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 nearing the four month mark of using our basement kitchenette while we are remodeling the upstairs kitchen/dining/family room areas. At first down sizing to such a small area seemed like an impossible task for a family of six, with a mom who LOVES to cook.

It took a couple of years kicking around a few ideas and a trip to IKEA to get inspired.

Here is a video of the installation of the Kitchenette. The cabinets and wall system were purchased at IKEA and installed by us. *note that we planned ahead and put 2X4′s in the wall wherever we knew the wall system would attach. Our home was a basement home from 1939-1944 and we just put a kitchen back where there once was one. It is a walk-out basement and with the kitchenette/living area, two bedrooms, and a bathroom it will make a cozy 700 sq. ft. apartment someday.

Sure, it was cute to look at, but I have been most surprised at how much I can do in this little gem. We eat family dinner together nearly every night and for six people that is no small task. Three of these people are ravenous teenagers. Originally, we had purchased a much smaller fridge, but decided that with all of the milk consumed in this household, a bigger (but still small) one was necessary. The far wall where the “dining area is will revert back to a small living room and the dining table for two you can see part of on the right side of the photo (the flip up kind from IKEA)

I love LOVE LOVE my convection Microwave. I was pretty used to cooking in the Microwave Convection and this year I even made Christmas dinner of Roast Beef, Yorkshire Pudding, Mashed Potatoes and got rave reviews from the Children. It is an Amana that I bought several years ago and it fits perfectly under the counter. It was on clearance for $250. Most Convection Microwaves will run about $350-$1,000. Newer ones also have halogen and steam features. There are many over-the-stove models that would also work great that have air filters and lights. I love my Convection Microwave so much that I bought another one for the upstairs kitchen. I can’t believe that these little babies aren’t more popular, because it is pretty unbelievable what you can do in them. There is an element in the back of the oven and a fan that makes it Convection, PLUS it’s a microwave. If you use a microwave safe dish you can combo cook things. In regular convection mode you just use it just like you would it’s larger counterpart and bake and roast to your hearts content. I have even baked a medium and large Papa Murphy’s Pizza in here at the same time. I have had to get a little creative, but there really isn’t much that I haven’t been able to do in my kitchenette.

My LeCreuset even fits for stovetop to oven cooking

3 quart covered glass dish from Libby is great for combo cooking

this 12" pan was on the Pet aisle at Cal Ranch for $4. It works great for family sized brownies, casseroles, etc

We were able to make holiday favorites like Chex mix and caramel popcorn in my large bowl

I can even bake bread in here (Oh, and meatloaf too!)

Using the rack from the upstairs convection Microwave I double the amount of cookies I can bake (I also use the bottom cookie sheet as a lid for the "pet" pan shown above).

My second Love in the kitchen is the little $99 Frigidaire Portable induction cooktop.

Induction Cooking uses Electromagnetic technology and turns your pan into the heat element for precise heat control. If a magnet will stick to your pan it will work on this.

60 seconds to boiling, 90 to a full rolling boil

I have pans that stack and can keep one thing warm while another cooks

The one thing that I don’t like about my Induction cooktop is that it emits a high pitch when it starts up and the kids go running…although that isn’t always so bad to have a peaceful kitchen to cook in

Other favorites:

• Crock Pot
• Electric Griddle
• Waffle Iron….there would be a mutiny if we could not have Waffles on -Sundays.
• Blender
• Toaster
• Hand Mixer ( *sigh*, however I dearly miss my KitchenAid stand mixer)

I have found that I will probably be getting rid of a lot of unnecessary pots and pans and other clutter when I move back upstairs. I have found that while everyone misses having a dishwasher, having a few people in the kitchen to do them by hand is good for conversation and family togetherness. Happy With What You Have Blog

Electric griddle is great for breakfast

Portable butane stove with grill attachment

collapsible dish pan stores under the sink

Popped out and ready to use

My kids were sure that NO one else in their whole school had to do dishes by hand, but they have also learned that it's not so bad after all.

