s obligations, it shouldn’t be surprising that so many are fascinated by the possibility of truly accessible housing even while living comfortably in a suburban ranch. Enter the DIY backyard tinkerer and consummate recycler constructing tiny free houses from discarded pallets and sidewalk trash much like those who convert gas cars to electric while awaiting a more affordable Tesla roadster. Carpentry, however, is the domain of conventional thinking. We all know what a house is supposed to look like. Scores of books fill the need for constructing sheds, playhouses and tree houses that look just like big grown up houses.

Derek’s book is a far cry from anything so conventional. He aims to inspire with his ideas, ideas that may well earn his book a place in tiny house history. What he ends up doing is reconstructing the mind into accepting what constitutes shelter. Could I sleep in that I asked myself of several drawings that borrowed quite a bit from Japanese capsule hotels. On the other hand I could certainly build it with the space, time and materials I had available.

Having, himself, been inspired by a copy of “Tiny Tiny Houses” by Lester Walker, which he received for his tenth birthday, he understands the importance of such books at a young age and includes a number of whimsical structures and indoor forts that would appeal to a child builder.

On his website, the drawing that convinced me to order the book (which he will mail wrapped in recycled cardboard or whatever lying around) was one showing a tree house platform with a ladder enclosed in a shaft so as to have a locked door for security. Such attention to detail, I realized with delight, promised practical follow through that would further my search for a hut I would be able to and want to build.

In the end it is his more loosely worked out ideas that compel my mind to take up pencil and paper to figure out how I could work it up into something I could use. My mind needed the exercise, but my soul needed the freedom of such thinking to expel the limitations of a system that does not aim to set us free. For such an experience at $15.95 (for a limited time only) this book was a bargain.

by Amanda Kovattana

Recently I was contacted by Michelle from Storey Publishing asking me to preview a book that is coming out in December.

The book is called Compact Cabins and subtitled Simple Living in 1,000 Square Feet or Less. It is written by Gerald Rowan has taught art, ceramics, architecture, and graphic design for more than 30 years. He is currently a visiting professor in the art and architecture department at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He has a strong personal interest in “building small,” and he lives in Pennsylvania.

Okay this is one neat book and really covers a lot. Besides having 50 unique designs that will inspire you, the book is full of useful construction information and the book is divided into three sizes of cabins. Micro, below 300 square feet, mini 300 to 500 square feet and compact from 500 to 1000 square feet.

• It covers ways to include RV materials into your small cabin to make it more efficient.
• The book has a section on using shipping containers in your cabin construction.
• Another section on living off the grid and cabins/houses designed to take advantage of off the grid design.

“Most of us dream of having a small place on a lake, in the mountains, on the shore, in the woods, or even in our back yard. Some dream of a place for privacy and solitude.”

Below are a couple of examples of the cabins and artwork in the book. Floor plans for each cabin are included. You can also pre-order the book from Amazon and will be available December 6, 2009. There timing is perfect for a gift for the tiny house lovers library. Pre-order here: Compact Cabins: Simple Living in 1000 Square Feet or Less; 62 Plans for Camps, Cottages, Lake Houses, and Other Getaways

This tiny cabin is based on ideas gleaned from the travel trailer industry to utilize space very efficiently. In a cabin this small, electric space heat makes sense. This is a 162 square foot Micro Cabin.

380 Square Foot Round House Cabin. A round cabin – how unique! Curved cement blocks are available for building cisterns and farm silos and adapt well to building round cabins. This design calls for a custom-built curved sofa and fold-up table to make the most of the interior space.

Off-The Grid Passive Solar Cabin A

This cabin is only 322 square feet, but the loft ceiling height makes it feel much larger. The passive solar feature is a large glass window opening into the living space. Space heating is provided by a wood-burning stove.

Reprinted with permission from Compact Cabins, published by Storey Publishing, LLC., December 2009.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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