Timber Frame - Part 3

Pan Abode Mighty Cabana

Pan Abode of Washington state has been selling their custom cedar homes and cabin kits for nearly 60 years. They offer a wide scope of sizes and styles including cabins that range from 120 square feet to just over 700 square feet. However, Pan Abode also sells an even tinier home they call the Mighty Cabana. These buildings do not require a permit and come in at under 200 square feet.

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.

Seeing Is Believing

by Kent Griswold

My Visit to Innermost House

by Kent Griswold

The other day I found a real intense peace sitting in front of this fire conversing with my new friends, Diana and Michael Lorence. Diana wrote a popular article for Tiny House Blog earlier this year entitled Diana’s Innermost House.

There is something almost unbelievable about Innermost House. When I received Diana’s invitation to visit, I was so curious to see it for myself.

144 square feet. No hot water or electricity. All their heat and cooking from the fireplace. I had seen the pictures on Diana’s website, and it’s hard to believe the house belongs to modern times. But Innermost House is real I can now say, and I can see how a couple really could live there. Seeing is believing.

It turns out the Lorences have lived there full time most of the last seven years. It’s their only home, though they do travel some. They didn’t even own a car until recently.

Living in the Future

by Christina Nellemann

According to the Lammas ecovillage in Wales, living in the future means looking to the past. This series of videos shows the baby ecovillage’s plans and struggles to develop a low impact village in the open countryside. The series also profiles several other successful ecovillages around Europe. The village is named after the pagan holiday that celebrates the abundance of the fall months.

Lammas is the United Kingdom’s first planned ecovillage and is sited on 76 acres of mixed pasture and woodland in Pembrokeshire. The houses use low-impact architecture which uses a combination of recycled and natural materials. The village will contain five detached buildings and one terrace of four dwellings. The homes will be built of straw bale, earth, timber frame and cob; they will have turf roofs and wool insulation and will blend into the landscape.

The videos (also available as podcasts) cover everything from searching for land, working with local codes, inspectors and design councils, examples of different types of natural building including straw bale and cob, surviving cold weather, self-sufficiency, growing your own food, and keeping community intact. The ecovillages profiled are Cae Mabon, The Village, Ireland and Findhorn. That Roundhouse by Tony Wrench is also featured.

The Stable Company

by Christina Nellemann

The Stable Company designs, manufactures and installs high quality, timber frame buildings and serves customers throughout the UK and Ireland. They specialize in small garden rooms, equestrian buildings and other outbuildings. The Stable Company’s insulated Garden Rooms would be the best option for a tiny house. The Company offers three: the Mono, the Duo and the Eco. The Mono has a single pitched roof and a choice of three different depths and unlimited widths. The Duo has a traditional pitched roof and a choice of 12 sizes. The Eco has a single pitched roof that features sedum plants and rocks.

The company also offers a pad foundation, Thermowood® siding, cedar roof shingles or insulated metal roofs, French doors, skylights, exterior lighting and decking. Interior options include laminate flooring, electrical and lighting, heating units and blinds.

Diana’s Innermost House

by Kent Griswold

Guest Post by Diana Lorence

*New photos added below of loft, kitchen and bathroom

This is Innermost House, my home in the coastal mountains of Northern California. It is the latest of many very small houses my husband and I have occupied over twenty-five years, all for the same reason–to make possible a simple life of reflection and conversation. I am delighted now to be a part of Kent’s public conversation with others who share my love of tiny houses, and I’m grateful to Michael Janzen of Tiny House Design for introducing us.

Innermost House is about twelve-feet square. It faces directly south beneath an open porch that shelters our front door. A hill rises to the north behind us and the forest lies all around. The house encloses five distinct rooms: to the east is a living room eleven feet deep by seven feet wide by twelve feet high; to the west the house is divided into kitchen, study, and bathroom, each approximately five feet wide by three feet deep, with a sleeping loft above the three of them, accessible by a wooden ladder we store against the wall.

Tiny Timber Frame Update

by Kent Griswold

I’ve been wanting to do an update on Ian’s timber frame tiny house that he has been building in Worcester, Massachusetts. You can view the original post here and get Ian’s story. Ian has been building the house in a firehouse building and just moved it to its permanent location. Here is what Ian says:

I just finished moving my house from my shop at the Firehouse to a spot in the woods on the other side of the city. There is still work to do before I move into it, but it is a huge relief to have finished the move. There are many pictures and a short video of the first part of the move on my blog

Tiny House Moving Day (Ode to teamwork) from pvander on Vimeo.