If you live in the Boston area be sure and go and visit the original Epu, the first built Tumbleweed that tiny house celebrity Jay Shafer built and lived in. It will be on display for an Open House this Saturday, May 12, 2012 from 1 pm to 4 pm in Boston, 88 Lambert Ave. (Avenue not “Street”)

If you can’t make the open house, fret not, as during the Boston Tiny House Building Workshop, you can also make a field trip to this very site, for a more intimate look at the structure, and with guest speakers galore….

• Tiny House Dweller and Author, John Hanson Mitchell
• Gypsy Wagon Builder and Dweller Sage Radachowsky
• Mariah Coz and her Comet Camper, a classic Avalon she’s renovating in a green and off-grid fashion to serve as a mobile classroom.

And perhaps more….

Also the Boston Workshop (May 19th and 20th) hosted by Derek “Deek” Diedricksen will be on hand to give you a tour, and answer any questions you might have in regards to tiny housing. Derek is also teaching upcoming workshops in DC, Chicago, and NYC. The event will also double as the delayed book release event for Diedricksen’s “Humble Homes, Simple Shacks.” which spent 15 weeks as the #1 ranked Carpentry book on Amazon).

My wife and I have now been living tiny for several months. For those who don’t know, tiny homes (living units under roughly 200sq’) have become increasingly popular in the past couple of years. When we researched many options for different types of tiny homes, we found a lot of information — but very few first-person accounts of the experience.

And, after all, that’s what tiny living actually involves — a fundamental shift in thinking about consumption and space utilization — the rest (what type of tiny home, whether its mobile, how its built, etc) is all just details.

Our Shipping Container from LEED Cabins, in Place, with the Completed Porch and Privacy Fence

Given the increasing popularity of tiny homes I thought it might be valuable to someone out there considering the same to read some of my thoughts on what this experience has been like for us.

In our case, this isn’t a tiny home, so much as a my home-office. But we decided to place this small office structure on the land first, before building our home. Our land is 30 miles away from the nearest town (where ‘town’ is quite loosely defined; we’re literally 20 miles away from the nearest service at all, which is our post office), which makes development quite challenging. So we started small, so we could establish a base of operations without too much trouble (that it took us a year to even get this far, is an entirely separate story).

We invested a good deal of effort in learning about the various options for tiny housing (you’ll be amazed at the variety that’s available). We purchased Jay Shafer’s book on Small Homes, and even went so far as to get the plans for his tiny Tumbleweed Popomo, before we decided to go with a pre-fab option to simplify our initial move.

Our Solution

After considering our goals, we opted for a tiny structure built from a used cargo shipping container. The benefits of a shipping container, in the context of the remote Oregon forest, include that it is rust-proof, water-proof, highly wind-resistant, bear-proof, fire-proof, and resistant to damage from downed trees — all of which promised to make our initial setup easier, and expedite the process of building our full home.

The Semi-Raw Container

We located a firm named LEED Cabins, and Dan Sokol created a pre-fab office structure for us, converted from a 20’ used cargo shipping container. We had it shipped up to our land, placed into position, and secured by high-tension cable to concrete blocks in the ground (laid during the excavation of our driveway and homesite).

The Container Being Delivered to Site

This structure is 160sq’ total, with about 135sq’ of internal usable space. In other words, it’s very, very small for two people. Not to mention our pair of dogs and the cockatiel. But again, this is temporary, so we figured we’d give it a whirl and see how we do.

(For those wondering, our full home will not be tiny; though, at approximately 1,000sq’, it will be quite small by contemporary American standards.)

We have a fair bit of external storage space. We placed another used shipping container on the land, to function as our garage. We rented a PODS to help hold our excess furniture, and we have some Suncast outdoor storage cabinets and chairs in the yard. Not all of the storage is so conveniently located (our garage is 200’ away, up a steep driveway, where our full home is to be built), but it means we are able to safely store all of our possessions, even while we temporarily occupy a tiny structure.

Our "Garage" Being Delivered

Before too long, we also extended the living space of the office, by adding a deck, and then placing a lean-to greenhouse on the deck to form a (more-or-less all-weather) porch. At 98sq’, the porch represents approximately a 72% increase in living space (as well as an effective source of passive solar heating most days) — and, more importantly, provides a second room (so that it is possible for my wife and I to both be in the structure, but be in separate rooms — a luxury that everyone really takes for granted). As soon as weather permits, we’ll build a second deck, add a second, smaller (24sq’) porch, adjacent to our other door.

