Tiny House Blog

Many tiny house dreamers want to build their own tiny house, but may be deterred by their lack of construction skills. In addition, fully customized tiny homes can be more than many people’s budgets. Tiny House Builders builds and sells simple, fully completed, mobile tiny houses that allow the owner/builder to customize the house to whatever style they want at an affordable price. The company accomplishes this with three levels of each of their products. Level One is a complete set of building plans instructional narrative, and step by step instructional photos. Level Two consists of a complete modular building “kit”. It arrives at your door with the completed floor system mounted on its own mobile chassis and the building shell in “panelized” form. Level Three is a complete building shell that can be further customized by the owner.

The first product sold by the company is the Wallowa. This tiny house is 8 feet by 12 feet and includes 2×4 framing, a standard home size entry door, two windows, double wall construction, cedar lap siding with cedar trim, and metal roofing guaranteed for 35 years. The interior clear ceiling height is 6 feet 8 inches, and the interior loft height at the peak is slightly over 3 feet 8 inches. The overall height with the building on its mobile chassis is 13 feet 5 inches, just under the legal limitation. Level One ($429) includes a complete set of detailed building plans, actual photos of construction and an instructional video. Level Two ($9,850) and Level Three ($15,975) allow the owner to design and build their own interior including wall covering, floor covering, plumbing, electrical, appliances and cabinetry. Continue Reading »

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”

From The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again by by J.R.R. Tolkien

 

For the lovers of that hole in the ground, take a look at these little, wooden houses with the quintessential round door made very familiar by the Lord of the Rings books and movies. Wooden Wonders, in Unity, Maine, custom designs and builds these little wooden structures that can be used as playhouses, saunas, writing nooks, guest cottages, yoga or meditation rooms or maybe even a tiny house.

The structures can be integrated into your own landscaping and flower boxes can be added onto the back. The structures can be customized with different colors, additional materials, windows, dormers, interior shelving and other decorative features. Wooden Wonders also features a “heavy duty” package with double doors that allows for storing a lawn tracker or an ATV. Continue Reading »

Article reproduced from the Instant House Blog

When is a trailer not a trailer?

Answer: when it’s a Wingfoot House! Wingfoot Homes was the brainchild of Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Apparently, selling tires wasn’t enough. The world’s best known tire company tried to cash in on the low-cost, post WWII housing boom. The company’s intention was to sell a completely outfitted home (including built-in furniture) for less than $2,000. The idea was that unlike other prefabricated or mass produced housing. The house would be built completely in the factory. Most prefabricators were building components that were later assembled on-site. Wingfoot homes were not designed to go over foundations and were ship completely built – the forerunner of today’s mobile homes.

Getting It There

If you’ve read my previous posts (because you’re my friend, you take pity on me, or both), then you know that shipping is the biggest problem with most prefabricators faced. Shipping a completed house presents a unique problem – the house can’t be more than 8 feet wide! Today’s “Oversize Load” tractor trailers make wider loads possible, but they are quite expensive. Wingfoot decided to avoid this altogether by engineering their house to be 8 feet wide at the time of shipping. Once the house was on site the bedroom sections pulled out “like drawers.” The final house measures 26 X 15 at its widest point when extended. See below for plans.

Continue Reading »

The popularity of Stieg Larsson’s books, and subsequent movies, about a certain tattooed girl has given rise to a new-found love of Swedish design. Sweden’s Technical Week website recently had a story on a 94 square foot tiny home that celebrates that clean design, but is also making a statement at the same time.

This experimental, free-standing tiny home for students has a kitchen, a bath with a shower, a corner office and an eating area with two chairs. A sleeping loft is accessed by a ladder. This home will rent for 30,000 Swedish crowns ($4,400) a year, when most student housing in Sweden rents for about 50,000 ($7,700) crowns a year. The country has a lack of affordable student housing and most seekers have to stand in line for an available place to live. This home will be rented out for three years to one person who can give the best reason why they should have the house. Continue Reading »

Treehouses, homemade canoes and Labrador Retrievers. What more can you ask for in a radio show?

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]

If you live in a ski town, keep an eye out for a truck towing an elegant tiny house and five ski bums on the lookout for some great powder and free Wi-Fi. For six weeks, Molly Baker, Zack Griffin, Neil Provo and their videographers Sam Griffin and Andy Walbon will be road tripping around North America in a 112 square foot house on wheels and will be posting their videos online. The idea behind the trip is to find grassroots ambassadors for the outdoor gear company, Outdoor Research, ski some of winter’s best deep powder and meet fellow ski enthusiasts. They also wanted to take this trip in a tiny house to show that a passionate and low-impact lifestyle could be had for little cost.

“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. Continue Reading »