The place is a ‘workshop’ basically, a commercial space that I use for my art/music studio and to live in. The place is in rural Colorado, no address (not on the city’s map), it was a shell building, a large garage basically…the house/studio is heated with a west bay door that opens to a homeade acrylic glass window that in the morning let’s the east sun in for heat, there is also 3 large south facing windows for all day passive solar heat, the ‘running water’ is all carried in (usage is around 5 gallons per day or less) and the sink is made from a water container with a spigot attached (properly) with hose clamps and gasket.

I fill the sink with water as needed but it runs on gravity, the toilet is a composting toilet inspired by the humanure compost toilet system, so I use either peat moss or good pine sawdust for cover material, I also have another toilet just for urine (number 1), the shower is a little less luxurious and is a large plastic basin that I use either a hung solar shower or water jugs with holes drilled in them. I have a small copper quartz heater for at night mostly and a wood stove for heat, the studio is about 1000 sq ft (so not exactly tiny), (but not a large ‘house’ either).

Everything is made from recycled materials, thrift shop finds (again recycled) or things I built myself, such as the toilet made from a vintage end table and one from a coal stove, the sink basin was free at a yard sale, and drain into a 5 gallon bucket in which I take to my grey water area, and the toilets are put into the compost piles.

I live/work in here (work mainly ) (it is zoned commercial), and it serves as a small living space, kitchen, bedroom(s) (2 beds and a nice sofa sleeper), and the rest of the space is my art (furniture, instruments, jewelry, audio sculpture…(all functional but still decorative), and my music studio, I play music live all over in Colorado. I release records on labels and our own record label and tour off and on. It is definitely a space well used!

All the best,
Matthew Hunzeker

http://thelonegaragemassacre.wordpress.com/

Building a tiny house by yourself can be intimidating, especially if you have limited construction knowledge. But imagine if instead of doing it alone, you were part of a community of people with different levels of knowledge and experience working in tandem toward the common goal of building and living in a tiny house. In this community there would be an experienced instructor who was there to guide you and answer all of your questions along the way. This is the idea behind the Tiny House Build Along.

At the end of six months you could be living in your own tiny house. A house that is mortgage free, environmentally sustainable, that you built with your own hands. Beginning on March 1st 2012, I will be building a tiny house, and I invite you to build yours with me.

Participants will get access to an online community where each step of the build process will be broken down and scheduled to allow ample time for completion. Illustrated instructions and videos will be provided for each step so that you understand exactly what needs to be done. There will also be a discussion area where you can post your questions which will be answered by your fellow builders and myself. For each step there will be an opportunity to call in and ask your questions with the instructors answers broadcast live over the web to all participants (these sessions will also be recorded for others in the event someone is not available at the specified call time). My personal number will also be provided for a limited number of immediate answers.

The total cost is $849 and includes your choice of one of the Tiny Home Builders tiny house plans (Tiny Living or Tiny Retirement), the Tiny House Construction Guide, and unlimited access to the Tiny House Build Along online community.

You’ve dreamed of living in a tiny house, if you’ve thought of building your own home, but didn’t know where to start, then this is it! This is your start!

Reserve your spot today for $99.
Learn more at tinyhomebuilders.com/buildalong.

Laurel Nest Yurts is offering a “Complete Yurt Building Experience” and a DIY Yurt Building Workshop.

Laurel Nest Yurt building workshops give you all the skills you need to:

• Build the platform
• Plan, design and build your walls, roof and tono.
• Install framed and mesh windows and skylight
• Sew your yurt cover out of Canvas
• Erect the yurt

The cost for the workshop is $125 to help cover costs incurred by workshop (snacks, materials, instructors, printing of the manual, etc.) We will have a limit of 10 people at our workshop, snacks and camping available.

You can get the complete details here: http://www.laurelnestyurts.com/ blog or use the following contact information:

For more information or registration contact:
Adrian
831-338-8300
adriantepperman@gmail.com

The conference is a three-day, solutions based gathering that brings together a diverse audience to create deep and positive change in our communities.

