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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Leo Babauta of Zen Habits, one of my favorite writers and bloggers, just introduced a new ebook that fits right in with living in a tiny house.

The ebook is called The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life and it is Leo’s goal that the book will help you live a simpler, happier life!

“Simplicity, clarity, singleness: these are the attributes that give our lives power and vividness and joy.” - Richard Halloway

What will this ebook help you with:

* Clearing clutter and reducing your possessions
* Figuring out what’s necessary, and how to be content with less
* Simplifying your schedule, your work, and living a less stressful life
* Creating a minimalist workspace, home, computer, financial life, diet and fitness program
* How to go paperless and digitize your life

The ebook is $9.95, and proceeds (up to $5,000) will go to benefit the non-profit Guampedia.com (more on Guampedia).

Look at the preview below and than purchase the pdf ebook for $9.95 here.

Minimalism Preview

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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The other day I received a package in the mail from Shelter Publications, located in Bolinas, California. They had contacted me earlier in the week to see if I would review some of there books and that they have a book on Tiny Houses in the works.

They sent some terrific books and I have decided to share with you the oldest one, because it has some neat ideas and really gets back to the basics of building construction.

In the classic book Shelters, Shacks, and Shanties: And How to Build Them, D. C. Beard covers a wide array of possibilities for building your own dwelling out of nothing but materials provided by nature. This book was originally published in 1914 and Shelter Publications has chosen to reprint it and make it available again.

D. C. Beard explains how to construct a variety of worry-free shelters appropriate to a natural environment that is by turns both friendly and foreboding. Included are a sod house for the lawn, a treetop house, over-water camps, and an American log cabin. I even found a shanty plan that looked remarkably familiar to the Sonoma Shanty. It just had a lower pitched roof, otherwise the dimensions are almost identical.

Fully recognizing that the outdoorsman builds a shelter with the intention of inhabiting it, Beard explains how to build hearths and chimneys, notched log ladders, and even how to rig secret locks. Illustrated throughout with instructional line drawings, Shelters, Shacks and Shanties goes back to the can-do spirit of the American frontier and belongs in your library of tiny house books.

I really like this book, the sketches are wonderful, the information is timeless. If you are looking for a book to get you back to the basics, this is it.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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Some Turtles Have Nice Shells

by Roger D. Beck

Self-Published in 2002
ISBN 0-9714103-6-4

Four Score and Seventy square feet ago….

No really….

Sharkey’s Book Review of…

Small structures and living spaces are finally getting the recognition they deserve, although there was and still is a sub-set of owners of such that adopted the technique out of necessity. You see our foundations were restricted to no more than eight feet of width and a length of no more than forty feet. Of course, I am referring to small homes built on vehicle chassis, specifically Housetrucks and Housebuses. Many of the owner-builders went to great lengths to finish and furnish their creations with the finest materials and antiques available at the second hand store!

Roger Beck’s much-awaited, often-touted, long sought-after new journal of the craft, “Some Turtles Have Nice Shells” is finally back from the printer’s and it is LOOKING GOOD! It’s a big relief to see this book finally finished.

The process of getting all of the details perfected has been daunting to say the least. Once Roger had done all of the layout and paste-up, the book was turned over to a printer’s agent, who found that the format of the computer files was wrong and that the hundreds of photos that Roger had scanned would have to be re-scanned in a higher resolution. Even once the book had been resubmitted in the correct file format, the initial proof pages showed that a lot of correction was going to be necessary to make the photos appear properly. An additional (and expensive) enhancement process was applied to all of the images, and the proof pages returned for Roger’s evaluation. Still not satisfied with the color and brightness/contrast of many of the photos in printed form, Roger ordered several more rounds of adjustments before the finished product was deemed “ready-to-print”. What all of this means to purchasers of the book is that the quality of the images, the paper and even the binding are all top-notch.

Now that the mechanics of making the book are out of the way, here’s a peek into what’s inside:

I’ve known Roger Beck for years. It was way back in, oh, let me think, 1999, when we first met. Honestly, how two housetruckers with similar interests and shared acquaintances could live in and around the same small city for 25 years and never cross paths….. but that’s another story. The point is, when we did meet, Roger had album after album after album of photos of house trucks and buses. Roger had always wanted to assemble his photos into a book, but never quite found the time to do it. When I told him how much a tattered copy of Jane Lidz’s “Rolling Homes” fetches these days, he was outraged, energized, and inspired, all at once. Roger bought a computer, learned to use it (very well) and scanned many of his photos, doing the layout and researching additional information to feather out his book-to-be into the compleat house truck and bus journal. I often times tell him he didn’t write a book about house trucks and buses, he wrote a dag-blamed encyclopedia.