When I need extra counter space I place my IKEA cutting board over the sink

What do you think? Could you use these two things to do nearly all of your cooking? Yes!

After graduating from college, the couple lived communally as organic farm volunteers in Europe. As a child in his native Belgium, Cedric lived on a 38 foot steel sailboat, and after school he lived in a re-built 27 foot sailboat in Charleston Harbor. So the 200 square foot home they are building will not be a far stretch. The couple (Cedric is a seasonal bicycle tour guide and Andrea is a Spanish teacher) also knew that they did not want to go into 30 years of debt for a home during an uncertain economy.

“People my age, people I talk to that don’t want to be indebted, people that are coming out of college in an economically unstable time…many are interested,” Tremols said to her local television station.

When complete, the home will have a kitchen with a stove, a small refrigerator and a sink with an on demand water heater. There will be a bathroom, a composting toilet, shower, a living space and an enclosed loft. The couple based their design on a photo they saw of a Protohaus, and most of the materials for the house came from the Sustainable Warehouse in Charleston. The house design utilizes cross ventilation without air conditioning and will eventually be hooked up to solar power. When the summer heat and hurricanes converge on Charleston, Andrea and Cedric plan to move their tiny home into the mountains.

The Protohaus design that inspired Andrea and Cedric

Photos courtesy of Andrea Tremols and Cedric Baele and Protohaus

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]

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]

“TINY: A Story About Living Small” is a short documentary about Christopher Smith’s process of building a tiny house from scratch with no building experience in the mountains of Colorado. The film also follows the lives of other families around the country who have downsized their lives to less than 400 square feet.

The project began back in February, when Christopher, also co-director, impulsively bought a plot of land with the dream of building a small cabin from scratch, himself. That cabin turned into a tiny house on wheels when he learned that building codes in Park County, Colorado would require him to build a house of at least 600-square feet. He realized that a house on wheels would allow him to bypass these laws, and the more that he learned about tiny houses, the more he liked the idea of minimally impacting the land he had bought by simply parking his small home on it, instead of digging a foundation into the ground.

Christopher, who has a background in filmmaking, happened to be looking for a film project at the time and I (Merete—the other half of the “TINY” team) nudged him to begin filming his building process. I remember seeing his excitement about establishing a home for himself—on his own terms and of his own design in a landscape that he
loves, and realized that his story of would be a great way to tell the larger story of the tiny house movement, profiling others who feel that living smaller allows them to have more satisfying, comfortable lives.

Nine months later, the exterior of the house is complete and the interior is well underway (the project has taken much longer than we expected, but we think it’s reasonable to say that it will be complete by January of 2012). In addition to building, we’ve also travelled around the country interviewing other tiny house owners, like this visit with Daniel Aragon in Telluride, below:

We’re interested in the ways that downsizing allows people to live more sustainable lives—both environmentally and financially. But most of all, we’re interested in exploring the idea of “home”—how we find and create the places where we feel most comfortable and at-ease.

After all, Christopher’s process of constructing his own tiny house is as much about building a life that feels right, as it as about the house that will contain it.

The filmmakers behind “TINY: A Story About Living Small” visit Derek Diedricksen, the micro-architect and author who has been featured in The New York Times, NPR, Readymade and MAKE Magazine.

If you would like to share your own experience of living small with us, or know of a tiny house that we should profile, please email us speakthunderfilms@gmail.com and let us know!

TINY on Kickstarter

Right now until December 15, we’re running a fundraising campaign for the film on
Kickstarter.com.

You can visit our project on Kickstarter and choose from a variety of rewards—including an invite to the online premier of the film, a signed DVD, access to special “Behind the Scenes” footage, even a weekend in the tiny house—in exchange for backing our project. All of the money that we raise will go towards post-production costs of the film editing, recording the original score, sound editing, and sending the film to a finishing house.

Please visit Kickstarter now and help us make us bring the experience of living small to as many people as possible!

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]