So, while in many ways this is tiny living, we’re using much more space and many more resources than you’d find with other tiny home dwellers.

Lessons Learned

If it’s not already clear, my wife and I took on multiple, separate challenges: living tiny, settling remote land, trying to develop on that land, all while continuing to run my company in Los Angeles — and taking this all on in our first year of marriage! As a result, we’ve been forced to learn many lessons, across many different aspects of life. I will try to focus this post specifically on those aspects that relate to living tiny, but there may well be some spillover.

And with all that by way of introduction, we have some top-level lessons-learned for anyone else who may be considering a similar lifestyle:

First, one of the key benefits is the low level of power and utility consumption. This is in part due to our efforts to go off-grid. We have only electrical service to the property, with a generator back-up for when storms or downed-trees take out the power lines. We have no gas service, and we provide our own water from a gravity-powered, spring-fed system on the land.

Utility Consumption

The Power Box

That said, all of our life runs on electricity. In addition to standard electronic equipment that you’d find in any home, all of our kitchen appliances are electric (with an electric convection oven, an electric range, an electric hot-pot, and an electric rice cooker), we heat the structure with electricity (shipping container homes are too tiny and air-tight to safely use indoor wood or propane heating), and we use halogen for most of our interior lighting. And, all told, our power bill (which is, you’ll recall, our only utility bill) is under $50/month.

It might be obvious, but it is still nonetheless striking: living tiny is just much, much cheaper.

Consider What You Really Need and Want to Use Regularly

As I explained above, we have a good amount of external storage. But most of it is not so conveniently located — especially given the precipitation in Oregon. When living tiny, you just don’t have that much interior storage space — almost none, when compared to what you’d find in a standard studio apartment, much less a home. In fact, a tiny home is approximately the size of some walk-in closets that I have seen in houses in Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

So, living tiny means really considering what it is you need to function on a regular basis. Which clothes do you want to wear regularly? Which pots, pans and dishes will you need frequently? Which parts of your medicine cabinet do you really need on-hand?

Beyond the basics, you’ll also want to ensure that you have some comforts (which have to be tightly budgeted, given space and storage constraints). In my case (especially given our remote setup) that includes ensuring I can make a nice fresh cup of coffee every morning, which requires a grinder and coffee maker. Which books do you really want to read (as opposed to those you have around just for show)? My wife and I have taken to playing the Wii quite a bit, so that made the cut. We chose which of our board games we would want to play regularly. And, given our remote location and frequency of bears and cougars, we needed to ensure space for our gun safe. The weather here requires that we have a dehumidifier running.

And so on, and so on. You’ll make your list, realize it’s too big, and then you’ll be forced to really make decisions about those objects and items you really wish to use regularly — even more so, if (like many tiny home dwellers), you don’t have 200sq’+ of external storage.

Smart Design

It may be difficult to understand (though many residents of Manhattan will immediately recognize this as true) how a functional interior design becomes more important, the smaller the quarters.

In a standard house or apartment, you can buy a chair and put it somewhere. If you need a cutting surface, there’s one around. You can place a nice, large bed in a bedroom and forget about it all day long. You generally have a single, large water heater, that’s easily placed somewhere on the premises.

Container Interior, Immediately After Move

Instead, when living tiny, you need to spend a great deal of time reflecting on how your interior space functions, down to minute details. Your bed needs to be a loft, or to fold-away. In general, folding furniture is great. As are multi-purpose items (such as our Suncast patio seats that are also all-weather storage; our bed, which is a couch during the day; our IKEA PAX wardrobe, that has full-length mirrors for the doors; and our printer, which quadruples as a copier, scanner and fax).

Some people (like Jay Shafer) believe in sculpting the interior space, with walls and in-line storage. After serious consideration, we opted for a structure that was almost an empty box (with an IKEA kitchenette pre-installed), so that we could maintain flexibility with how we furnished and utilized the space over time. In either case, you really need to consider the design of your structure, and how you wish to utilize it to the greatest effect.

