The new version has metal on it and is we think more fitting to the needs of helping those who need shelter. After being in Haiti this summer it seemed like a crime to give families living under tarps if they were lucky a shelter that relied on the lifespan of another tarp so we designed it to have corrugated metal go around it. The corrugations are cut in the framing so that the metal goes on very easily.

This link will send you to our new website with pictures from our recent fundraiser. We also were in Atlanta recently setting up one of our shelters for a homeless shelter group called the Mad Housers.

Happy Holidays  Robert Bridges

If you are interested in purchasing one for yourself please email Robert at info@shelter20.com.

I’ve been investigating little houses and got to thinking about the trailer my father built in 1937. He was an electrician working for a contracting company in Rapid City, SD, in the 1930s. His company was taking on new construction jobs assigning him as foreman. Some of them were government jobs as the country prepared in case the problems in Europe overflowed to the US. One job was for a Naval installation in the middle of South Dakota, if you can believe that.

The problem was that these jobs were going to take my dad away from home and into the surrounding states of North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Nebraska for extended periods of time.

My older brother was an infant and my dad didn’t want to leave his wife and young son behind seeing them only every couple of months. Remember, this was the late 1930s and people didn’t drive hundreds of miles just for the weekend. Being a practical fellow, he built a tiny house on wheels.

At that time there were several magazines that printed plans for various projects. Mechanics Illustrated and Popular Mechanics had plans for all sorts of projects in every issue. I loved reading those magazines when I was growing up in the late 1940s and ‘50s. All the projects were fun to read about and learn from. They also had ads for plans you could purchase from third parties. I assume that my dad got plans from such a source. He may then have modified the plans if he thought of ways to do things better.

The trailer base that he used was probably about six feet wide by about ten feet long. He built the ends so they bowed out. My mother’s grandfather, who was a builder, always said that my dad had lost space by not extending the trailer bed and having straight ends to the trailer. My dad maintained that he had a certain sized trailer and had increased space by making the bowed ends. In addition to a few small windows, it had two vents in the roof to help release heat in the summer.

My parents and brother moved into this tiny space in January 1938. They traveled to various towns in the five-state area, living in that trailer until late 1939.

The kitchen end contained a small oven that was just big enough to bake a chicken or a nine-inch square cake as that size pan would just fit in it to make dessert but my mom could only bake one thing at a time. There was also a small little heating stove on which she could put a teakettle but that would only have been used during the winter. We think the oven and the heat stove may have been fueled by kerosene. She may have had an electric hot plate to put a pan or teakettle on to use during hot weather.

The dining room and bedroom were at the other end of the trailer and were the same space. The table folded down to the same level as the benches on either side. The bench cushions then folded toward the center to make a mattress for the night.

There was some sort of crib arrangement for my brother but I can’t figure out where it was or just how it worked other than the side had a screen door hook on the end near the top to hook it to the wall.

I don’t know if there was a bathroom of any sort in this trailer but maybe not. I don’t believe there was any provision for running water so perhaps they always parked it in a place where there were bathroom facilities.

My dad told about one location where some teenaged boys walked by regularly and sometimes would pull the plug from their power source. After they had done that several times, he wired the plug so that the next kid who tried it got a pretty good shock. Needless to say, they didn’t do that again. But, over the next few days, he did see them hanging around and pointing– probably spreading the word to their friends.

In 1939, when my sister arrived, the family moved up to a larger, Covered Wagon brand commercial trailer and later, when two more of us came along, they bought a house. When I was about three, my parents bought a small house in a rural village east of Rapid City. My dad had grown up there and we had our grandparents, two aunts, and ten cousins on nearby ranches. We lived there for a number of years. My dad started his own business of “farm modernization”, wiring houses and farm and ranch buildings as the REA took electrical lines into the country.

The car in the photos is a 1933 Pontiac that my mother had before my parents were married.

It reminded me of one of the smallest houses I’ve seen in my life. It was back in 1992 during one of my trips through Switzerland when I saw this barrel with a man living in it. He lived there the whole summer and it contained a bed, a table, storage space and even a tiny kitchen. Unfortunately I was young and didn’t have a great camera, so the attachment is the only picture I have of it. The barrel is located in Madulain, in the Engadin in Switzerland. It’s next to the train station.

Daan Vogel www.daanvogel.nl

Glamping, the new term being used for upscale — or glamorous — camping, is one of the fastest growing trends in the eco-luxe hospitality industry.

Glamour camping offers all of the attractions of camping – sleeping under the stars, sitting around a campfire, falling asleep to the sounds of nature, etc, while taking all of the hassles out of the experience – pitching a tent, lugging gear and food, sleeping on the bumping ground, collecting firewood, etc. It then attaches the comforts of a luxury hotel room – ultra comfortable king size bed, luxury linens, concierge and cleaning services, etc. Collectively, the result is a completely extraordinary experience.

