They’re hoping to find a client who would like to offer their little house as the subject of the class — significantly jump-starting the construction process! Essentially, the client would dictate the design and offer the materials, including the trailer, and the folks at Yestermorrow would begin the construction process as part of the class. http://www.yestermorrow.org/workshops/detail/tiny-house-design-build

If anyone is interested in getting more information about the class or how their project could be used in the class, please contact Paul Hanke of Yestermorrow. He can provide information about how the class went last year. I’ve attached a photo of the little house they started last year. The porch and other aspects of the house weren’t complete, but the walls and roof were on and the project well underway by the end of the class. Paul’s e-mail is jphanke@gmavt.net.

For those who haven’t heard (many, as we haven’t talked/posted on it much), I’m hosting another Relaxshacks.com Tiny House Building Workshop this year, something we’re dubbing “Tiny House Summer Camp,” and for good reason….

Last year’s sold out workshop went very well, and we had great feedback, so we decided to try a FOUR DAY workshop this time, with camping sites and lodging, and MANY guest speakers and demonstrators. I initially only wanted one guest presenter, perhaps two, but this tiny-house-athon has almost become a small living convention of sorts. Well, a convention where we’re only letting in fifteen attendees!

The aim is to keep it small, hands-on, fun, and eclectic. We want you to not only learn about the ins and outs of small space design and construction, but also to actually build a tiny cabin in the woods together. You’ll have the chance to see and stay in a small off-grid log cabin (one Kent featured as a “tiny house in a landscape” last year), my own Vermont Cabin (as seen in both Lloyd Kahn and Mimi Zeiger’s new tiny housing books), The U.B. 30 Treehouse, and we’ll take a field trip or two to The Pine Crest Cabins in Barton, Vermont, a local mom and pop sawmill, and “Uncle Bob’s Place” to check out some thrift-built tiny structures, and more….

Photos are by Deek and Bruce Bettis

The log cabin we'll be doing talks in, off-grid and solar powered, where people will also be welcome to stay for the weekend.....its about 500 yards from my land/camp....an easy walk.

See why do we need four days??

We might try out a few of the other ideas/approaches from my book “Humble Homes, Simple Shacks” as well- and you’ll see many of the sights depicted in the photos and text of that very book.

The U.B. 30 Treehouse down the trail, where attendees are also welcome to camp

The hiking, fishing, and sightseeing in this area of Vermont (Orleans, in the Northeast Kingdom) is just incredible too miss. Coventry, a neighboring town, has THE MOST covered bridges in all of the US, an underground house too…and the local architecture (one town north boasts an actual castle) is just incredible.

Two meals included, campfire discussions at night, and lots of hammer swinging will make this a weekend not to be forgotten. $399 for four days, which includes camping spaces and/or cabin spots (first come, first serve). Email kidcedar [at] gmail [dot] com if you’d like to sign up.

For those who can’t make it I’m also heading workshops for the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company in Boston, Washington DC, Chicago, and more all in 2012.

-Derek “Deek” Diedricksen

Deek's cabin

inside of Deek's Vermont Cabin (where people can stay)

Deek's Vermont Property

Building location in Vermont

Tiny house and loft work by Derek and Dustin Diedricksen

Deek's Book - Click to Purchase

What: We built a small house in our Southern Vermont backyard and documented the process, including:

• Actual costs in a public spreadsheet
• The Plan is on Houseplans.com
• 200-ish photos, including shots of plans.
• Blog posts http://www.calebclark.org/?p=1928
• Videos of sun studies and construction
• Link to sites, house plans, organizations,
• Architect

Who: We are not professional carpenters, nor will we be quitting our day jobs. Laura is an elementary school teacher at The Neighborhood Schoolhouse. I’m the director of the educational technology program at Marlboro College Graduate School. I also worked as a carpenter in my youth, and have always been interested in real estate. In November 2010 we bought a house on tiny 1/8th of an acre lot, 1/2 mile from downtown, Brattleboro, Vermont. (200 miles North of NYC).

Why: I created this Clog because when I was doing research on small house construction, this is what I wanted to find on the Web. We also wanted to have a record for ourselves, and blogging is somewhat job related for me. My wife Laura came up with the “Clog” name and we loved it. We are “clogging” the project in the spirit of open source information.