Interior Line-of-Sight

Many tiny homes (though not all) are under 8’6” wide. This is so that they can be easily transported across roads and highways, without special permits or traffic provisions. Once that structure is insulated and drywalled, you are left with an interior width of, at most, 7’. Interior storage space, furniture and appliances all subtract from that very low starting number.

If you are like us, open spaces are important. Being able to see 10’ in front of you, is much nicer than seeing only 4 or 5’ in front of you; being in a room that is 7’ wide is much more comfortable than being in a room that is only 4’ wide. And, if you are building tiny, there are many tempting opportunities to cut into the limited (and precious) amount of open space you have.

As you do this, consider the importance that you ascribe to your interior line-of-sight. If you are like us, and maximizing that internal distance is important, this should be considered a design directive (this is one reason we opted for the open, rather than sculpted, interior design).

Multiple Entries

To build to code in most localities around the country, your structure requires two entries (in case one is blocked during a fire). Still, many floor plans and designs that we’ve seen for tiny homes incorporate only a single entry.

The Patio Doors

Because of code issues (and per Dan Sokol’s advice), without thinking much else about it, we opted for installing two entries in our tiny structure (a main door on one long side, and double patio glass doors on one of the shorter sides). It was only after experiencing life in this container (and a few months in which only one of our entries was actually usable), that we really appreciated the emotional impact of having two entries. Even now, as I write this, I find it difficult to express just how this improves quality of life, but it does. It gives you options on how you want to enter and exit. It allows you to establish two separate, easily-accessed outdoor areas. It allows for easier cross-ventilation of the structure. It makes it feel more like a ‘home’.

In short, having two separate entry-ways adds a lot of value to tiny living.

Outdoor Space

One significant factor in our decision to move to this remote area was to spend more time outdoors, in nature. Of course, this means hikes and fishing and similar activities. But if you plan properly, it can also just mean lounging in the yard, regardless of the time of year.

The Porch Deck, In Progress

Of course, having nice outdoor space, or a yard, adds value and comfort to any property. But, when living tiny, it becomes more important. Being able to step outside, and spend time comfortably, is just a lot more important, when your interior is very small. Even having a small covered entry-way helps in minimizing dirt and mud that can get tracked in. This is why we built the porch (and will be adding a 2nd smaller one later this year), have all-weather furniture in the yard, and have covered a portion of the yard (temporarily, with a tarp; we will replace that with a trussed roof that extends over the yard, later this year). The more outdoor space you claim as your own, for easy use, the happier you will be.

Installed Fixtures and Outlets

Of course, planning which fixtures (particularly lighting) should be installed is an important part of any home design process. But, in the context of tiny living, it is important to remember that installed lights take up no floor space (no space at all, in the case of recessed lighting), and do not consume any outlets. For this reason, you should plan to use built-in lighting as much as possible in your tiny structure. In ours, we have only installed fixtures for illumination — no floor or desk lamps.

Installed Fixtures and Outlets

Along the same lines, it is quite easy to underestimate how many outlets you will need. Tiny structures require a denser allocation of outlets than a standard structure — particularly if all of your appliances are electric. And don’t forget! You want outlets on the outside of the structure, as well, for your power tools, or for a light to enjoy your yard, or whatever the case may be.

In short: built-in lighting and electrical outlets are not areas in which you should seek to save money or be stingy. You’ll want a healthy amount of both.

Clean Immediately

One main benefit of tiny living is reduced maintenance — there’s less space and less stuff, so caring for it takes less time, effort and cost. And, by and large, this is true.

But, on an individual, case-by-case basis, cleaning can take much longer. Again, there’s just nowhere extra to put anything. Cleaning means moving and shifting around items, accomplishing one set of goals, then moving more items around, to accomplish your next set of goals. Just washing a normal amount of dishes can take much longer when living tiny.

As well, once you’ve decided how to design and furnish the interior, and actually move stuff into the tiny structure, everything will have its place. And I mean that very literally. Everything has a specific, allocated place. If you take something out and use it, you must immediately return it to its place when you are finished.

There is just no room for messes to accumulate — and, in a tiny home, any item outside of its place constitutes a mess. Once messes occur, they rapidly become overwhelming (a small mess in a tiny home is a big deal). And if we’re talking about, for example, dishes and utensils, you just don’t have enough of them for any to lay around dirty.

