Tiny House Blog

On my last trip to Sebastopol, California. I was able to visit Jay Shafer’s Epu. He has moved it to a new location within town, but still offers open house tours on the first Saturday of each month from 2-4 p.m. My husband, Harry Thomas, a semi-professional photographer took a few photos that I thought were a interesting and different view of Jay’s sweet, little house. The sleeping loft is a great place to hide.

By Christina Nellemann for the (Tiny House Blog)

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Well, I’m finally getting this post up. I’ve wanted to for quite a while and somehow it got put aside. I had been in communication with Gerry Shaw while he was building his Tumbleweed Tiny House Company Epu, which is the same home that Jay Shafer lives in and wanted to tell you more of his story. Here is what Gerry has to say about his build:

Well the move was a bit hairy as it was full on winter when we started then a huge rain storm when we arrived in Victoria.  The distance was ~800 KM and we did it over a full day leaving at 4 AM.  We had one ferry crossing.  We wrapped the house in leftover home wrap and padded the front and pack with insulation panels to prevent any windows from  breaking and keep as much muck off the house as was possible.  When we arrived everything was intact.

I haven’t had much time to ‘finish’ it but it’s very livable.  My plan wasn’t to complete the bathroom as I’m still not sure how I want to prevent water freezing and what sort of toilet system I’m going to use so that will be a summer project along with the porch roof and some trim.  I might redo the cabinets at that time as well since the ones I built were done in hours on the last day before the move.

The closest thing I’ve built before this was an end table that didn’t turn out that well  Hiring an experienced friend to mentor and help me was the best decision I made and the house would not have turned out as well as it did without her help.

Living in it has been great.  The proportions are amazing and the layout gives the impression of it being much larger than it is since you have about 4 distinct rooms in the house (great room, kitchen, bath/closet – tiny, and a very private bedroom.

Costs are about $15,000.  Trailer, windows and labor were about 2/3rds of the cost.  I still need to install the bathroom and hot water system.

Here are three galleries that are open to the public to view.  I’ll reply (in time) to any questions people ask me.

To view Gerry’s gallery of pictures go to the three links below.

• http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=71737&l=649fc&id=563415667
• http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=70976&l=c733e&id=563415667
• http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=58669&l=dd438&id=563415667

If you would like to get plans to build your own Epu, visit the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company website.

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