Tiny House Blog

When a custom home builder and an architectural designer decide to build a tiny house together, there is a guarantee that something special will be born. Shane and Carrie Caverly of Clothesline Tiny Homes are currently living in their new 144 square foot baby and are also available to design, consult and build custom homes for anyone looking for a simpler lifestyle. The married couple decided they were fed up with paying rent and mortgages and having nothing to show for it, so with their 30+ years of combined building skills they drew up their own design that is timeless, clean, and modern.

So why the funny name?

“Shane thought of it!” Carrie said. ”I came up with about a hundred names, including Roadrunner Tiny Homes (which I still think is awesome) but none of them were sticking. We were out in the backyard at our former rental house, next to the clothesline, and Shane said ‘What about Clothesline Tiny Homes, because it’s so small you’re going to need a clothesline.’” Continue Reading »

Charles Finn might just be the ultimate tiny house Renaissance Man. He’s a self-taught woodworker, an author, freelance writer, editor of the High Desert Journal, a literary and fine arts magazine, and his custom microhomes also allotted a full color spread in Lloyd Kahn’s “Tiny Homes, Simple Shelter” book.

Charles is originally from Vermont, but lived in Japan for a few years and admired the Japanese tea house designs. He eventually found himself in British Columbia living in a 7×12 foot vardo made by a woodworker friend. The vardo had no electricity or plumbing, but did have a 3-burner propane stove, a Jøtul woodstove and a set of deep-cycle batteries to run his laptop. After his first experience in a tiny home, he built his first “microhome” in Potomac, Montana out of lumber dismantled from old barns. The 8×12 foot cabin with a five foot loft became known as the Potomac Cabin. Continue Reading »

by Benjamin Vine
rdp architects
Hastings, East Sussex, England

When our Octogenarian clients came to us in 2010 with the idea of converting a tired leaky small trapezoidal garage into an artist studio with accommodation we jumped at the chance. The brief was to take the existing unusable garage and create a self-contained, multi-role building that can be used for storage of general items at the front, as a bright artist’s studio and also as temporary accommodation for visiting family and guests.

Located in the Ancient Seaside Town of Hastings, on the south coast of England we are used to dealing with tight sites and designing around listed buildings whilst maintaining sympathetic design, required for most of the town’s conservation areas but this was the first conversion of a garage. Being located in a conservation area we took great care to design the Stannexe [named by the Client, a combination of “Studio” and “Annexe”] to enhance the locality through the use of quality finishes whilst having an individual style.

Despite strong opposition by the local Planning Department, permission was eventually gained for the Stannexe through Planning Appeal.

The Stannexe gets its unique form from the shape of the original garage, it was designed so that when viewed from the nearby street a passer-by would simply see a slate roof and gable end typical of many buildings in the vicinity. The act of maintaining this roof line along the side viewed from the street created the tall side and rear elevations that give the building such an individual character. Continue Reading »

Named after a simple, yet valuable commodity throughout history, Spice Box Homes is the vision of Colorado residents, Edwin Lindell and Chris Curry. They wanted their tiny house company to reflect their own love of the outdoors and concern for environmental impact, and felt that they could create a similar commodity through building, living, and educating.

Spice Box homes started in 2010 as an alternative to renting. When Edwin was finishing up college in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, he got tired of paying rent and decided to construct a tiny home on a trailer that could be moved every six months.

“Chris Curry, my business partner, had built a similar dwelling for himself a few years back to combat the same issues, just not on a trailer.” Edwin said. “Once our prototype was constructed and tested for seven months, we decided to hit the ground running to build a company, lifestyle, and adventure for our community, friends, and our environment. We work to construct custom homes that resemble our clientele and create better living patterns.”

The homes are built from reclaimed materials and include passive solar heating and efficient appliances. The company subcontracts all the electrical, plumbing, metal stud fabrication, insulation and roofing to ensure quality construction. Continue Reading »

Barbara Techel is a writer who recently finished her first adult nonfiction book in memorial to her wheelchair-bound dog, Frankie. Frankie’s story and other stories about animals who have changed Barbara’s life were envisioned and brought to life in Barbara’s 10×12 foot writing studio which sits just behind her 1,100 square foot house in Wisconsin. Even though Barbara still lives in the larger house, she has been actively thinking about tiny spaces ever since reading Tammy Stroble’s new book You Can Buy Happiness (and It’s Cheap).

“I’ve begun smart-sizing the stuff in my home, donating many things to second-hand shops as we begin to think about moving to a tiny, or least a tinier home, in the future,” Barbara said. “When I started telling my husband about tiny home living and subscribing online to tiny house communities and blogs, he really embraced the idea also.”

Her tiny studio was built over the course of 3-4 weeks by her husband, who’s a contractor, and has been decorated in a cottage style by Barbara. Her husband, seeing that his wife spent a lot of time reading and relaxing in her little space, named the studio MySpace.calm. Continue Reading »

The Home & Garden Centre in Monmouthshire, Wales has a large selection of garden cabin kits that are currently only delivered to Wales, England and the Scottish Lowlands, but I saw that some of the designs and styles of these kits contains some details not seen in other kit structures and which could be translated over to other stationary tiny houses.

Some of these finished kits have built-in decks and covered porches, large windows, double doors and sit well in a garden or on a deck. The company sells kits for traditional and contemporary style log cabins, log cabins that will fit into the corner of a piece of property as well as smaller structures like saunas and and tool sheds. The packages come in complete kit form with detailed instructions for installation and optional extras like insulation kits and underfloor heating. The sizes of the cabins range from about 50 square feet to about 215 square feet. They range in price from $2,200 to just under $5,000. Continue Reading »