Eric Rochow of GardenFork recently spoke with Deek Diedrickson, microhome builder and author of the new “Humble Homes, Simple Shacks” book in an episode of GardenFork Radio.

Deek and Eric (two men cut from the same cloth) discuss the merits of publishing your own book, using recycled and curbside found materials for tiny homes, how to build and anchor a treehouse and how Deek is able to make a living with his various building, music and drawing hobbies.

They also talk about Deek’s future plans which include teaching a few of the Tumbleweed Tiny House workshops, building a houseboat, a treehouse workshop and writing and publishing another book.

You can download the episode from iTunes or you can listen to it on the GardenFork website.

Photos courtesy of Relaxshacks.com.

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

(This information is for the UK not the United States)

Getting a surveyor on-board for your tiny house project can seem like a relatively daunting step. It can be the moment where your tiny house makes its first real steps into becoming a reality. That said, it can also bump up the expense of the project, so it is not a decision that will be taken lightly by those with grandeur objectives for their tiny home.

It should go without saying that it won’t be necessary to bring the technical expertise of surveyors into smaller micro-house projects. There are circumstances, however, where you will bring in the expertise of builders, architects, and indeed, surveyors.

With this in mind we’ll look at the value a surveyor will bring to your project and the circumstances that would predicate this decision.

This article will provide an overview of the role a surveyor plays in the construction of buildings and look at why they may add value to your projects.

There are three factors that will determine whether you will consider using a surveyor:

• The size and complexity of your project
• The budget for the project
• Your prior experience building

Of these three factors, the size and complexity of the project is ultimately the most important. (These however, are often defined by the project’s budget.)

In any new building project, the design is likely to chop and change as the structure begins to take shape. Let’s have a look the responsibilities of a surveyor in a construction project.

Cost Management
The role of a surveyor from your point of view boils down to two words: cost management. On smaller projects, this task can straight forward to manage yourself, but with any job of a significant cost, it’s not recommended you go it alone.

Why?

At the start of any project, you’ll have an approximate idea as to what it is going to cost. There are always (always) unforeseen changes to the project that can cause its costs to escalate.

Whilst this deviation may not be a major problem in small projects, in larger ones they can add up and jeopardize the projects chance of completion.

An architect may have an idea about cost, but they are not qualified to account for the management of building costs as they change over time. The surveyor’s cost management role continues throughout the project,
particularly in accounting for the value of a builder’s work on a month-by-month (or week-by-week) basis.

This isn’t to imply your builders will pull the wool over your eyes, it’s simply a means of giving you confidence that the project is being completed on-time, on-cost, and to sufficient quality.

For example…
As the home begins to take shape, you decide to make a change to the home’s design; for the sake of argument, adding a window, which the builder quotes at $3,000.

A surveyor will audit this quote to ensure the cost is right. You may be adding a window, but you’ll be losing cladding, so money could be saved here.

Your surveyor will be involved in material procurement as well as the negotiation of the builder’s contract, ensuring a fair price as well as the completion of the work to a high standard.

By employing the services of a surveyor for help with the construction of your tiny home, you will introduce a series of checks and balances to the project, helping to fix the cost.

Anyway, that’s my overview of the value a surveyor could bring to your tiny house build. If you’ve any questions, leave them as a comment and I’ll do my best to try answer them.

I love to decorate for the Holidays and had a lot of fun creating a “White Christmas,” inside my tiny home. To draw the eye upwards in my tiny retreat, I lined the upper shelf with faux candles for fire safety and live holly that grows wild on my land. I also used many vintage garage sale and thrift store finds to pull together a vintage Christmas style this year. I added lots of white candles and a few silver vintage Christmas trees and bulbs. Adding Epsom salts and shredded white plastic along the window sills and fireplace mantle, gives the effect of glistening snow. Fresh baked goodies and fresh Organic milk sit on the old farm table waiting for Santa and as they fill the tiny home with a wonderful aroma.

Happy Holidays & Many Blessings from Tonita’s tiny house.

Visit Tonita’s blog to see more pictures. http://shabbychictinyretreat.blogspot.com/

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Great little sketch Deek and thanks for sharing it with us!

As for inside, I wanted the perfect tiny tree. I bought a beautiful 14 ft. noble fir and lopped off the top 2 ft. With the bottom part of the tree, I lopped off all the branches and made a 10 in. wreath for the front door, and used the rest of the boughs for a greenery display that rested on the tongue of the trailer.

Moving from a 3,000 sq. ft. loft in the city to a 700 sq. ft. house in the mojave desert was no small feat. As you well know, we gave up a lot of frills when we made the transition to tiny house living, including eschewing annual Christmas tree and most holiday decorations. However, each year around this time, our nostalgic sides emerge and so we try to re-invent the holiday traditions for small-space living and in a manner that treads lightly on the earth.

