Tiny House Blog

This week’s Tiny House in a Landscape is of some cabins in Iceland and was photographed by David duChemin. David shares wall paper photographs and made this one available for his readers during the month of April. I contacted David and he is allowing me to share his photo on the Tiny House Blog.

David is a world and humanitarian photographer, best-selling author, and international workshop leader. David uses his powers for good and not for evil. Thanks David for sharing your photographic inspiration with us.

Get the wall paper of this image here: http://www.pixelatedimage.com/blog/2012/04/april-desktop-wallpapers/

Guest Post by R Blank (this is a repost from his original blog)

My wife and I have now been living tiny for several months. For those who don’t know, tiny homes (living units under roughly 200sq’) have become increasingly popular in the past couple of years. When we researched many options for different types of tiny homes, we found a lot of information — but very few first-person accounts of the experience.

And, after all, that’s what tiny living actually involves — a fundamental shift in thinking about consumption and space utilization — the rest (what type of tiny home, whether its mobile, how its built, etc) is all just details.

Our Shipping Container from LEED Cabins, in Place, with the Completed Porch and Privacy Fence

Given the increasing popularity of tiny homes I thought it might be valuable to someone out there considering the same to read some of my thoughts on what this experience has been like for us.

In our case, this isn’t a tiny home, so much as a my home-office. But we decided to place this small office structure on the land first, before building our home. Our land is 30 miles away from the nearest town (where ‘town’ is quite loosely defined; we’re literally 20 miles away from the nearest service at all, which is our post office), which makes development quite challenging. So we started small, so we could establish a base of operations without too much trouble (that it took us a year to even get this far, is an entirely separate story). Continue Reading »

by JT

My friend and I rode our motorcycles over to the Bighorn Canyon in the Pryor Mountain Range near Lovell, Wyoming. While we were there we took these pictures of these original cabins.

To get to these cabins you need to take Rt 14 A over the Bighorn Mountain towards Lovell, Wyoming and take a right onto 37 which takes you into the Bighorn Canyon Recreation area, you have to go through Wyoming on 37 into Montana and the cabins will be off 37 on the left side.

It was really interesting to see what the pioneers lived in and compare what they had to what we have. Hope you like the pictures as much as I loved taking them. I also have some pictures of Wild Bighorn Sheep and Wild Horses we took while in that canyon.

[View with PicLens]

Guest Post by Daniel Sokol

I started my container business because I wanted one for myself. My goal was a practical, well designed, cost-effective living space. Being an interior contractor, I had the skills for the finish work but never worked with a shipping container.

Everything I saw online was either an extremely expensive “one off unit” or renderings of proposed containers. My research didn’t yield enough useful construction information so I learned as I went along and made a lot of mistakes. The learning curve was a wonderful experience and, after building several containers, am still learning and experimenting with different components and designs.

A shipping container, used as the primary construction unit, has almost unlimited possibilities for any living environment (desert, mountains, forests, etc.) Although the
housing industry is in a major transition – along with our country – I believe there is a future for small, energy efficient, well designed living. Continue Reading »

Here’s a new mini-video- part of my freebie/redneck windows for cabins/budget tiny homes series….with some other news/yappage on our summer building workshop (July 9th in MA) and more. We’ll also be starting that micro-design contest (details to come) semi-soon- and thanks for agreeing to be a guest judge. We have quite a panel already, including Jay Shafer, Alex Pino, David And Jeanie Stiles, Michael Janzen and more- we’ll post the details (and the HUGE array of tiny-house-related prizes) soon on Relaxshacks.com. Its gonna be real fun/wild! Meanwhile, while you perhaps check out the new vid, its off to work to finish some work for this weekend’s shoot for Make Magazine, AND for “The Tree-Rex”- a treehouse/micro-home (small-scale, but a useable/inhabitable prototype) that will be, yup, shaped like a dinosaur- arms, tail, and all! We might keep this near my property long enough for this summer’s workshop attendees to check out first hand- as well as 3-4 other cabins I have on the lot.

-Derek “Deek” Diedricksen relaxshax.com

Justin Magnuson invited me to check out their park model cabins and I thought you might enjoy them too.

As campground owners in Hayward Wi. we are always looking to bring in new campers to our resort. For 4 years we were strictly RV’s, 5th wheels and tent camping. After doing extensive research we decide to start up Namekagon Cabin’s.

More and more campgrounds and resorts are moving to park models for seasonal sites and rentals.

Namekagon Cabin’s are built to RPTIA standards and we are in the process of becoming a RPTIA Park Model manufacturer. We have built and sold 2 cabins with both being used as seasonal sites at Camp Namekagon. We have had great response on both cabins and have had many others interested in purchasing one of our cabins. Continue Reading »