Peter King’s workshop will be joined by dozens of other workshops and keynotes throughout the conference weekend. For more information on this year’s program please visit, http://www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change/events, and here is more information on my presentation, http://www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change/events/how-build-small-wood-frame-house.

In addition, here is a link, http://www.marioninstitute.org/videos/2010/2010-connecting-change, to VIEW A VIDEO of the 2010 Connecting for Change Conference

This conference can change the way you see the world and the experience can help you change the world! REGISTER here, http://www.marioninstitute.org/connecting-for-change/register, for the 2011 Connecting for Change Conference.

About two months ago my boyfriend, Shane, sent me an odd text, “Can you take off from work July 8 – 11?”

“I think so, why?”

“We’re going on vacation.”

And so began the Super Secret Vacation saga. For weeks I guessed where we might be going and worried about what to pack.

“Are we camping?”
“Maybe.”
“Ok, we’re camping. We can’t be going South – it’s too hot. Are we hiking?”
“Maybe”
“Do I need a bathing suit?”
“Yes.”

And on it went until July 8th when we got into the car. All I knew was that we were camping in West Virginia. But what on Earth was in West Virginia?

When we pulled into Taproot Farm (taprootfarm.info) I thought we were lost and asking for directions to a nearby state park. Then I met Beth Reese, a gracious and friendly woman who greeted us as if we were old friends – not strangers who had just pulled down her long drive way, uninvited, to ask for directions. She and Shane were chatting away when I saw Sigi Koko’s green VW bug with Build Naturally scrawled across the back bumper. It clicked.

Querencia

Shane and I were the first of 40 people to arrive for Taproot Farm’s a cob workshop. I had been looking for a cob workshop within driving distance to NJ for some time (I’m certain the Pacific Northwest is lovely, but it’s such a long way from where we live in the North East!) and had finally given up for the season when Shane found out about Sigi Koko and her company, Down to Earth Design (www.buildnaturally.com).

Workhop Participants

Kasey and Shane, the happy cobbers

Shane, thankfully, had other plans. The Reeses, our hosts, were wonderful. After 25 years living, working, and raising a family in Arlington, VA. They moved to Capon Bridge in Tim Reese’s home state, West Virginia, to start Taproot Farm which will one day be a 20-acre sustainable farm. Querencia is Beth’s whimsical artist studio currently being built on the property. I have to be honest when I walked through the tree line and saw Querencia for the first time I fell in love. Shane and Beth were still happily chatting away, but I was stunned silent trying to absorb my unbelievable Super Secret Vacation reveal.

Architect, builder, and teacher Sigi Koko helped design Beth’s dream studio and facilitated our workshops. Sigi was a blast! Her teaching style was engaging (complete with Sigi produced sound effects) and patient (she gracefully handled children’s interruptions and thoughtfully answered our many questions). Throughout the weekend I was impressed by the amount of individual attention Sigi, Beth, and Tim gave workshop participants by answering questions, giving feedback on our developing technique, and just enjoying the company!

Here is the schedule we followed (loosely) at the workshops:

Friday:
Check-in.
Workshop attendees make camp and enjoy a fantastic dinner prepared by Leenie, a local herbalist and amazing cook.

Cob Lesson

Mixing Cob

Saturday:
Breakfast prepared by Beth Reese (who despite modest protesting prepared a fantastic spread).
Check-in with Kate Reese, Beth & Tim’s daughter, who helped organize the workshop. Cob lesson by Sigi Koko on preparing cob, testing soil for clay content, and testing clay soil for sand content.

Cobbing! Forty workshop participants broke into small groups to sift clay, mix cob, and build cob walls.

Lunch, including a long break prefect for those who choose to nap and/or swim to re-energize.
Mini cob lesson, Sigi makes minor adjustments to cob technique’s based on her observations. She also introduces two new projects: a cob bookshelf and cob bench.
Dinner prepared by Leenie.

Sunday:
Repeat of Saturday’s schedule.
New cob lessons include: trimming walls, shaping a cob bench, and imbedding objects (such as glass bottles) into a cob wall.

Imbedding Objects

Niche

Monday:
Repeat of Saturday’s schedule.
New cob lesson included: building a niche in a cob wall.

