Tiny House Blog

Peter Sing the designer of the Sing Panel is selling an 8×14 cottage on wheels and is asking $9,800 for you to take it home.

This little cottage weighs in at less than 2700 pounds so can be towed easily. The cottage is ready for you to use as is for an office or spare bedroom, or a kitchen and bathroom could be added and you could have a perfect little cottage getaway or even live in it full time.

The Sing RV cottage is built using the Sing honeycomb product designed by Sing. Continue Reading »

***Sold*** Lorna emailed me yesterday to tell me that the cottage is still available and that she would like to find someone soon to make this little cottage their home. She has also just reduced the price to $15,999.

You can view the cottage at 8283 Valley View Drive in Sebastopol 95472 (exactly one mile outside of downtown Sebastopol just off Bodega Highway) to look at it, you can walk on to the property and look in all the windows. It’s parked at the back of the parking lot and easily visible from the street.

If you want a key to get inside that can be arranged with Lorna’s friend who lives on site, Paula Arico, her cell is 707-217-2496.

Lorna is asking $19,900 NOW $15,999 for the cottage. To view more details visit our previous post.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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The FirstDay Cottage company in New Hampshire offers a house kit which they claim a couple, and a handful of friends, can build in approximately fifteen weekends and for under $45,000. These house kits can be customized for each customer and can be built with almost no carpentry experience. What I found very refreshing about FirstDay is that they insist that their kits are so simple to put together, that they encourage all their customers to contact them frequently to get advice and support throughout the project. They even help to get the owner/builder financing.

While these houses are little larger than the average tiny house, the smallest is under 1,000 square feet. The smallest of the plans is the Basic, which is 16 feet by 30 feet or 960 square feet and costs about $26,900 for the kit.

The FirstDay Kit Includes:

• Instructions and plans
• Posts and beams
• Sheathing and decking
• 2″ High-R Foam Insulation
• Roofing and siding
• Windows
• Interior and exterior doors
• Nails
• Building wrap
• Interior partitions
• Kitchen cabinets

I actually found the FirstDay plans through this couple, who are living the simple life in upstate New York with their young son. They built their own FirstDay as a spec house and then built a tiny cabin in the woods from the scraps left over. The entire project cost them about $900.

By Christina Nellemann for the (Tiny House Blog)

Alex from Sweden at EcoHouseFilm sent me a mobile hunting cabin that is for sale if you are in his neck of the woods. If you’re far away like I am, it is nice for tiny house idea generation.

I like the simplicity of the design, the basic porch that gives you some protection as you enter the house. The cottage has a simple  and usable living area, a bedroom and kitchenette. It has a small heater that keeps it comfortably warm.

To view the listing go here, I used the google translator to interpret the posting.

by Kent Griswold (Tiny House Blog)

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A vintage tourist cabin finds new life—and love—in the Wisconsin woods

The Chicago Home and Garden had a neat article about this vintage tourist cabin. Here is what Gina Bazar has to say about this cool little cabin:

Talk about a labor of love. The resurrection from near-collapse of this modest one-room cottage is a perfect example of such a labor. The last remnant of a 1920s Beardstown, Illinois, “cabin court” composed of multiple tiny frame houses just like it, it is a relic of an era when middle Americans vacationed by giddily road-trippin’ with their new automobiles.

Tereasa Surratt, a creative director and partner at Ogilvy & Mather, whose grandmother lived next door to the broken-down, abandoned cabin, was hell-bent on saving it. “History has value,” says Surratt, who researched the property for years, with the goal of restoring the cabin to its original state. Over its lifetime, the 11-by-11-foot house had served as everything from a pit stop for weary travelers to an illicit gathering place to a hunt club’s cabin to the office of a trucking company. The owner of that company sold it to her in 2006 for $500. Read the complete article here.

Photo Credit: Aimee Herring

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If you love Ross Chapin’s cottage designs as much as I do, you’ll be happy to know that another pocket community is now open in the White Salmon/Hood River area of  northern Oregon. The community is being developed by Smart Development and built by Skyward Construction. The landscape architect is Andrea Flint.

Wyers End is a small community of 18 cottages situated in a grove of mature oak trees with views of Mt. Hood and the Columbia River. The land parcel that the community is situated on used to be a high crime area until Chapin and Smart Development took over. They proposed to the city that the existing streets be narrowed to reduce the impervious surface area and avoid overheating of the microclimate.

Each of the cottages will have a private garden and will share the green spaces and the community building. They will also be situated to take advantage of the amount of natural light that comes in through the numerous windows. The cottages average about 1,100 square feet and include custom built-ins and cabinetry and low-VOC paints. The landscaping will be built for low water use. Parking will be on the community periphery.

“There is a market in tight times for well-designed, thoughtfully-built, smaller homes in a community setting,” Chapin said in Builder Magazine. “Baby Boomers, especially, are looking ahead and reconsidering their options. Most don’t want to end up isolated in a sheetrock castle.”

Photos courtesy of Ross Chapin Architects and Smart Development

By Christina Nellemann

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I recently came across these two companies who design and build small, whimsical backyard and garden

cottages for a very affordable price. EcoScape Outdoors in San Diego, Calif. and Zoe Outdoors in Salem, Ore. are both run by different members of the same family and offer a wide array of unique customizable garden cottage studios and outdoor living products. Their tiny cottages are made with prefabricated wall panels, a roof truss system and floor system that a certified installer can complete in about three or four days.

Both EcoScape Outdoors and Zoe Outdoors are factory direct manufacturing companies which can save the buyer about 50 percent of the construction cost of one of these homes. They offer three sizes: a 10 x 12 cottage for $7,450, a 10 x 16 cottage for $8,450 and a 10 x 20 cottage for $9,450. These tiny homes also offer the following:

• High quality northwest building materials
• Insulated vinyl windows
• Low E glass insulated windows
• Steel insulated entrance door
• Natural, oiled cedar finish
• Architectural roof shingles with a 25-year warranty
• One year manufacturer’s warranty

Neither company provides wiring or plumbing, but a heavy duty commercial grade extension cord for electrical power is provided with each cottage. Having a contractor or electrician wire your cottage is an option after the cottage is built.

Zoe Outdoors also works with churches, shelters and other community organizations to provide cottages for the homeless and families who need emergency shelter. Zoe Outdoors will soon be offering a cottage on wheels.

They also offer distributorship opportunities for someone who would like their own tiny cottage business. They have showrooms in several areas of the country including Seattle, Boise, Tulsa and Las Vegas.

By Christina Nellemann

Trailer Version

Trailer Version

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