Eric Rochow of GardenFork recently spoke with Deek Diedrickson, microhome builder and author of the new “Humble Homes, Simple Shacks” book in an episode of GardenFork Radio.

Deek and Eric (two men cut from the same cloth) discuss the merits of publishing your own book, using recycled and curbside found materials for tiny homes, how to build and anchor a treehouse and how Deek is able to make a living with his various building, music and drawing hobbies.

They also talk about Deek’s future plans which include teaching a few of the Tumbleweed Tiny House workshops, building a houseboat, a treehouse workshop and writing and publishing another book.

You can download the episode from iTunes or you can listen to it on the GardenFork website.

Photos courtesy of Relaxshacks.com.

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

“We are refining the entire process of living as ski bums,” Zack said. “It is really about figuring out what you do and don’t need. For me, I want to ski and there isn’t much else that I need.”

Initially, the group thought they would take the trip in a van with a wood stove – similar to one that Zack lived in in the parking lot of Mt. Baker. But, after seeing some of the Tumbleweed tiny houses, the crew decided a custom built house would meet all their needs.

“Zack (who works as a carpenter in the summer) built the tiny house over the course of seven weeks,” Molly told me as the group made their way up to Big Sky, Montana. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone work that hard every day with no breaks. It was a labor of love.”

While building the tiny house, Zack and his crew had to deal with snow piling up on their open frame, a freak cold snap and a tree falling on the tiny house. Zack utilized some reclaimed pieces of wood, doors and windows and re-used some cherry trim from an old job site.

The tiny house has a loft that sleeps two people, plus a “drawbridge” bunk bed that comes down from the loft and a pullout sofa bed. A storage area above the door hold ski and camera gear. There is no bathroom or shower, but there is a kitchen sink and a hot water heater as well as a small refrigerator. The group relies on hostels and the kindness of friends and strangers for their bathing needs. The tiny house has electricity, a battery and generator, and the skiers cook with a toaster oven and a two burner propane stove. The handsome, French wood stove came from a mill in the old mining town of Gold Hill, Colorado.

“The only meals we’ve really cooked are breakfast and maybe some bagels,” Molly said. “We’ve yet to do a full-blown dinner. We are usually too tired from skiing all day.”

The ski bums and their tiny house have had extremely warm receptions from the places they’ve visited. Firewood has been gifted to them when they are out during the day and they have even received some Secret Santa gifts. Molly also said that her parents, who are in their 60′s, also want a tiny house.

As the group makes their way around to various mountains, Molly is also impressed with how easy the living is in a tiny house – even as the only woman living with four men.

“They are really tidy,” she said of her fellow ski bums.

Photos and videos courtesy of Outdoor Research

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

The Mighty Cabana is pre-cut from solid wood and is connected by a patented building system for strength and ease of construction. They can be used as a small house, a small business, a vacation home, an artist studio, pool house or storage shed.

The Mighty Cabana comes in two configurations: the Cabana Series and the Gable Series. The Cabana series starts at $5,240 for a 10×12 foot structure and goes up to $7,520 for a 12×16 foot structure. The Mighty Cabana Gable Series starts at $4,790 for a 10×12 foot structure and goes up to $7,450 for a 12×16 foot structure.

Cabana Series Interior

Cabana Series Interior

Gables Series

Gable Series Interior

The price includes:

• Treated floor joists, plywood floor and skids
• Pre-cut 2×6 T&G SPF solid walls and timber with Glulam columns
• A 60” porch roof (Gable) or 36” roof overhang (Cabana)
• 2×6 T&G SPF roof decking on Glulam wood roof beam
• 30-year black composition roof shingles
• Vinyl sliding glass door system
• Vinyl windows
• Western Red Cedar exterior trim package, glue and fasteners
• Free customer support

Delivery of the Mighty Cabana is included up to 30 miles of Tacoma WA. There is a $2.00 per mile charge beyond 30 miles. Each Cabana can be connected to an on- or off-grid electrical system.

Photos courtesy of Pan Abode

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

Manu, who is a designer who creates custom furniture, wanted the home to be eco-friendly as well.

“Little and low-priced to me is green,” he said to Arizona Central.

