Tiny House Blog

Ryo contacted me about his project in Northern California. Ryo has put together a shelter for a very small amount of cash and I think we can all learn from his experience.

Ryo has a very interesting blog and you will enjoy reading it. It is a journal of his experiences in building his hut, so make sure you go and visit it here. I’m going to let Ryo tell his story now.

This past summer, I bought 60 acres of vacant land in northern California, and have been living there part time since August. Sleeping in a tent was fine while it was warm, but as the weather turned colder and wetter, I decided I needed something bigger, warmer, and dryer. I knew I didn’t need or want much; just something big enough for me to relax, cook, and sleep in comfortably. Continue Reading »

I always enjoy finding someone new building a house and especially locally where I can go an observe. I was talking with my neighbor a few houses down who is planning on constructing one himself and he told me that he was helping Jenine Alexander build one in downtown Healdsburg and invited me to come meet her. Jenine has had quite the experiences in her life and I would encourage you to explore her blog and find out more about her travels. Right now though I want her to share her story about the house she is building.

I’m building this enormous tiny house, more accurately, it’s building me. I began with wood from a barn a friend and I took down in Cotati and a 7′ x 16′ utility/ flatbed/ car hauler/ trailer. With each decision, my approach has been to imagine a million other people making the same choice I’m considering. Continue Reading »

Denny Henke wrote me and told me about his cabin/eco village in Missouri. I have posted a few of his photographs but you can view the rest on flickr and visit his ongoing blog called Our Tomorrow. I’ll let Denny tell his story.

I’ve been living full time in my 12×16 cabin since May of 2008. The cabin was built by myself and my brother-in-law, Greg. He’s the carpenter and I the assistant though after building 4 structures I’ve accumulated a good bit of knowledge and skill. I’m on land left to our family by my grandfather.

The property had been a campground of sorts from the 1970’s to the early 90’s so has the somewhat functional remains of an electrical infrastructure and several wells. The area we are using had a well and an old but structurally sound pole-barn style shed. It’s a mix of woodland and meadow with an 18 acre lake on the west side. We’d often talked of building a couple cabins but we never seemed to get started which proved lucky as a tornado hit the far side of the property in 2006. Continue Reading »

Shelley recently sent me this link about Rima and her horse truck hermitage. I really like the rustic look of this home and you could spend hours just viewing everything in Rima’s blog.

Rima is a traveling artist who with Tui her partner have built this unique home to travel around the country selling her artwork.

These pictures will just wet your appetite for what Rima has on her blog.

Rima’s curiosity leads her through the many worlds of words, languages and lettering, books and stories, puppetry, nature and interesting people, music, superstitions, folklore and fairytales, and most of all the otherness that can be found on the periphery of our lives, the strange and grotesque, the absurd and unnerving … that topsy turvy in between place where things are not quite what they seem… Continue Reading »

I wanted to give you an update on Bill’s Solar Tiny House. You can view the first post here. Bill is constructing Michael Janzen’s free plans of the Solar Tiny House pretty much by himself.

Bill just completed installing the windows with some help from his father. He was able to complete the installation one day. Below are some updated pictures of the house with the sheathing completed. The house wrap in place and the roof installed.

Windows Installed

If I have done a post on your tiny house that you have started and you have an update for me, please let me know. I get rather back logged with all the great ideas and projects coming in and I am unable to stay on top of all the projects at times. Please send me an email with pictures and I will do an update on your project too. Continue Reading »

John Labovitz contacted me the other day to tell me about his tiny housetruck project that he is working on. The minute I saw the frame it reminded me of the Cable Car Trolleys that I worked on for a couple of years as they were built using the same steel tubing and looked very similar before being skinned and completed.

I’ll let John tell you more about his plans and his philosophy behind his choice of design and materials.

My overall values in designing the housetruck were simplicity, durability, sustainability, and mobility, which combine to liveability. Although I’ve been inspired by the tiny house movement, the biggest breakthrough was discovering the long tradition of gypsy caravans and British ‘living wagons.’ Continue Reading »

Joe in Michigan sent me his story about what he is doing in his life right now and how he is downsizing.

I have been a tiny house fan all my life and a fan of your website for over a year.

In 1997 I had to sell my 2000 sq ft house in the country and move into a trailer park in town. Not wanting to sell my solar panels and equipment with the house, I installed them on my 1979 camper trailer and parked it on my parents back 40 for safe keeping and the solar camp was born.

Mom was quick to tell me where a good place was to place the fire pit and I had a 4ft by 8ft building for the kids to wait for the school bus moved over into the area.

Last year I put in a sawdust privy and power for the camper trailer and a 35 gallon rain barrel with an outdoor sink in. This spring wanting a better place to deal with the food from the cookouts, I added on to the backside of the privy an Arizona kitchen.