It is our pleasure to introduce Tent City at Redtail Resort – an ultra luxurious wooded glamping community. Your custom-made canvas glamping tent features fine linens, art adorned walls, and, of course, the most comfortable beds west of the Mississippi. All luxury tents have electricity, cooling fans, and heat. Refresh yourself in your Glamping Bathhouse, which hosts 8 private, luxury washrooms, including rain showers, heated floors and indulgent organic spa products.

If you would like to experience this please contact Redtail Resort at 307-690-2495 and get all the information.

This also would be another option for tiny house living.

Take the time to look at the embedded slide show from Hagop Garagem’s Imagens, it lets you look back on a more relaxed time as the auto was just making its impact in our lives.

Now That's a Tiny House

Nothing New Under the Sun

Cathy (Kate) Johnson is one of the people who kindly emailed me some pictures of her own tiny house/shed/cabin/fort/shack creation- which I’ll include in my book through The Lyons Press- due out Fall 2011. We’re still accepting photo submissions, ideas, and general words of tiny house wisdom for this book which will be LOADED with tiny house designs! kidcedar@gmail.com

We recently posted a few shedworking/tiny house photos and sketches from artist/tiny house author Cathy (Kate) Johnson on this very blog, and now having emailed back and forth with her many times, here’s a little more of what has transpired, informationally- as well as a couple more of her really cool sketches and watercolors….

Deek: Is the little outcropping a bathroom/toilet? (next to the bench in the sketch shown below)

Cathy: Nope, just enclosed storage since there isn’t much inside—we’ll keep deck chairs, a folding table, maybe a small BBQ and charcoal, etc. in there—right now there’s still a fair amount of construction stuff, tools, stain and such.  It’s in the yard next to our house, so I walk over here for the necessaries.  Getting plumbing and permits for a bathroom would have also upped the cost a LOT—we managed to keep it around $5000, even paying our friend Mark to do most of the heavy work.  He had recycled stuff and we had leftover plywood and boards from previous projects, so that helped too.

Deek: Permit wise, based on size, were you left alone? Or were you forced to jump through various, razor-wired hoops?

Cathy: Permit-wise, we thought the City wouldn’t have to be involved, since it’s under 120 square feet, but turns out any deck of ANY size has to have a permit.  Then they made us get an electrical permit, and a licensed electrician, and dig an 18” trench, so that all upped the cost, but still I’m pretty pleased with the budget.

Deek: It looks like a great little cozy place to get creative with your artwork…

Cathy: It is! I’m very happy to have the brand new light in there, it makes doing art MUCH easier.  I can use the laptop over there if I want, but I have no internet connection, it’s too distracting!

Deek: That’s right, no Ms. Pac Man for you! Now your out of print book “A Naturalist’s Cabin”- can we still find it anywhere?

Cathy: You’ll still find it online in a few places.  I have a few copies, as well, mostly bought on Amazon for people who want them.  (Check out her site- email her? http://artists-shed.blogspot.com/ ). I also have a new book on the way as well- this one’s on keeping an artists’ journal.  I’ve done something like 10-12 books for North Light over the years…

She has! Definitely a hard working, VERY talented woman. Be sure to check out many of her works online….you’re sure to come away from the experience inspired! I actually now have a desire to mess with watercolors, something I’ve never done, after having seen some of her books on the subject…

A chorus of cannery whistles, each with its own unique call, summoned the Cannery Row workforce. Men and women in rubber boots and oilcloth aprons showed up to clean, cut, pack, cook and can the sardines that were a major part of Monterey’s economy for more than three decades.

The work was dirty and hard, cold and wet, and the smell was terrible–but it was the smell of prosperity. The stench of sardines, reduced to fertilizer, fish meal, and chicken feed, permeated the Row.

At least a half-dozen languages could be heard over the din of canning machinery. The men operated and maintained the equipment and warehoused and shipped the finished product. The women worked the packing lines, filling Cannary Row’s trademark one-pound oval cans with sardines and salmon. Until the formation of the Cannery Workers Union in 1936, wages averaged 25 cents per hour.

At the peak of the 1941-42 season, the canneries packed 250,287 tons of fish. However, the industry’s capacity to harvest soon outdistanced the sardines’ ability to reproduce, and the fishery crashed. When asked at the end of the 1947-48 season where all the sardines had gone, Ed Ricketts replied, “They’re in cans.”

This spring I relocated the solar panels and the related equipment from the 20 ft camper trailer and temporarily installed the equipment on site at the solarcamp. Then with help from a expert in building camper trailers we demoed the camper, took the scrap to the scrap yard, trash to the transfer site, and saved everything I possible could use for the Hermit DeLuxe.