The tiny house contains a small kitchen/dining area, a living room, one bedroom with a walk-in closet and a bathroom with a sunken tub. From the front door of the house, every room is visible except the bathroom. A full size washer and dryer are inside a closet and a tiny office area utilizes a vintage sewing-machine cabinet as a desk. In the kitchen the appliances are smaller than average and the eating area is a steel breakfast bar. The couple had a stove custom made and they use Japanese shoji screens to separate the bedroom and living/cooking area. In fact, every door in the house is a sliding screen door.

The couple’s home has a beautiful, simple design but also contains vintage and inexpensively refurbished items. For example, the bathroom sink is made of a $2 bamboo serving tray from Goodwill and the sunken tub was crafted from leftover pieces of marble tile. They call their style “shanty-city chic.”

In addition, since the home is located in Arizona, the spacious, covered deck also gets a lot of use.

Photos courtesy of Gavin Parsons and azcentral.com

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

December 3rd, 2011 is the final deadline, so sharpen your wits and get that essay in if you have not done it yet but have been dreaming of the possibilities.

Thanks for being part of this inspirational offering that hopefully will seed great things in everyone’s lives just through the positive visualization and realization that they can help inspire others to do something like this in their parts of the country too. Thanks for being a part of the dialogue that may help make the transition to Pure Salvage Living possible.

Click here to enter now: http://tinytexashouses.com/?page_id=131

The huts are made with 2×2 Red Swedish Pine frames for durability and the 8×8 pressure treated legs and subframe hold up the structure. The decks are pressure treated to resist moisture. Pine boards are used for the interior and the roofs instead of plywood and each hut is finished with galvanized hinges and locks. Each hut is also painted with an environmentally friendly water-based paint.

Many of these beach huts in the UK have storage, seating and dining options, gas or electric burners and sinks. With a little ingenuity, maybe a bed and a bathroom can be added on to create a tiny house on stilts.

Beach huts have been popular in the United Kingdom for over 250 years. The original beach huts were tiny houses on wheels that Victorian sea bathers would use to change out of their clothes at the same time the hut was being pulled by a horse directly into the ocean. The bathers would then be able to step directly into the ocean without having to show their modest bathing gear which usually consisted of skirts, pants and pantaloons.

Later on the huts lost their wheels and became more permanent fixtures on the beach. Some beach huts have been owned by families for generations and some pre-war huts have sold at auction for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Photos courtesy of James Ward Beach Huts

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

The story is about a Troll family who live under a mushroom in a meadow. They are content in their tiny home, but a bit bored. One day it begins to rain and various other creatures (Glumps, Dimmles, Gizzygonks, Tomtes and the like) show up to come out of the damp. Mr. and Mrs. Troll happily invite their guests in for tea until the party becomes too crowded and the various dancing and chaos knocks over the mushroom. The Trolls bemoan the loss of their home, until the sun comes out and they realize that overnight dozens of mushrooms have popped up all around the meadow – with enough room for everyone.

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

The house was built in the 1980s as a guesthouse and has been used for numerous guests and visiting family members. It is 12 feet by 8 feet, single story, on a cement slab foundation, insulated, and has electricity and a wall mounted heating unit. The interior is a single room with a tile floor, three windows that look out on the nearby Tahoe Range and the garden and skylights that face south. The ceiling has charming rafters and is decorated with items from my mother’s native Denmark and Sweden.

However, the house does not have a kitchen or a bathroom. I’ve made it my Spring plan to add a bathroom onto the house, add a small kitchen unit and include more storage options and multi-purpose furniture. Future additions may be a back deck and a front cement slab and some landscaping. If the house is remodeled in time, it may be rented out to our neighbor’s elderly mother. She will then be closer to her daughter and can be around when my mother is home alone.

I thought I would get the Tiny House Blog community’s input on what they would do if handed this little challenge. The house does have room to extend out to the south, access to water is nearby and there is enough space behind the house to add a septic system if needed.

