It has walls!

My house of tiny has walls! The shape is coming together and I'm starting to get excited. I still wake up everyday with a little bit of nervousness but seeing it come together has been an awesome experience. Wielding a hammer, putting nails to wood and a saw blade to boards have all been new experiences for me but I've learned a lot. For example, I learned that all boards are not created equal. Knots make the overall board weaker, but they are the hardest spots in the board and they are where branches used to be. Pretty interesting stuff.

We decided to make the pinnacle of the triangle out of plastic so that there's lots of natural light coming into the structure. Not to mention that it will look pretty sweet! Here's a photo progression, all of this has happened in the last 10 days! Not too shabby :)

Footers and RVs

Over the past few days we've had some progress on the House of Tiny.  This project started with the demolition of an old deck that was holding a hot tub (I'll insert the video of the Subaru Hot Tub demo later).  Now instead of trying to rip out all the concrete footers (a footer is a piece of wood coming out of the ground, held in by concrete), we decided to instead leave the old footers and just install a few new ones.  

After letting the concrete on the new footers dry, we used a laser-level to get the same heights on all the posts, and then cut them with a saw.  Now we have a level surface on which to build a House of Tiny!

Today I became the proud owner of an old and decrepit $400 RV. While not so usable for recreation, this RV will provide us parts to use for the House of Tiny, I made a little video today.

The Japanese go Super Tiny!

Check out this tiny concept from Japan - these units are only 100 square feet! Makes 200 square feet sound like a mansion!

 Everything you need in one wall!

  Pretty cool.

Tiny house, tiny house, time to build a tiny house

Do you ever wonder why people go into huge amounts of debt to buy a house that's bigger than they really need? Well I have, and now I have the opportunity to do something different. It's called a tiny house, and don't let the name fool you, it's big enough. 200 square feet of efficient living, created from sustainable, local materials, and built with love.

Example of a tiny house

Another piece to living in my tiny house is community and something called co-housing. Co-housing is when people come together to design their communities and to share some space (which in tend, enhances their communities).  Community is something we have lost in the West.  We've become isolated, alone and that makes living and thriving a whole lot harder.  Community support  allows us to thrive and live in a whole new way.

Our goal is to build a tiny house in 3 weeks for less than $3000.  The water will be supplied by rainwater, the power by solar electricity and it will be completely off the grid.  I will be working with my new friend Patrick to build a tiny house on his land, starting a community, designing our very own place with a new system of being.