Anyway, on to the enecyclo…uh, book. This is not a thin collection of widely-spaced images held together with clip art. At 192 pages and nearly 400 photographs, the reader is sure to get a very solid taste of what the housetruck culture was and is about. Both exterior and interior views are presented for the majority of the vehicles depicted, and whenever possible, the identity of the owner is tastefully presented to assist the reader in identifying the truck or bus further into the pages

The book includes construction photograph sequences of Roger’s fourth housetruck, built on a 1952 Federal 5 ton truck chassis, and the roof-raising of Sam’s 1951 White school bus. Either of these photographic essays with accompanying text will prove invaluable to someone considering building their own truck or bus. The many, many images of a wide variety of vehicles serves the reader as a “wish book” and design guide, suggesting a multitude of ideas and options to the would-be builder. Even the casual reader who wishes no more than to browse images of unique and functional small homes will be delighted in the contents of this book.

Roger has put a lot of work into this project and has self-published his book. The price of Some Turtles Have Nice Shells is $29.95, which makes it affordable for common folk. The book can be purchased through Roger’s web site, the address of which appears at the bottom of this review. It is also available through a variety of book sellers, including Powell’s Books, and Roger frequently lists copies of the book on eBay.

Roger was a member of a loose association of crafters known as the Northwest Trading Company, which traveled the Western United States, making stops at craft fairs, where the members would display and market their wares. Trucks and buses were the favored means of transportation of these crafts persons, as they provided shelter, conveyance, shop space and retail display area in one package.

Eugene, Oregon in the 1970’s was ground zero for Northwest Trading Co. and house trucks and buses in general. Fortunately for us all, Roger chronicled much of the construction and habitation of these vehicles with his photographic skills.

Pages 88 through 103 of the book consist of a construction diary of Roger’s fourth housetruck. Following are a few excerpts from that section.

After being parked all winter and drawing the plans, summer arrived and it was time to begin construction. When the frame was lengthened, the layout of the sub floor was started using 4×4’s at two foot centers. The deck was laid on top, giving a solid sub floor. Before the floor was finished, the truck needed a new paint job, This was much easier to do before the house gets in the way.

Framing is done using 2×3 studs on 16″ centers, allowing a 4×8′ sheet of plywood to center on the studs. The wall and the skirt covering the tanks are sheathed with ½” plywood to add shear strength to the structure. It’s best to have your entry door and windows before you start framing so you know what size to build the openings for them.

Starting at the bottom, tar paper is stapled up, covering the sides. Next, the windows are framed in, which takes time if you don’t want them to leak. Corner windows are put on a 45° angle to minimize wind resistance. I learned this first hand from having a housetruck with a flat front. Head winds would wipe me out!

The bevel siding is added, starting from the bottom and working up. Like long shingles, each piece has to be cut to fit around windows and doors, straight and tight. The main roof is covered with 3/8″ plywood. The skylights are cut out, then framed in with 1×6″ wood, protruding through the roof. Removable, hatch-like covers with safety glass are made to fit over the frames.

Finish work is slow, but before long the insulation in the walls gets covered and things start looking better with new wood on the walls. With ceiling and walls finished, the cabinets are started so everything can be stashed away neat and tidy and out of the way. In many ways, a housetruck is like a boat.

Roger Beck built his first house car in 1969 and left L.A. heading north. In the next 7½ years, he traveled the Pacific Northwest doing art fairs, and building three more house trucks, each one getting larger. He also met many other house truck people along the way, and took lots of photos of their “mobile” homes.

He is currently the owner of a full-production cabinet shop, and enjoys collecting a variety of artifacts, including antique tin models of trucks, and has an awesome female action figure miniatures collection, among other things.

For additional information about ordering Some Turtles Have Nice Shells, stop by Roger’s web site at www.housetrucks.com, where you will find a 109 page virtual-tour of the building of his Federal house truck and many more photos of fine trucks and buses.

Some additional background on Roger and the book can be found at Mr. Sharkey’s Bus Barn:

Roger’s 1952 Federal Housetruck: http://www.mrsharkey.com/busbarn/roger/roger.htm

Newspaper article from Eugene, OR “Register Guard”: http://www.mrsharkey.com/busbarn/roger/rg.htm

Book review article from Eugene, OR “Eugene Weekly”: http://www.mrsharkey.com/busbarn/roger/ew.htm

The original book review of “Turtles”, from which this page was taken: http://www.mrsharkey.com/busbarn/roger/shells.htm

Also check out Sharkey’s Bus Barn site: http://www.mrsharkey.com/busbarn/

Written by Sharkey for the (Tiny House Blog)

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I recently received a book to review called Tiny Houses by Mimi Zeigler.
This book is a tiny 7 x 7 inch coffee table style book and is in the spirit of treading lightly on the earth. Mimi brings an international look at over thirty homes under 1000 square feet.

