Tiny House Blog

I recently featured a teardrop trailer builder in Eugene, Oregon on the Tiny Yellow Teardrop blog and was pleased to find out that the family-run Oregon Trail’R company is one of very few companies to offer teardrop trailer kits. These types of kits can be perfect for people who are interested in building or owning a teardrop trailer, but don’t possess the skills, time or tools to build one completely from scratch.

Jon and his brother Sawyer of Oregon Trail’R create and supply a solid foundation for their FronTear style trailer. This includes precut walls, a floor, doors, bulkheads, partitions and spars. The buyer can do all the assembly themselves or Oregon Trail’R will begin the build and the buyer can finish it themselves. The buyer supplies the frame and chassis, galley and interior cabinetry, lighting and any other finishing details. Oregon Trail’R can also supply a custom frame designed for a 5×8 foot trailer for $1,300. Continue Reading »

by James Kinkaid

I have been working on a tiny house project since June, when I found a 1948 Trotwood camper for sale alongside the highway here in Ohio. I purchased it, complete with original ice box, for $350.00 delivered. I renovated the inside first, then had my neighbor Tim help me drag it out into the woods behind my house. I painted the outside and built  deck from reclaimed lumber from the Habitat for Humanity store near me.

I am a teacher, so I got some of my techie kids involved in designing and building off the grid energy technology for the project. They built a pop can heater designed to heat the inside space with passive solar heat, a solar panel to charge a 12 volt battery for lights, an outdoor wood-burner to channel warm air into the camper, a water collection canopy and filtration system, and an outdoor privy. Continue Reading »

On a fall trip to Oregon, I saw what looked like a tiny brown house parked in a truck and trailer rental lot in Klamath Falls. The owner told me that it was a summer concession trailer built specifically for serving coffee and sweets. It is 8×15 and about 3,500 lbs. and looked so much like a tiny house that I was wondering if other concession stands could also be turned into a small house on wheels.

Concession trailers are created specifically for serving food or beverages on the road or in parking areas. They range from mobile food trucks to trailers towed by larger vehicles. The design of concession trailers will sometimes reflect what they sell and will be decorated with a tropical theme for Thai food or a classic 50′s theme for hot dogs and corn dogs. Most concession trailers are equipped with industrial and public food-grade equipment or sometimes they are stripped so you can install your own equipment. Many of them already contain the necessary plumbing for water, propane and electricity. Concession trailers can range in price from about $40,000 to about $6,000. Continue Reading »

For this Christmas Eve, I thought I would do a post on a couple of classic, red cabooses that have been made into the offices of the beautiful Osmosis Day Spa in Freestone, California. Osmosis is located in the tiny hamlet between Santa Rosa and Bodega Bay and features a Japanese-style retreat with bonsai, bamboo and Buddha. The spa offers massages, mud baths and their signature cedar enzyme bath.

Each of the recycled train cabooses are located in the backyard of the spa and hold storage areas and computer equipment. They are also nice places for the staff to hang out and have lunch. Over 25 years, the garden has grown up around each caboose, making them look as if they’ve sprouted out of the ground.

The Osmosis Spa is one of the greenest spas in the world. The spa recycles water from its own wetlands and uses the water for local irrigation. The spa is a founding member of the Green Spa Network and uses sustainable practices in its business.

Photos by Christina Nellemann

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

by David Lacey

The X-Permit Cabin is an exercise to create a livable space that will be built on a salvaged travel trailer frame. It will be self sustainable, off grid, and will be built without building permits because it is a “travel trailer” and will be registered as such. The site is beside the ocean in Canada. The actual location will be revealed as time goes on. The point of this is to circumvent onerous permits and inspections that come with “permanent” structures. XPC will be an exercise in civics, construction, and innovation. I hope you follow us as we move forward.

Certainly, “tiny homes” have been built before and many are like the one we are building, on a trailer, for various reasons. This one is a personal experiment in building a livable space in a maximum of 135 square feet. There probably won’t be “grand innovation” involved, but the completed cabin on wheels must have the charm and friendly atmosphere of an old seaside cottage distilled into the space allocated. Continue Reading »

by Dan

About 4 years ago, when our first born was only a year old, we caught the road tripping bug and decided to buy a small travel trailer. We began traveling locally in California and Arizona and fell in love with the lifestyle.

A year later, as we were expecting our second child, we upgraded to a 25-foot Airstream and began contemplating longer and more extensive road trips. Being self-employed in the software industry, we were able to work from anywhere. Even though our home in California was a small bungalow less than 1,000 square feet, we felt like it was a lot of space for our little family of 4.

When our second daughter was just 5-months old, we packed up and left our house for a cross country road trip. Unlike most other road trips, this one was not a vacation but rather a working, living, and learning experience on the road. For the next 4 months, we lived in our Airstream with less than 200 square feet of space. We learned to live small, conserve our resources and were surprised that we were happier than ever. Continue Reading »