The drawback is for those with slow internet connections as you will not be able to watch it. Simply click on the graphic below and it will take you to the Tumbleweed sales page, there you will learn how to build a backyard cottage Tumbleweed Style. Okay here goes, it’s not perfect so be kind to me

I recently received Ross Chapin’s new book called Pocket Neighborhoods to review and share with you. This is a beautiful coffee table style hard bound book written by Ross Chapin. Ross Chapin is an architect and long-time advocate for sensibly sized houses and vibrant neighborhoods. He leads an architectural and planning firm on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle, Washington, where he has lived and worked since 1982.

This book covers modern day pocket neighborhoods across the country and includes the fascinating history of this type of neighborhood which Ross Chapin discovered while researching the book. The book is published by The Taunton Press in 2011.

What is a pocket neighborhood? Pocket neighborhoods are clustered groups of neighboring houses or apartments gathered around some sort of shared open space — a garden courtyard, a pedestrian street, a series of joined backyards, or a reclaimed alley — all of which have a clear sense of territory and shared stewardship. They can be in urban, suburban or rural areas.

These are settings where nearby neighbors can easily know one another, where empty nesters and single householders with far-flung families can find friendship or a helping hand nearby, and where children can have shirttail aunties and uncles just beyond their front gate.

Photo Credit: Ross Chapin

What Kind of People are interested in Pocket Neighborhoods? All kinds! Singles, Empty-Nester Couples, Families, the ‘Great Generation’, Baby Boomers, Gen-X and Y, Millennials — anyone who wants to live in a close, tight-knit neighborhood.

Photo Credit Ross Chapin

Is zoning an issue for pocket neighborhoods? Most towns and cities have zoning regulations that limit housing to detached, single family homes on large private lots with a street out front. Forward-thinking planners are seeing pocket neighborhoods as a way to increase housing options and limit sprawl, while preserving the character of existing neighborhoods.

Photo Credit Ross Chapin

From my perspective as the editor of the Tiny House Blog I see this as an option for a tiny house community. Ross Chapin has built several pocket neighborhoods using small cottages and I see this as an opportunity for a similar situation using tiny homes. Can you imagine a community built with Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny Houses nestled in a corner of a town or in a more rural setting beside a lake? Or how about a cluster of Scott Stewart’s Slabtown Custom Homes in a similar situation in Arkansas? Something to think about…

You can learn more about Ross Chapin and his work at his website called Ross Chapin. He has also opened a new website and blog dedicated to Pocket Neighborhoods with a lot more information that covers many questions regarding this great idea.

I highly recommend Ross Chapin’s book and it is available at Amazon at a very great price. The list price is $30 and is available at Amazon for $18.66.

Photo Credit Ross Chapin

Photo Credit Grey Crawford

Photo Credit Ross Chapin

Greg and Anne lived a very busy life and Greg served for twenty years as a pastor in The United Methodist Church in Washington DC. As they neared retirement Greg and Anne decided to make some drastic changes in their lives. Greg had roots in Nova Scotia and they started researching real estate in Nova Scotia.

Discovering property on McNutt’s Island with a home that needed restoring it seemed like the perfect place to use Greg’s passion for restoration and a nice quiet place to call home.

The book covers their first year on the island as they learn how little they know about life on an island. They discover new challenges that come along with island living. Meet Skipper and Radar, lobstermen who become Anne and Greg’s teachers and guides. Discover the ongoing battle of the Zulu Spruce that grows like weeds on the island.

Meet the wild sheep that they thought were a romantic part of the island but have some very different sides to  their character also. Discover the difficulty of dealing with garbage and making the crossing to the mainland in fog and stormy weather. Learn about some of the ghosts of the island haunting past. Learn about the lighthouse and the history of pirates. See how Anne and Greg divide the daily labour to keep life going on the island. Join in the festivities of the First Annual McNutt’s Island Pirate Festival and enjoy the wild raspberries scattered across the island.

This is a book for dreaming and relaxing and sharing a simpler life. I highly recommend it and you can purchase the book from Nimbus Publishing for $19.95. Thanks Greg and Anne for sharing your story with us. Stay up to date with their daily life with Anne’s blog here.

Featuring shedworkers and shedbuilders from around the world who are leading the alternative workplace revolution, Shedworking looks at why having a shed office is a greener way of working, improves the work-life balance, and accelerates one’s productivity.

Below are a couple of videos of Alex introducing his new book.