Tiny Houses is published by Rizzoli of New York and it is a beautiful book.

Through mostly pictures and descriptions and floor plans Mimi gives you many ideas of what living small and green is all about. These houses range from practical to conceptional and range from tree houses and pre-fab to floating homes.

A tiny house is an experiment of space but also a challenge to simplify ways of life. This book will inspire the reader to think about architecture and interior design in a new and enlightened way.

Here is what some publishers are saying about this book.

“The houses on display in this handsome volume, all beautifully and vividly photographed, point to more sustainable, less expensive ways to live.” ~Preservation Magazine

“In her adorably scaled-down coffee-table book, Tiny Houses, Mimi Zeiger argues that living small isn’t just ecologically sound but aesthetically pleasing.” ~Time Out New York

Mimi Zeiger is the founder and editor of Loud Paper Magazine, a cheeky architectural digest geared toward young architects. Zeiger also writes for Metropolis and Dwell magazines and teaches courses at SCI-Arc on urban branding and architectural journalism.

The Tiny Houses book is available at the Amazon book store for $19.77, list price is $29.95.

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I have a growing library of tiny house and cabin books and one of my favorite is David and Jeanie Stile’s “Cabins.” This book is jam packed with useful information and if your dreaming of building that tiny house or retreat this is one to add to your library. Below is a synopsis of the book:

Publisher Comments:
A complete guide to building a wilderness retreat, from buying land and getting services, through developing plans and construction methods. All aspects of construction are clearly illustrated and various designs are explored.

Synopsis:
Authors David and Jeannie Stiles give readers all the information they need to build their own cabins — whether it be as a wilderness retreat or a backyard studio. The authors describe each step in the process from buying land to obtaining services, from finding qualified construction help to deciding on and developing plans for a structure that suits their lifestyle and budget. Cabins is packed with detailed illustrations, plans and common-sense advice.

Chapters include classic construction methods: how to build a log cabin, pole-built and stick-built cabin, post-and-beam, stone, cordwood and kit cabins. Construction methods are clearly illustrated in photographs and drawings and the advantages of each are explained in detail. Foundations, windows, doors, insulation, roofing, installing utilities, water and sanitary systems and heating are all discussed.

Many designs are presented as inspiration and to help readers select the cabin that is perfect for them: homesteader log cabin, writing cabin, guest cabin, Japanese moon-gazing cabin, lakeside retreat, pyramid and A-frame, and hillside Mediterranean cabin. The authors include personal reminiscences from successful builders and cabin owners, and discuss furnishings and accessories that can help readers get the most enjoyment out of their newly built wilderness retreat.

Synopsis:
Provides instructions for designing and building cabins in a variety of styles, discussing how to choose the right site, build a foundation, and install water, heating, and electricity.

I highly recommend that you buy this book and Amazon has “Cabins” if you are interested. Below is an example of the illustrations in the book.

Construction Details

Elevations

Floor Plan

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Summer Horton one of our readers pointed me to a cool book review by Kirkuss. I think this book might be a good read for all tiny house lovers. Here is the review:

A restless city poet recounts her experiment with country living.

The idea to swim against the “consumptive current” and move west came to Minato (The Wider Lens, 2004) during a Chicago traffic jam. Increasingly bothered by the global impact her metropolitan existence was having on the environment, the poet packed up and headed to Oregon for graduate school.

But after eight years, even Eugene proved too urban for her, and she moved again, this time to a ten-square-foot cabin that was part of an eight-acre commune on Siesta Lane in the relative wilds of Rainbow Valley, Ore.

Her memoir, a veritable menagerie of thoughts, observations, photos, poems and lovely pen-and-ink drawings by Jan Muir, is the result of Minato’s year or so away, where she discovered as much about herself as the wonders of nature. “

Not so simple—simple living,” she realized early on. Characterizing each of her fellow Siesta Lane residents, the author doesn’t neglect herself, saying she’s a “single woman with ninety-eight part-time jobs trying to figure out how she connects to the greater forces of the universe and to the tiny earwigs that hide in the curled-up seed heads of Queen Anne’s lace.”

Part of this volume’s charm lies in its somewhat fractured composition, which mirrors the author’s state of mind during this transitional period. Short chapters hop from “Incubation” to “Freaks” to “July” to “The Garden,” while loosely conveying the sense of time’s passage as Minato adjusted to her rustic domestic situation.

Living without many modern conveniences—for example, only the commune’s main building had a kitchen and running water—led her to provocative conclusions: “For us it appears to primarily be the mind that evolves, and we then cater our surroundings to our weakening bodies.” She took some radical actions as well, such as getting rid of her cat after he brought home one too many birds.

An evocative record of a year in the woods and an interesting study in enacting one’s beliefs.

You can order now from Amazon here. 

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