The solution is to clean immediately, as best as you can. Don’t let any dishes pile up. Wash them as soon as you are finished (which also means ensuring that you have space reserved for a drying rack that is always out). If you trek in dirt, clean it up instantly. And so on.

As well, the garbage has to go out immediately. There is just no place for it. This means having adequate (in security and capacity) outdoor containers for your garbage, recycling (and, in our case, composting). We do have a small indoor garbage can, and kitchen composter, but other than that, garbage goes out immediately (to a series of bear-proof trash containers, steel-bolted to trees in the driveway). There’s just nowhere for normal quantities of waste inside of a tiny home.

Along the same lines, you have to finish jobs that are started, before moving on to anything else — there’s simply nowhere to store a work-in-progress on multiple projects. So you must pick your projects (and battles) wisely, and then get them done as rapidly as possible.

So, there’s less to clean, but cleaning can take longer, and requires more discipline.

Small Problems Can Get Big; Big Problems Can Be Simple

Exploded Sediment Filters, Part of Our Winter Plumbing Escapades When living tiny, small problems can get big — very quickly. As a case in point, earlier this winter one of our plumbing pipes exploded from the freeze, leading to a tiny rupture in the pipe leading to the sink.

Exploded Sediment Filters, Part of Our Winter Plumbing Escapades

Of course a tiny hole in a pipe, leads to a relatively tiny leak, which persisted for about 60 seconds before I could run out and cut-off water to the structure. And so our tiny leak — a leak that would be an inconvenience in a normal-sized dwelling — turned into a flood of the entire container. So that was no fun.

At the same time, it took only a few hours to clean up from a flood of our entire structure, using 1-gallon Wet-Dry Vac Micro — you can’t say that about any normal-sized home. Similarly, we can repaint the entire structure in under a day. We could rebuild all of the interior walls for just a few thousand dollars. We can execute projects on the structure — projects that would take significant lengths of time in a normal-sized dwelling — in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the cost.

Got Friends? Visit Them, Instead.

With a very few number of exceptions, we have not hosted anyone at our container. We have a cute yard, so once summer kicks in, that will change. But for most of the year, outdoor hosting in Oregon is not possible, and so we forgo having visitors over. And when you do have visitors, you can really only have one or two at a time — there just isn’t space for more (again, unless you have outdoor appointments and nice weather).

It’s obvious once said, but it was one aspect of tiny life that we hadn’t really considered in advance: you won’t be hosting all that much. And, unless you tell your friends why, you risk offending them.

Love the Ones You’re With

Again, it’s obvious, but when you voluntarily occupy tiny quarters with someone else, you really need to love that person. You are continuously exposed to all of each other, all of the time. There is very little privacy of which to speak. When one of you is in a mood, the other knows it instantly. And when tensions increase, there’s not really room for either one of you to blow off steam.

In short, don’t go tiny with someone else, unless you are very confident in your relationship with that person. This includes those of you living tiny by yourself; you’d better be comfortable being with yourself, in small quarters, for extended periods.

Our Biggest Sacrifice

We’ve discussed this subject many times, and my wife and I both agree on what has been the biggest sacrifice accompanying our choice of living tiny: the kitchen.

Now, most Americans have kitchens that are far larger, and more capaciously appointed than we think is necessary for our needs; I’m not saying we need or want that. And, in creating kitchenette plans for a tiny container, not everything has been a sacrifice — for instance, we’ve adapted to living out of a ‘dorm’ fridge quite easily (we have a separate, all-weather freezer outside for meat and other frozen products).

Still, my wife and I both love to cook, and tiny living doesn’t make it easy to do the type of cooking we enjoy (it doesn’t preclude it, either; it just makes it much more challenging). Except for bar-b-q’s and other outdoor food-prep, there’s too little work space to comfortably create, say, a Thanksgiving meal — or any meal in which there are multiple hot courses. We only have one burner, and a small convection oven, which makes for a lot of swapping out of pots and pans during meal prep.

We still cook (we have no other options, living where we do) — but it’s just harder, and not as fun as it used to be.

Our Container Structure, Ready for Winter

Though, enjoying our meals — on our porch, which we built with our own two hands, in the middle of a national forest, with the creek running just across the neighbor’s field, in the shadows of a tree-covered forest mountainside — that’s a lot more fun now, than it used to be.