It was a fantastic experience! The camping area on Taproot Farm was well cleared, with solar footpath lights along the walkways. The outdoor shower was perfect at the end of a muddy day (although chilly the first evening, which served me right for being among the last of 40 people to shower!) and the port-a-john was what you might expect.

Tim, Beth, and their kids Kate, Jenny, and Allen, were great hosts. There was ample shade thanks to easy ups placed around the worksite, easy access to water, and lots of sun and bug spray available for those who forgot theirs at home.

During meal breaks Shane and I were happy to peruse the library of natural building books Beth and Sigi left on display. I’m certain Shane and I weren’t the only ones who left with a list of 5 or 6 books we will be adding to our library in the future!

We hope to attend another Taproot workshop and are looking forward to the release of the straw bale and cob documentary, which was filmed in part during our workshop, this fall. We are also looking forward to Leenie’s workshop inspired cookbook which will include the many amazing dishes we enjoyed during our say, including gluten free and vegan options that were to die for!

If you are in the area and looking for a natural building workshop I suggest you check the remaining Taproot farm schedule. These are an excellent value and a great experience!

Taproot Farm Workshops http://taprootfarm.info/natural-building/
Sigi Koko, Down to Earth Design http://www.buildnaturally.com/
Shake Test video by Sigi Koko http://buildnaturally.blogspot.com/2011/06/shake-test.html.

Workshop location: Laurel Nest Yurts 264-1 Marlowe Dr. Mills River, North Carolina

We will be teaching people how to build all yurt parts. All participants will leave the workshop with knowledge about building their own yurt, sewing the yurt cover, the complete yurt building manual, and a roof ring that they assembled and finished on their own. We will offer lots of tips and suggestions, and participants should leave the workshop with first hand experience and knowledge about how all yurt parts come together.

We feel that because the roof ring is the most challenging frame piece to build, it will benefit all participants to make it on site. In the sewing studio, we teach how to make windows, assemble the walls, and cut and sew an entire roof! Some of the participants have helped with the sewing.

The cost for the workshop is the cost of the ring plus $100 to help cover costs incurred by workshop (food, materials, instructors, printing of the manual, etc.) We will have a limit of 8 people at our workshop. Deadline for registration is April 11! Check our website www.laurelnest.com for prices and other information. We will also be posting information on our facebook page, so sign up to get updates!

We had some other positive feedback, and testimonials, and they are below… thanks to everybody who made the workshop a success!

”I don’t know where I could find a better value in a sustainable shelter or a more helpful group of people to facilitate my dream of building my own yurt, then at Laurel Nest Yurts.”

“The workshop was awesome! people had a great time and learned a lot..no matter what level of know-how they came in with. There were people who already knew a lot, and people like me who were total beginners, and everyone was comfortable and got a chance to learn. Thanks Hal, Charlie, Asia and everyone for a great weekend!”

“I loved the hands-on options. Thanks for the background, so that personal modifications [to the yurts] can be made… I would recommend this workshop to others!”

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

Tiny Green Cabins makes the popular Wildflower cabin and several other designs. To register using Paypal visit the Tiny Green Cabins website. Here are the details of the workshop.

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.

Tim says: “We’ve always wanted to teach longer courses as part of our curriculum. We’re going to take that plunge and offer an intensive residential course starting January 2011. This will be a three month/twelve week course that will give any woodworker a very solid grounding in the array of skills they’ll need to develop as a furniture maker, cabinetmaker or (dare we say it) as a maker of Gypsy Wagons.”

He goes on to say: “We’re planning to push the envelope here and offer students the option of choosing to focus on one of these areas in the final part of the course. This would be a way for somebody with carpentry skills to transition to furniture making or finer finish work. For the avid hobbyist to develop a broader range of skills. Or for the Romany at heart to build the skills to complete a Gypsy Wagon.

We believe that this course can change your life. The course will give you woodworking skills that will last the rest of your life whether you make furniture for fun, rebuild your kitchen or plan to finish that gypsy wagon. Through the design part of the course we may uncover hidden passions or flair that help you grow as an artist.”

To get the full details visit the Woodworking website and see if this course if for you.