The idea to build came from a childhood spent in a “back to the land” community in southern Maine in 1970s. Building your own simple house was common place and everybody seemed to be an amateur carpenter. When we bought our house it had an old garage that begged for help. I convinced my wonderful wife Laura it would be a good to invest our savings in something that could provide extra income. We also both like guest house possibilities, and enjoy being around people. In addition we wanted to shorten our needlessly long asphalt driveway and park near the road to reduce shoveling. Then we found out that our town offered $3000.00 grants to build second units, and we could get rebates from Efficiency Vermont if it was efficient. Our journey had begun!

After night two Deek and Dustin awoke to find it snowing, and proceeded to pack their stuff up quickly as they had to move their car up a hill before it was snowed in as they did not have four wheel drive.

So we luck out and have two pictures that look like two different seasons. Thanks Deek for sharing your adventure with us. You can also view a couple more pictures of the interior on Deek’s blog.

Bruce say: I built two 12′ yurts last summer each, with 12 students, and each, in two days, start to finish and up. I’ll be offering the lessons learned in a workshop this summer. Course details at http://www.forloveofyurts.blogspot.com.  Minimal cost on a sliding scale $225-$185. The 12′ yurt design is simple and uses ordinary lumber and simple sail maker technology to make a waterproof roof (polytarps cut to shape and jointed with double sided carpet tape hammered down with rubber mallets). Material cost of each 12 foot yurt was $421.83 using Pex for a dome or about $771.83 using a plastic dome. There are pictures of the classwork at the blog at older posts from the workshop announcement.

Yurts have sheltered people since Heradotus wrote histories 2000 years ago. With minimal woodworking skills, a home of complex and magical beauty can be made at an amazingly modest cost, (roughly one tenth of the cost of a Yurt kit). In this workshop, you will gain an experience that will allow you to make your own yurt of any size and any design. This course will lead you through building walls, door frames, rafters, roof rings, roof ring supports, domes, tension bands and coverings. You will gain an experience that will allow you to make your own yurt that meets you needs and matches your dreams.

Workshop Objectives

To learn how to build an ultra simple, green, sustainable yurt
To learn simple power and hand woodworking skills necessary to build a yurt
To experience the magic of wall rods, under tension, shaping walls
To experience the ease and joy of lifting the roof ring skyward and fitting rafters to ring and wall
To see how a yurt cover plays with light
To gain a knowledge that allows you to create your own yurt

Build Your Own Dream Yurt.
Memorial Day Weekend, Friday 4 PM To Sunday 4 PM, May 27-29
Click here for all the details: For Love of Yurts

The students visited the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, Vt. for inspiration and ideas for their tiny house and they decided to design a rectangular building with one low corner to create a curved roof that rainwater can pour off of and be collected. A loft, furnishings and lighting fixtures were also designed and constructed by the students. Sheep wool was added for insulation into the window casing, the hardware and metal roofing was purchased from local building supply companies and the threshold to the front door is slate from a local quarry. The house will have a solar powered electrical system installed as well as the rainwater catchment system. The house will then be sold by the students to recoup the costs of the build.

The tiny house represents an excellent learning opportunity for students in the College’s REED (Renewable Energy and EcoDesign) certificate program. During the design and construction process, students adhere to sustainable building practices as well as learn about the real estate market. A video was created about their build and can be see on the Green Mountain College website.

Photos courtesy of Green Mountain College

By Christina Nellemann for the [Tiny House Blog]

Guest Post by Gwen Powers:

Back in October, some friends and I decided to head up to Vermont to participate in a Tiny House Workshop, run by Peter King (check out the website – and look for upcoming workshops – here).

I wrote an earlier, much shorter post on this right after the event, but I’m hoping to be able to give a more thorough report in this one. While this may not end up containing more information, memory being the finite thing that it is, it will definitely contain more pictures!

Photos by Gwen Powers, please contact her for permission to use them.

This is Peter King, giving us an intro talk about why he does these workshops. Peter feels strongly that building a place to live is not rocket science. Housing gets expensive and complicated when we decide we “need” extravagant amounts of space, and complicated structural and decorative details. But if we are willing to redefine that need, and pare it down a bit, than being intimately involved in building the most important structure in our lives is well within reach.

Peter claims – and I believe this, after the weekend – that anyone can learn how to build a simple structure. All it involves is basic math, and basic tools, and a few easily learned rules.