Again, living tiny is not a permanent state for us — it’s a temporary solution to the challenge of building a full home, out here, in the remote wilderness. As we hoped, it has been an invaluable process for us, learning what is important to us in home and interior design, as we begin the process of building our full home.

But, more than that, living tiny has proven to be a great (sometimes overwhelming) learning experience about ourselves, informing us about our relationship to the spaces we inhabit, the items we fill them with, and how we consume and utilize those items — not to mention, of course, how we relate to each other.

All in all, we’re quite comfortable these days, having acclimated to, and begun to enjoy many of the benefits found in, this life-style. Fortunately, though, we’re still just uncomfortable enough to ensure that we don’t slack too much on building our full home.

You can follow R Blank at his blog http://www.rblank.com/

Us On Our Land

“Honey, I Shrunk the House – by 1,377 Percent”

A local Seattle-area family has just built a new home that’s only 159 square feet. They’re part of a national movement toward smaller, more sustainable housing that is taking root in the Pacific Northwest.

Seattle, WA, February 16, 2012 — This week, thousands will converge in Century Link Field for the Seattle Home Show (February 18-26, 2012) to browse the latest trends in building the American dream. However, they’ll likely miss one of the fastest-growing trends: living in tiny homes that are sustainable, flexible, and often mobile.

To learn more about tiny homes, you need to venture a few blocks north to a gathering of fewer than 100 people: the Tumbleweed Tiny House Workshop held the same time (February 25-26, 2012) at the Pioneer Square Courtyard Marriott.

Photo Credit Seattle Tiny Homes

One Seattle-area resident planning to be there is Sharon Read, with a tiny home in tow. She’s just built a new home that is only 159 square feet – 1,377% less than her family’s current dwelling. With classic Craftsman styling, beautiful cedar siding, and lots of windows to let in light, the tiny home has a kitchen, a “great” room, an office, a bathroom with a tub/shower, and even a washer and dryer. The home also features two sleeping lofts that have room for two queen size beds and storage.

The home’s foundation? A sturdy 22-foot steel trailer, meaning the home is portable and can be positioned anywhere.

While Read and her family hope to live in the tiny house as much as possible, the home is also the show model for Seattle Tiny Homes, a company Read founded to build high-quality, custom tiny homes – both portable and stationary – that can be used as primary residences, vacation homes, guest cottages, auxiliary housing for elderly relatives or college students, or an office or studio.

Read and Seattle Tiny Homes are part of a growing movement of tiny home advocates that is spreading across North America – and taking root in the Pacific Northwest. Spearheaded by Jay Shafer, called the guru of the tiny homes and author of The Small House Book (learn more at www.tumbleweedhouses.com), the movement touts the freedom and flexibility that tiny homes offer – plus the “green” advantage of a greatly reduced environmental impact.

The public is welcome at the Tumbleweed Tiny House Seminar. To register, visit www.tumbleweedhouses.com/workshops/seattle/. Classes will be taught by Dee Williams, a tiny house pioneer and co-owner of Portland Alternative Dwellings (learn more at www.portlandalternativedwellings.com).

Photo Credit Tumbleweeed Tiny Houses

Read’s new tiny home – all 159 square feet – will be on display and open for viewing during the seminar. For exact times and location, contact Sharon Read of Seattle Tiny Homes at:

(425) 445-3675
sharon@seattletinyhomes.com
www.seattletinyhomes.com

When my husband and I first moved to the country after 20 years of living in the big city, we talked a lot about the different possibilities for housing. We were both sick of apartments. We fantasized about the different natural building techniques like cob and straw bale, but worried about exorbitant land prices here in California.

About five or six years ago we stumbled upon Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed website and were completely charmed. This was pre-Oprah, before he was so famous. We had a free private consultation with him within the first few weeks after he moved out to California. A couple years later we went to one of his open houses, and recently went to his first showing of his new Craftsman style cottage. We love his work, but his prices were too high for our budget. Building it ourselves seemed too difficult, though I’m sure it is possible for some people.

The tiny house bug had us. We now knew how we could own our own home without land or a mortgage, but we needed a place to put the house.

After a couple years of searching we found a lovely RV park that would take us as long as the house was an RV. We knew Bill Kastrinos at Tortoise Shell Homes usually builds his as RVs, with the DMV doing an inspection and giving a license plate. For a time we were also looking at Little House on a Trailer in Petaluma, and Molecule Homes in Santa Cruz. Both of those guys also do lovely work. But we finally decided on Bill.