I have been drawing and dreaming of my little house on wheels for my retirement years, I came across your article on a 8ft by 8ft finished house for $9,000 this inspired me to start drawing on the 64 sq ft idea.

Needing a temporary replacement for the camper trailer next year when I remove the old trailer from the frame and build my new 8ft by 22ft little house on wheels, I started the bunkhouse which is 8ft by 8ft with a 4ft covered deck.

I have to date finished the exterior and should have the bunkhouse ready for sleeping in a mouth or two. Next spring I hope to finish up on the desk and closet for a finished and complete project.

Thanks Joe for sharing your project, I look forward to pictures of the completed bunkhouse and will plan to do an update when you are finished. Please keep us posted on your 8 x 22 tiny house on wheels as you design and build it as well.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

Arizona Kitchen

Many of you expressed interest in the availability of the plans for this little red cabin we featured in a recent Tiny House in a Landscape post.

The owner has kindly consented to making these plans available through the Tiny House Blog.

This 14 x 28 cabin is 392 square feet plus a 198 square foot loft. The plans are on two pages, 24”x 36” each and are drawn 1/4” = 1’.

The first page contains four plan views for the foundation, roof, loft, and main floor along with a door & frame schedule, and a window schedule. The second page contains four elevations (front, rear and both sides) some general notes on codes, systems, and the like, and a detailed stem wall section (from footing to roof).

The owner is selling these plans for $149.95 with additional sets available for $15 each if bought within a 90 day period of purchase of original plans. Three shipping options are available. At this time the plans are only available at the Tiny House Blog.

You can purchase the plans on the Tiny House Blog Plans Page.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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We didn’t do everything right when we built The Little House, but I love the things we did do right.

One of those things was to skip the carpeting and instead, we installed laminate flooring that looks like wood.

I put a lot of thought into the flooring because I hate carpet – and here’s why – we have dogs.

Dogs and carpet don’t mix. I would like to say I was the genius who came up with the plan to forego the carpet, but my aunt moved here before we did and was actually the brains behind the plan.

She’s been here since 1999 and her high-quality, laminate flooring still looks almost as good today as it did then, and she has several big dogs running around with their nails.

As well, carpet is just not good here in the country, where the clay is red and seed ticks dwell (seed ticks are tiny little baby ticks that are worse than their grown counterparts and can burrow in carpet).

When we pulled the carpet up to replace it so we could sell our house in the city, I was doubly glad I would never have to deal with carpet again. Even when you keep it clean, the dirt and dust (and I suppose mites) that congregates under the carpet and padding is one of the grossest things I’ve ever seen!

As with most people I know, our primary consideration had to be with cost when building The Little House. Our next consideration was the convenience of cleaning/maintaining a floor with the dogs.

When taking both cost and convenience into consideration, hardwood was automatically ruled out.

While I would have liked to have gone with bamboo, as it is the most environmentally friendly flooring, cost also eliminated that choice as well.

We were left with laminate and I’m very happy with it. In The Little House, we went with a light oak, as the décor is more cabin-based. In The Belle Writer’s Studio, I went with a darker wide wood plank, as the décor there is what I like to consider more “19th century country law office.”

If you’re going to choose a laminate flooring, here’s some tips that made things easy for us:

• In The Little House, we went online and chose a high-quality laminate as the prices were cheaper then the stores, even with shipping. We had the company ship us samples first to make sure it was what we were looking for.
• For both buildings, we chose an easy snap together flooring that uses no glue.
• We haven’t found it to be true that you can’t use laminate in the bathroom due to the risk of water. I suppose it might not be a good idea if it were to get wet all of the time (if you have kids, for example), but we’ve even had an incident where my husband left the shower curtain out and the floor didn’t buckle. Of course, we soaked up as much as we could and put fans on the floor to dry it as quickly as possible.
• We weren’t here for much of the building process on The Little House, so we hired a flooring company to install it for us. BIG waste of money. The snap together flooring is easy and can be done in a small house in a matter of hours. Just make sure you follow the directions. If you have a helper, my husband says it’s easier!
• The one thing I would have done differently was to go with the next higher grade. We went with a medium priced, medium quality floor and we’ve found when things hit it just right, it will dent and even chip.

Guest Post by Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell for the Tiny House Blog

Office Floor

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Yesterday, we looked at a book promoting the Minimalist lifestyle, today I want you to take eight minutes of your time and watch a couple who is living this life style.

Go back to the 1800’s with a couple determined to live in solitude without any modern technology. Dick and Bonnie Cain don’t have electricity, running water, or any other conveniences on their West…

Thank you Robert who brought this movie to my attention and who thought you might like a look at some people who have lived a life dream for 35 years. In a 100 year old adobe home in West Texas, and thank you Texas Country Reporter for putting together such a neat story for us to sit back and enjoy and at least dream about this type of life and break away from our hectic day to day lifestyle we live in today.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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