The second aspect of his involvement in these workshops is that he feels strongly that housing is just too darn expensive – we should be able to own the house and the land we live on, and not have to loan it from a big corporation.

After this discussion, and after getting a quick summary from each of us – eight participants, including the owner – on why we were there, we got to work.

The first task was framing out one of the walls. The building was 12 by 20, and the two long walls had to go up first. Khumpani (the owner, who is an herbalist who is currently living in an even smaller tiny house on the land) and Peter had finished the foundation earlier in the week, in spite of the miserably cold and persistent rain, so that we could get as much of the main structure done over the weekend.

This photo is just prior to getting the wall up – this is the most complicated tool used that day, and only Peter was allowed to use it:

And Peter in action:

And the first wall, going up!

Getting it level:

Then the rest went together relatively quickly. Unfortunately, the nail gun was not in use, as apparently these contraptions are picky about the types of nails that go into them, and we had the wrong kind. So instead we got to do lots of hitting of things! Which was fun, but much slower. When someone like Peter is sinking a nail, it takes him three hits. When rookies are sinking nails, it takes us anywhere from 8-20.

Also, we were learning about king, queen, and jack studs, as well as what cripples were and where they were supposed to go, so there was a lot of “Peter? Do we hit this one in here?” followed by pauses for measurements, re-measurements, and explanations.

Our progress near the end of the first day:

Cutting out windows:

One of the tools we were allowed to use, a speed square:

The other tools we could use included hammers, and measuring tapes. And chisels. All simple hand tools, which did the majority of the work.

By the middle of the second day, the roof was going up:

Some inside shots – this is from the entrance door, looking to the south. Khumpani planned for passive solar gain, which is why all the windows are on this side, and why they are enormous.

From the door, looking north – the kitchen will be going against the back wall, under the windows. The door that is framed out will eventually open to a deck.

From the kitchen windows (and the future deck) there’s a lovely view of the meadow where Khumpani is currently living, and the mountains beyond. See:

And one more inside shot, from the kitchen looking back:

The ladder over on the right goes up to the loft. He had planned for a dormer, to have another window and some headroom up there. I don’t know what it looks like inside at this point.

Here is what it looked like at the end of the second day – you can see the gap on the left where the dormer will be:

Peter’s ability to manage the project was remarkable. He was constantly juggling the roles of teaching and project management, and I thought he did a tremendous job. He somehow managed to keep track of all the little jobs that had to get done, kept everyone moving, paused to answer questions, and got a team of total novices to frame a house in two days. It was also fun to chat with him at meal times about his views on housing and lifestyle – he had really helpful things to say about finding land, books to read, and skills to acquire.

Overall, it was a fantastic way to spend a weekend, and we lucked out with a crew of lovely, thoughtful, interesting, fun and hard working people. It was also really great to meet and work with Khumpani, who is living his life with an inspiring level of dedication to his ideals and to the earth.

After we left, Khumpani continued to work on it on his own, with a little bit of help from friends and family, and I believe that Peter also returned to help him finish up the plywood sheeting, etc. Khumpani recently sent the participants an email with photos of the current progress – this is from the middle of November:

The inside is sheetrocked, and it’s almost ready to be moved into! I’m hoping to get updates as the inside gets finished. I think it will be a lovely space to live in.

Please be sure and check out Peter Kings website for more workshops. I will also try to stay in the know and let you here about them on the Tiny House Blog. Thanks Gwen for such a great report on a wonderful workshop. Visit Gwen’s blog here for more great reading.

We head to the green mountains of Vermont, where Deek and his brother have been working on a cabin in the woods for several years. Away from the noise and chaos of city life, this tiny home away from home offers a place where friends, family, and neighbors can kick back and enjoy nature, play music around a campfire, and enjoy the simple things in life.

Here are the details:

Time: September 15, 2010 at 9am to September 16, 2010 at 5pm
Location: Johnson Vermont
Website or Map: http://www.vermonttinyhouses.com/
Phone: 802.933.6103
Event Type: sustainable, building, workshop
Organized By: Colleen Korniak

Tiny House workshop with the effervescent Peter King! Wednesday Sept 9/15 & Thurs 9/16 in Johnson Vermont. Learn fundamental building techniques for Sustainable Living. $250 includes camping on site. For info & to register, call Peter at 802.933.6103