Now down to the frame, I sandblasted and painted with free tractor paint. Then I set up the clean camper frame at the solarcamp on blocks and leveled it ready for construction. Needing a dry storage space at solarcamp for the larger construction materials I added a temporary tarp tent behind the solar panels.

After a month or so delay for some jobs I was working on, I started the floor, Aluminum flashing under a 2″ x 4″ frame, 3″ of Styrofoam R9 insulation and a OSB flooring with a heavy coat of exterior deck paint. Framed up the walls laying down on the deck when completed I arrange a house raising work party with all my friends and anybody else I could sucker in and raised the walls, installed the roof rafters and sided. After waiting out the rain and delivery of the roofing, I than roofed and constructed and installed custom door and frame.

I should complete painting and trimming of roof in the next few days. after completion of door and wheel tubs the building will be weathered in and ready for winter. I will be continuing to work on the Hermit DeLuxe as money and weather allows. I believe that anyone can build the Hermit DeLuxe with ease. as long as you have the funds, time and patience you can build the Hermit DeLuxe of your dreams.

You can purchase Joe Chipman’s plans here. Anyone who buys the plans now will receive a free update of the plans with photos when the Hermit Deluxe is completed.

The Hermit DeLuxe $27

[View with PicLens]

123►

I have always wanted a log cabin, just some little place to get away with my thoughts and relax. I had helped a friend with the building of his log cabin back in Michigan and found out how difficult it could be with the heavy logs to move around and get into position. This wasn’t anything that I wanted to attempt on my own.

After doing a lot of research on the web I soon found out that a simple log cabin wasn’t exactly what I call cheap and nothing was available locally if I wanted to do it myself.

When I saw the laminated log cabins, suddenly a light went off in my head and I wondered if it were possible to do that myself with ordinary lumber. The next day I put a few boards together to get a better idea of what it would look like and then my idea really took off.

I had already planned on building a garage so this was the perfect way to test my theory with minimal problems.

With this idea you basically are just gluing and nailing three boards together into a tongue and groove log that will interlock into the log above and below it. Before the log is stacked I just planed the corners to give it that groove between the logs that make it look like a log cabin. Construction adhesive is also applied between logs.

I didn’t do a lot of measuring for the logs. I just used 2″ by 2″s as spacers for the clamping jig to eliminate most of the measuring. I also used a 2″ by 2″ as a guide so that I didn’t apply construction adhesive or nail into the wrong areas. I used a nail gun but there is no reason that it couldn’t be done by hand nailing.

For chinking the small cracks between the logs I used more construction adhesive on the inside and outside to seal everything up and make it even stronger.

To my suprise this turned out to be pretty low cost as well as efficient. My walls for this 24′ by 35′ garage only cost about $3000 and is nearly all twelve foot, 2″ by 8″ lumber.

This method of alternative construction gives you something that the others doesn’t, the ability to easily resell it if necessary.

I finially have my own piece of heaven here in beautiful Middle Tennessee.

Scott Stewart, who I have featured quite a few times lately because of his fine quality and affordable prices has been bouncing the idea of an American made Cube. The French Cube post was one of the most popular and I think their might be enough interest to build something similar here in the U.S. Here are Scott’s thoughts and he would enjoy feed back from you on the subject.

I am attaching a rough draft of a cube that is 11x11x11, these are inside measurements, I wanted to go with a size that stays under the 12′ outside dimension for permit purposes, once over 12′ escort cars are involved and this raises the costs and slows down delivery. This also gives much more room inside over the French version which is 10′ x 10′.

I have changed it up a little, I placed the door on a different wall, across from the kitchen, I thought I could offer a murphy type bed/entertainment center on the wall to the right of the door, between the door and kitchen, the loft access comes up quite a bit for older folks, this would be an option, I also turned the bed area 90 degrees putting it over the bathroom/kitchen area, I thought this makes good sense since you really don’t need much headroom there anyway, this allows dropping the ceiling there to give more room in the bed area.

I plan to use octogon or even regular window instead of the round windows in the French version, they do look good but are expensive, hard to trim and hard to buy or replace. Window placement can be anywhere, I only show a couple on the drawing but will be glad to install anywhere.

As for pricing, I am thinking $10,500 for the completely finished version, $4500 for the dried in model which would look totally finished on the outside but would just be a shell. I will as usual include delivery within 300 miles of Mountain View, AR and will include crossing into one state , any other state crossings and or extra mileage will be extra, $3 per loaded mile plus permits for each added state.

Scott would also like your input on size and I have put together a small poll below and would appreciate your response on this. Also please add your suggestions and ideas through the comment section.

***Update: Be the first to buy a Slabtown Customs American Cube and I will do a series of posts with photos of the build, your experience dealing with Scott, and the delivery and final setup of the Cube.

French Cube 10' x 10'