Learn more at Amazon.com: Shedworking: The Alternative Workplace Revolution

“Our simple living journey has taught me that less is more. Having less stuff and no car in my life has helped me establish the priorities of building solid relationships, being debt free and living with less stress.

Success is not defined by whether or not you own a car. In fact, I think it’s just the opposite. The intended function of cars is comfort and convenience. However, cars represent an enormous amount of time and money. Because of the work stress I endured to maintain this depreciating investment, I felt inconvenienced by my cars. By selling the cars, I have more time and money. A surprising side effect of selling our cars was becoming debt-free.”

Five years ago, we lived the “normal middle class” suburban lifestyle. We were newlyweds with flashy rings, living in a two-bedroom apartment, driving two cars, commuting long distances to work and living well beyond our means. The idea of living without a car didn’t seem possible.

By changing our perspective and planning small steps, we learned lessons that simplified our lives and got us out of debt. Going car-free was part of our downsizing process and was one of our first big goals toward living intentionally.

Click here to view more details

I felt so compelled to merge with “Deek” Diedricksen’s uber building gene, after reading his self-published book, that I got out my highlighter pens and helped him out by adding some color to the cover.

Printed at a local Ma and Pa printshop, then assembled by hand with a garage sale velo binder, this is a true Do It Yourself venture in bookmaking, financed, he points out, by dumpster diving the trash of others to sell stuff people were too lazy to fix. The marketing he leaves to us micro housing enthusiasts for there is a growing population of would-be tiny home dwellers who can’t get enough of this under the wire lifestyle.

Thus Deek’s book is important not so much because it is another entertaining zine produced by an overly creative young person, but because he is both fed by a movement and contributing a large chunk to it with his mind bending, Houdini like acts of radically small, home-built shelters.

The casual observer might have suspected that there was a backlash to the decades of MacMansioning, embodied by the books of Sarah Sussanka and her Not So Big House concept, but on closer inspection I was personally aghast that most of these books were about living well in less than 2,500 sq. ft. I beat a hasty path back to books published 20 and 30 years ago for it was there, in the wake of the counter culture movement, that I was first informed of the idea that what held people enslaved to corporate jobs were their mortgages. Thus the path to freedom lay in finding a way to live without one.

The live-lightly-on-the-earth simplicity movement revived this concept, most popularly exemplified by Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed, a tiny house on wheels making the rounds of eco minded publications and fairs. And while Jay argues that $150 per square foot is justified in light of the quality of materials used in his beautiful handmade house, the $10,000 to $30,000 cost of materials, plus copious amounts of time aspiring to such perfection, imposes restrictions on the mind that, practically speaking, have more in common with a mortgage.

Freedom being as much about where the mind can go as how one actually manages to escape the shackles of one’s obligations, it shouldn’t be surprising that so many are fascinated by the possibility of truly accessible housing even while living comfortably in a suburban ranch. Enter the DIY backyard tinkerer and consummate recycler constructing tiny free houses from discarded pallets and sidewalk trash much like those who convert gas cars to electric while awaiting a more affordable Tesla roadster. Carpentry, however, is the domain of conventional thinking. We all know what a house is supposed to look like. Scores of books fill the need for constructing sheds, playhouses and tree houses that look just like big grown up houses.

Derek’s book is a far cry from anything so conventional. He aims to inspire with his ideas, ideas that may well earn his book a place in tiny house history. What he ends up doing is reconstructing the mind into accepting what constitutes shelter. Could I sleep in that I asked myself of several drawings that borrowed quite a bit from Japanese capsule hotels. On the other hand I could certainly build it with the space, time and materials I had available.

Having, himself, been inspired by a copy of “Tiny Tiny Houses” by Lester Walker, which he received for his tenth birthday, he understands the importance of such books at a young age and includes a number of whimsical structures and indoor forts that would appeal to a child builder.

On his website, the drawing that convinced me to order the book (which he will mail wrapped in recycled cardboard or whatever lying around) was one showing a tree house platform with a ladder enclosed in a shaft so as to have a locked door for security. Such attention to detail, I realized with delight, promised practical follow through that would further my search for a hut I would be able to and want to build.

In the end it is his more loosely worked out ideas that compel my mind to take up pencil and paper to figure out how I could work it up into something I could use. My mind needed the exercise, but my soul needed the freedom of such thinking to expel the limitations of a system that does not aim to set us free. For such an experience at $15.95 (for a limited time only) this book was a bargain.

by Amanda Kovattana

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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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

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

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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