Here are some ideas that have been tossed around:

• a composting toilet can be added to save water and nix the necessity of septic
• greywater from the shower and sink can be used to water the garden
• a Yestertec kitchen unit, or something similar that runs on electricity, can be installed
• functional furniture such as the IKEA Norden table and the Hagalund sofa can be used

I have been consulting the book, In-laws, Outlaws, and Granny Flats: Your Guide to Turning One House into Two Homes by Michael Litchfieild, on issues on dealing with contractors, inspectors and permits. In addition, I would love to get our reader’s suggestions on what other issues I should be thinking about before beginning the project.

Photos courtesy of Christina Nellemann

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

The couple also plan to move around the country, staying in campgrounds that offer year-round rates. They then want to purchase some land where tiny house living is more acceptable.

Their 117 square foot Tarleton, built on a car hauler trailer, will have a great room, a sleeping loft above the bathroom and kitchen, another storage loft above the door and a bathroom with a custom shower and composting toilet that vents to the outdoors. The kitchen has four feet of stainless steel countertop, a two-burner stove, a bar sink, a toaster oven, a small fridge and – rare for a tiny house – a combination washer and dryer that they got from a family member for free.

The great room boasts plenty of storage space with two closets and built-in “cubbbies”, as well as a combination window seat/storage trunk topped with an organic mattress. A small table/desk is held up by a wall brace where Evan and Gabby can do work or eat. The room also has space for a training board for rock climbing, which hangs just above the entryway to the kitchen. The great room floor is made of cork and the entire home will be cooled by a 5,000 BTU portable air conditioner and heated with a propane marine stove.

The couple have even built an ingenious little cubby for their cats’ litter box that includes a cat-sized entry door.

The sleeping loft will contain two small closets whose doors will swing open to create privacy for sleeping. The couple plans to make a custom mattress for the area and Gabby is proud to be able to winnow down her clothes to fit the tiny space.

Gabby was also committed from the start of the project to build the house with very little synthetic materials. The insulation for the house is made of sheep wool and the house will contain very little plastic. Even the cats’ litter box is metal. Both Evan and Gabby love the outdoors and are avid backpackers. Evan said that he finds nothing in his daily life to be as rewarding as carrying only the things you need for your basic needs and immediate comfort. He adds that the Tumbleweed Tiny Houses merge the two worlds of home and backcountry living: backpacks for everyday life.

Their website, named “Built by Friends”, shows the step-by-step process of their build with excellent documentation and photos. It also has a page dedicated solely to the friends and family who have each lent their skills to different aspects of the house.

“We’ve found folks to be very interested in getting involved with this unique project, particularly one with such a positive impact in terms of living consciously, simply and intentionally,” Evan says on their website. “As we progress, we’re slowly chunking away at the many details and still finding offers of help. It has really brought people (including Gabby and I!) together.”

Photos courtesy of Built by Friends

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

The tiny house on a trailer is being built by Juko and Jerry, not only as a new home, but as a way to respond to the Great Recession. Following the foreclosure of their home in Santa Monica, the couple decided to downsize and live more simply. Their first tiny house, the Huling Halfway Hut, was featured in  a Tiny House Blog “Tiny House in a Landscape” post. During this time, Juko and Jerry became stewards of Sarana Park and wanted to make this new land a place for reflection, restoration, and transformation. They think of it as a “re-boot camp” – a place where their friends and guests can take some space to recharge, rest, and be inspired.

Sarana House is being built with as many reclaimed materials as possible. They are using reclaimed white pine from Ohio (Juko’s childhood home) and Pennsylvania; and Juko is building a larger kitchen by re-furbishing an IKEA freestanding kitchen. A long bench will be the focus of the dining room. It will be large enough for several people to sit or for one person to sleep. Bamboo flooring has been installed and  a stock door from Lowes has been cut down to fit the entrance.

The original tiny house, the Huling Hut, will be the couple’s bedroom and that is being run by a 60 watt solar system. Sarana House’s kitchen will have a propane boat stove, a small refrigerator and a six gallon hot water heater. Juko and Jerry are still working on what electrical system would be best for Sarana House.

The ideas for Sarana House came from two different sets of plans and was influenced by Japanese architecture. The approach to the space was less about maximizing and more about placing things to encourage intimacy without feeling crowded. Juko and Jerry will be sharing their home and 23 acres with friends and family, as well as their three dogs.

Photos courtesy of Juko and Sarana Park

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]