I spent long months designing my floor plan. Bill was kind and built me a custom house. The build was exciting. We were close enough to him to be able to visit every weekend and watch the progress of the build. My husband got lucky on his commute home from work on delivery day, and ended up driving behind our house as Bill hauled it down the highway to our RV spot at the campground.

We have now lived 3 months in our new home and have loved every moment. It being a studio and only 150 sq. feet (8’ x 18’), we wouldn’t recommend this size for couples that don’t get along really well, or for those with complicated hobbies. For us it has been wonderful though. Our main hobbies are watching DVDs, reading, and hiking. We are using our computer as our TV to save space. We don’t feel claustrophobic, having a view out our great-room window of the rolling hills of a horse pasture. We can’t really see other dwellings or people for the trees. Our first utility bill was only $28.00. Our house is all-electric, we use a little space-heater to heat the house.

At night we like to look out our big window at the constellations. I’ve never had such a view of the sky at night before, it’s quite magical. Our loft we only use for storing all our stuff. We bought a very comfortable futon couch which we convert into a queen-size bed at night, and that seems to be working for us. For those that don’t want to negotiate ladders, we recommend futons. My husband does have a camping pad up in the loft and likes to take naps in the daytime once in awhile, he calls it his ‘man cave’.

Here are pics of the loft, and my hubby having a nap in his ‘man cave’. Also, the closet which covers the whole end-wall by the door. We were originally planning on having enclosed his and her closets on either side of the window. But changed our minds once we moved in. There’s still a window behind all those clothes, so if we decide someday to have enclosed closets we could still do that. It’s messy now, but very easy access which we like.

Here is a pic of our little kitchen which has granite counters that I absolutely love. The other pic is of our recessed shelving, which was one of my best ideas. It is built into the interior wall between the kitchen and bathroom, next to the bathroom door.

There’s a new tiny house company in town, and our name is Bungalow to Go (www.bungalowtogo.com).

Hi, my name is Paprika Clark, but a lot of folks call me Pepper. Although I only named it a few months ago, I started my house design company in spirit when I noticed an ad for a new subdivision in the newspaper at the age of six. Next to an elevation sketch was a floor plan. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The rooms were named. I could recognize an overhead view of a toilet, and the distinct round burners on the stove in the kitchen. I created a three dimensional projection in my mind and walked around “my new house” picking out my room and figuring out where we would put our couch. It was magical and I was hooked.

I started drawing my dream house then and I’ve never stopped. In the beginning they were huge and often strange, with lavish impossible features. Ponds with lily pads, indoor pools, waterfalls, tree houses, cave complexes, three story libraries with enormous rolling ladders, fireman’s poles, secret tunnels, maze gardens, green roofs, greenhouses, orchards, fire pits, dance floors… my houses had it all.

They’ve been a shifting collage of everything I love; alternative architecture, living close to nature, living an energetic movement filled life, making things from scratch, using local and natural materials, and enjoying life to its fullest.

Stumbling on Tumbleweed

While doing marketing research about five years ago I ran across Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. I had seen plenty of alternative architecture by then, but designs that took dramatic steps toward sustainability seemed too difficult and expensive to approach because of bureaucratic barriers and the cost of real estate, permitting, and construction. They were just too big to fit in my life. Furthermore, while I’d like to say looks don’t matter, in truth they make a huge difference as to whether a house will ever get permitted and built. An earthship home, for example, can be aesthetic and amazingly green, but the idea and the look is very different from the typical house, and scary or unappealing to a lot of people (although I like it). The Tumbleweed idea struck me as an amazing solution that had real potential to be both truly green and accessible to more people financially and aesthetically than anything I had seen before.

Later I came back to the Tumbleweed site and pored over every floor plan and imagined how I would live in one, where I would keep things, what I would own and what I would get rid of. All pure fantasy for a busy working mom with a big family. Eventually, I signed up for the workshop in Sebastopol. There were about 20 of us that day under a soaring tree next to the orchard where Jay had his tiny house parked at the time. We sat in the shade taking notes (I still have mine!) and talking about how to build a tiny house. I could never have imagined that years later I would speak at a Tumbleweed workshop to a group of 80!