My husband is a sculptor, and several years ago, he made a giant red star as one component of an art installation that he installed in a Sacramento, California art gallery. That star had been collecting dust ever since, but this year, the time seemed ripe to dust it off, add some bulbs, and hang it on the kitchen wall. Of course that got us both in the holiday mood, so I surveyed our living room. We needed something more, I decided, and so I started stringing Christmas lights on our tumbleweed (I’d collected it some time in mid-summer and had given it center stage on top of our curio cabinet). Then, in an inspired moment, I recalled some kanji flash cards that I’d purchased for an art project from a seller on Etsy, I quickly grabbed them, and Geoff and I took turns adding cards to the tumbleweed until there was only one left. That one we added to the very top. But first, we looked at the back to read which word ended up being the “tumbleweed topper.”

The card was ‘Megumi,” which means blessing.

Kerri Tuttle, (owner, Casa Wabi Sabi) https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.309264132434785.90514.286641701363695&type=3

I made tiny gingerbread houses that are meant to be perched on the edge of a mug of hot chocolate.

I made a few versions to figure out how to make one that wasn’t so top heavy that it would flip off the mug. I also was interested to see how small I could get away with and still fit on both large and small cups. I generally followed the size of my The Mini Gingerbread House Kit (though, those pieces don’t fit together as nicely as I’d have liked).

See the article and full instructions at notmartha.org.

Travis & Becky from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. See our previous post on Pine Top Homestead here.

Well we did a few things to our homestead, including adding a shop building for me to our place and added a raised area for parking for a future carport area. We continue to build as we go. I’ve taken some time to decorate for our first holiday season in the new place. I added some lighting to the front of the house and added two holiday solar lights to our carved bears of our entrance. Yes, I carved those.

Actually, that’s what I do for a living. I’m a full time chainsaw carving artist and do carvings of all sizes. Like tiny houses I love doing tiny bears that make perfect gifts as well. I attached a sample photo of one that is a black bear I do that can decorate any tiny home. He is only 12″ tall and 8″ wide. I will soon have a page folks can visit to see my work. I do every carving one at a time and each one is different making it a true piece of rustic art.

Becky and I love our homestead here in the Ozarks. We wish you and yours a very happy holiday season.

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Here is what I would like you to do. Take photos of your decorated tiny home, interior, exterior, or both and send them to me at tinyhouseblog [AT] gmail.com. Also include a short paragraph explaining what you did to your home. I will then pull together a post showing off everyone’s home and share it with you on the the Tiny House Blog.

Please have all photos and descriptions to me by December 20. Thank you for your participation.

“TINY: A Story About Living Small” is a short documentary about Christopher Smith’s process of building a tiny house from scratch with no building experience in the mountains of Colorado. The film also follows the lives of other families around the country who have downsized their lives to less than 400 square feet.

The project began back in February, when Christopher, also co-director, impulsively bought a plot of land with the dream of building a small cabin from scratch, himself. That cabin turned into a tiny house on wheels when he learned that building codes in Park County, Colorado would require him to build a house of at least 600-square feet. He realized that a house on wheels would allow him to bypass these laws, and the more that he learned about tiny houses, the more he liked the idea of minimally impacting the land he had bought by simply parking his small home on it, instead of digging a foundation into the ground.

Christopher, who has a background in filmmaking, happened to be looking for a film project at the time and I (Merete—the other half of the “TINY” team) nudged him to begin filming his building process. I remember seeing his excitement about establishing a home for himself—on his own terms and of his own design in a landscape that he
loves, and realized that his story of would be a great way to tell the larger story of the tiny house movement, profiling others who feel that living smaller allows them to have more satisfying, comfortable lives.

Nine months later, the exterior of the house is complete and the interior is well underway (the project has taken much longer than we expected, but we think it’s reasonable to say that it will be complete by January of 2012). In addition to building, we’ve also travelled around the country interviewing other tiny house owners, like this visit with Daniel Aragon in Telluride, below:

We’re interested in the ways that downsizing allows people to live more sustainable lives—both environmentally and financially. But most of all, we’re interested in exploring the idea of “home”—how we find and create the places where we feel most comfortable and at-ease.

After all, Christopher’s process of constructing his own tiny house is as much about building a life that feels right, as it as about the house that will contain it.

The filmmakers behind “TINY: A Story About Living Small” visit Derek Diedricksen, the micro-architect and author who has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Readymade and MAKE Magazine.

If you would like to share your own experience of living small with us, or know of a tiny house that we should profile, please email us speakthunderfilms@gmail.com and let us know!

TINY on Kickstarter

Right now until December 15, we’re running a fundraising campaign for the film on
Kickstarter.com.

You can visit our project on Kickstarter and choose from a variety of rewards—including an invite to the online premier of the film, a signed DVD, access to special “Behind the Scenes” footage, even a weekend in the tiny house—in exchange for backing our project. All of the money that we raise will go towards post-production costs of the film editing, recording the original score, sound editing, and sending the film to a finishing house.

Please visit Kickstarter now and help us make us bring the experience of living small to as many people as possible!