Tiny House Blog

This weeks Tiny House in a Landscape was taken by Emily, a geology student from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The picture was taken somewhere in the Yukon and I discovered her blog by accident looking for tiny cabins in the mountains. It is a random photo of a log cabin she took on one of her explorations of the area and I just think it is so cool and fits right in with this feature. You can follow Emily’s blog here. http://moss_agate.blogspot.com/

My name is Grant Kennedy and I live in Prince Edward Island, Canada. I have been following the Tiny House Blog for more than a year when I decided to build my own small house. The outside of the house is finished now and I thought you would be interested in a picture and a brief description. The size of the house is a 24’ x 18’ with a 24’ x 6’ porch on front of it, 432 sq ft. I was planning on building on two floors but I figured with my bad knee and getting older, I didn’t want to be crawling up stairs.

Here are some facts: Designed by myself, built on pressure treated posts, 2″x10″ floors with R-30, 2″x6″ walls with R-20, and roof with R-30, open concept with just a bathroom.

I was originally looking at plans with lofts but with old age creeping up (I’m 45 now) and a bad knee, I thought that a one floor house would be more feasible. I will have an on-demand hot water heater, five small convection heaters and LED lights throughout. I am hoping to have less than a $200 electricity bill even in the winter where we get -40 celsius weather with 7-8 ft of snow.

I have only spent about $10,000 (Canadian) right now for all the building materials which also includes my windows and door, the front entrance set, a one-piece bath/shower combo and my light fixtures.

Thank you Grant for sharing your project with us. We will look forward to an update when you complete the interior.

This weeks Tiny House in a Landscape is a photo I discovered of a small off-the-grid farm for rent in the wilds of British Columbia, Canada.

It has a 450 square foot cabin and is located on 160 acres. It is about 20 minutes to a general store and a gas station, and the person wishing to rent it must be accustom to living off the grid. If you would like to learn more you can visit the kijiji site where it is listed.

Guest Post by JoAnne Leonard

Our story about our little 1998 Aliner camper started two years ago when my husband and I brought home a funny camper with a rotted floor and got the evil eye from our neighbors. We salvaged it from its destiny of the dump from a couple camping friends of ours. They were getting older and had given up on most camping and didn’t have the time, energy or desire to fix the rotting floor, a known problem for this model and year. They had offered it to us a couple years prior, but we didn’t really have the means to deal with it. We were very happy camping in tents as we were lifelong campers ourselves and wanted to keep it simple. But this camper was different, it was simple, a basic popup but without the hassle of canvas, a unique triangle profile and a small foot print (6’3”x12’).

We’d bring the subject up to each other every once in a while until we decided to just go get it. It sat in the furthest corner from their house, the tires sat almost half way to the ground from sitting for so long, a branch had pierced a hole in one of the vents from a bad ice storm the year before and the floor was now growing things under the linoleum that was keeping it together. Looking back now I am not sure how it made it through the 30 mile trip back to our house. Continue Reading »

Smallworks Studios/Laneway Housing Inc. is a design and building company based in Vancouver, Canada. They specialize in small homes and laneway houses which are small cottages or homes that are built on the rear of a property lot, usually behind another house. Their designs range from around 100 square feet to 750 square feet.

Smallworks takes an active role in the entire process of building a small home including site inspection, custom design, permit applications, in house millwork, pre-fab and flat pack material delivery and on site construction management. The company uses LEED accredited designers and will walk a customer through various sustainability and green building options. Premium upgrades for each project include lifetime warranty metal roofing, upgraded siding, millwork and furniture packages and bamboo flooring. Continue Reading »

Bowen Island seems to be an attraction for tiny houses. It’s home to the Eco-Shed by James Glave and is now home to the Quarters house by industrial designer Amanda Huynh in collaboration with Anna Gukov, Lydia Cambron and Emilie Madill. Following nearly a semester of intense research in materials, compact housing and the homelessness epidemic in Vancouver, a full-scale, timber-framed unit was built to house 1-2 residents in need of a simple shelter.

The 8 foot by 8 foot structure has a built-in sleeping loft, a readily available 5-gallon bucket wash basin, a City of Vancouver rain water barrel and modular furniture, which could be easily configured to create a second sleeping space. Because the individual unit does not provide running water or electricity to reduce cost, it would function best in a community of such dwellings with central kitchen/washroom facilities. Continue Reading »