Quite some time passed after the workshop before I was able to take some tiny house action. My seven person family is multi-generational and complex. We have two kids, several pets, and a lot of hobbies and trades amongst us – we take up a lot of space. I had very specific ideas about how to interpret the tiny house experience and I desperately wanted to design and build one, but I knew we couldn’t afford to do it just for ourselves. We didn’t have a true need for it, we couldn’t fit in one, and it wasn’t something I could justify – unless I made a business of it. I knew in the long term what I really wanted was to develop a whole community for tiny houses, so when I had the opportunity to invest, I decided to start by building just one.

Developing the Bungalow to Go Style

One thing Jay and Tumbleweed have done is create a unified image of the ideal tiny house exterior; it’s the essence of house-ness in its shape and proportions. It looks like the classic drawings of houses made by children across the world to represent home – regardless of the shapes of the houses they live in. His exterior forms have become the icon of the tiny house movement, so at some level every tiny house exterior is judged by how it compares with Jay’s designs. The interior, on the other hand, is where the world of tiny house building holds potential for a million interesting variations – with parameters so personal there’s almost no wrong way to go. I went with my instincts and made every choice as if I were going to live with it forever.

In touring Jay’s tiny house and looking at endless photos online of his interiors and others, I had developed my interior design parameters; I wanted a bigger stove with an oven, I couldn’t live with metal walls in my bathroom, and I wanted something other than tongue and groove on the walls. I love natural wood, but the horizontal bands on every surface seemed like it would be too much visually, and I wanted to see something more smooth and restful. I also wanted certain built-in “real house” conveniences; more electrical outlets, lighting with wall switches, ethernet/phone jacks, a triple mirrored medicine chest, the ability to take a ten minute shower, and cabinetry with a solid feel, smooth action and adjustable shelving. For each of us the priorities are different; every individual has their own unique preferences and values. For me, over the long haul these interior comforts were a more important investment for my dollar than upgrading the windows to aluminum clad wood.

A Bountiful Beginning

I was blessed in my journey with several important gifts; great neighbors, a bigger than average yard, a circle of friends in various building trades, a supportive spouse who could both help the construction process and back me up by caring for us domestically while I devoted my time to building my company, and my meticulous next door neighbor with 30 years building experience who was looking for work. My small business and marketing classes grounded me in start up fundamentals, while my background in landscaping prepared me with some important tools as well; drafting, plan reading, some general construction knowledge and experience of how complex projects get done. In August of 2010 I took a deep breath, shook hands with the neighbor on a deal for his labor, and bought a trailer.

Over the following months we worked together at least a little bit every weekday (and some weekends). I researched every purchase exhaustively and still the house came together with amazing speed at first. We framed it up, got the exterior finished, put the roof on, and then in early October I ran out of money for several months. I worked on other projects and used the down time to spin my mental wheels doing ridiculous amounts of research on everything I still had to buy. In late January we started back up again, and the last items on our punch list were finished this week. The project has been visually complete since around June, but there was a long list of subtle tweaks and additions right at the end, and by then we were starting on our second house so our attention was on that for a while.

Where We Are Now

The journey has been thrilling and I’m very happy with our progress so far. Now that we’ve been in business for about 15 months, we’re ready to sell our first completed house, a variation on the Tumbleweed Lusby plan. We’ve hosted a couple very well attended open houses at the Windsor Farmer’s Market to satisfy local curiosity and to generate a little awareness of the tiny house concept in our neighborhood.

Our second tiny structure is a more budget conscious interpretation and the exterior is almost finished. A buyer could have some influence on what goes into the interior if they wanted to commit to it at this stage, and it will be priced more affordably, depending on options possibly as low as $30,000.

Hide Tiny House at Windsor Pumpkin Festival

This fall I was invited to speak briefly about my company and my house to the audience at the Tumbleweed workshop in Santa Rosa. It was an honor to talk to such a great group of people, and a delight to be able to surprise the audience by saying I had my tiny house in the parking lot for everyone to tour. Excited people rushed out to see it, and I had a wonderful time talking to different folks from all over as they waited in line to get inside.

Since then, I’ve been talking with Steve Weissmann of Tumbleweed and have agreed to present workshops for them. My first one is scheduled for March 24-25 in Asheville North Carolina (http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/workshops/asheville/). The next will be in Phoenix the 21st and 22nd of April, and after that I will head to Santa Fe for workshops on May 5th and 6th. I feel privileged at the opportunity to meet and support the tiny house community through these workshops and honored to be joining some of the most creative and influential members of the tiny house revolution, Jay Shafer, Dee Williams, and Deek Diedrickson.

