Jay Shafer: The Politics of Tiny Houses

This is hot off the press and you are the first to see it. Thanks Joan and George for letting me know! In February, 2011, we spent a couple of hours with Jay Shafer (Tumbleweed Tiny House Company), in his 96 square foot house-on-wheels in Sebastopol, California. Jay is one … Read more

Riveredge JayBee Project

Guest Post by Jan Brackett

I first learned about Tumbleweed Tiny Houses many years ago. They are so attractively designed and soundly built; I returned many times to the Tumbleweed web site to fuel and inform my own housebuilding fantasies. I didn’t seriously consider building my own tiny home on wheels, though–until recently.

When I bought property on the western bank of the Kennebec River in Maine 20 years ago, my plan was to replace the run-down, poorly-built home with a new one within a year or two.

Instead, life happened. I have lived in this house, and raised a son (who is now 25 and on his own) in this house. Over the years, I have worked on various possible strategies for living on my land while tearing down my house and building a new one. No plan felt “right,” though, for various reasons until, recently, when it occurred to me that I could build a tiny home on a trailer as my interim living space. Now I am spending every non-working moment living and breathing tiny-home planning.

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