Guitar Duet on the Porch at Sonoma Academy

At the Santa Rosa Tumbleweed workshop I also met Erin Axelrod of Daily Acts (http://www.dailyacts.org/), who invited me to teach a session on alternative housing and bring my house to show to students at Sonoma Academy (www.sonomaacademy.org), a local college prep high school. That was a wonderful time, and the students could not get enough of the tiny house. At one point, there were about 12 sophomores sitting in the sleeping loft chatting with each other at close quarters! When it came time to give them an overview of sustainable housing choices we had a lively discussion, and the kids asked challenging and intelligent questions that gave us all inspiration and food for thought.

Students Gathered Around at Sonoma Academy

I look forward so much to meeting more people in the tiny house community and seeing what the year ahead brings. The need for feasible solutions to our housing challenges is undeniable, and the voices for alternatives grow more numerous and insistent all the time. Someone, somewhere will be the first to achieve a legal, sustainable, itty bitty house community. A tiny house trailer park, if you will. Perhaps 2012 will be our year!

View some new interior photos at a recent Tumbleweed blog post. http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/see-a-tiny-house/see-peppers-house/

Pepper Talking to Students at Sonoma Academy

Tumbleweed is offering it on sale for $8.99, regular price $15.99. I have a copy of one here at my house and my wife likes it so well she wants to frame it and put in the guest room. You can purchase yours NOW by Clicking Here. Show off to your friends your love for tiny houses!

Since then it has been a crafting shop and guest house on the new owners property in Boston. It is in excellent condition and you can get the complete details at Tiny House Listings. This is your chance to own a piece of history.

Jay agreed to do a video walkthrough of the Gifford explaining his thoughts behind the design of his house. These homes were recently featured in HGTV Design Star’s contest but I prefer Jay’s design and I think the designers could learn a lot from him. The video is a little rough as I am still learning, but I hope it will give you a feel for the completed home.

I would like to invite you to Subscribe to the Tiny House Blog YouTube Channel below and feel free to Like or Comment on the video also.

I have also attached some professional pictures that Jay had photographed of his house in the gallery below. Enjoy the Tour!

[View with PicLens]

Calling all tiny house fans!

Would you like the opportunity to stay overnight in a tiny house before plunging into building your own?

My Story

Indulgent Restraint was born of my fascination with tiny houses and a desire to live in one. A few years ago while living in New England, I fell in love with the Lusby design by Jay Shafer of the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. I wanted to nestle the tiny house in a Thoreau-like setting, among tall pines near a pond. My kids were grown and I was ready to downsize. So I put our big house on the market, bought land, purchased the tiny house plans and hired a professional home builder to start work on the Lusby. But it was 2008 and the start of the housing crisis. The big house wasn’t selling, so I couldn’t hang on to the lake front land; my plans would have to change.

After some twists and turns, I sold the lot, rented out my big house, and moved myself, two dogs, three cats and tiny house to California. I lived in the tiny house on rented farm land in the delta along the Sacramento River. It was a wonderful adventure!

But I really wanted to be closer to San Francisco and have enough room to host guests. So when my big house in New Hampshire finally found a buyer, I was able to make another move. I bought a 96 year old, two bedroom house in Vallejo and brought the tiny house to its backyard. I’d love to open it up for other tiny house fans!

http://www.indiegogo.com/Worlds-Tiniest-Hotel

To view more photos go here: http://indulgentrestraint.com/

There is a lot of secrecy as to what the designers will actually be doing but I am hoping that they will be asked to design a complete house that includes a bathroom and kitchen and a sleeping area. Can you image what we can learn from HGTV and these expert designers?

The show airs for the first time on Labor Day, Monday September 5, 2010 at 9/8c and again on September 6 at 12 am. If you miss the live broadcast the show will also be posted on Hulu on September 9th.

If you’d like to take part in a chat on Twitter during the show the folks at Tumbleweed will be hosting via hashtag #DSTumbleweed.

If you’re new to the idea of downsizing, please take some time to look around the Tiny House Blog and you will learn what it is all about.