I haven’t posted in a while, but recently found this site that I am so glad to see! If you’re like me you get frustrated when you have to buy something and, no matter how much you research, it breaks within a few months or years. It seems like good solid objects just aren’t for sale anymore – it’s all discount walmart junk destined for the landfill.
but check this out, a site dedicated to finding and sharing products that are made to last:
[This is a repost of a post from Tammy Strobel’s Rowdy Kittens blog.]
by Tammy Strobel, October 12, 2015
“During 2011, our tiny house was designed and built by Portland Alternative Dwellings. Being part of the design and building process was fun and exciting, but it was also nerve-racking because we didn’t know where we were going to park our tiny house once it was finished. Thanks to our friend connections, we were able to rent a small yard in Portland, OR before we moved into the house. Knowing we had a place to park the house made everything a lot less stressful.
The tiny house we built for a client is now up and running as the best little coffee shop there ever was! Really cute tiny house parked conveniently in Poncha Springs on Hwy 285 / 50 just west of Salida, CO on the way up to Monarch Mountain ski resort.
the picnic table is a great spot to sit and sip your espresso while reviewing your map and planning the rest of your trip.
If you’re in the area stop on by! I’m biased of course, but the tiny house looks amazing and the coffee is some of the best I’ve had. Organic, fair trade, and all the great things coffee can be. Great job Michael and Sabra!
we received an email from a group calling themselves ‘The Collaborative Tiny House Project.’ They are creating video curriculum instructing how to build a tiny house that will be used in high schools and trade schools as well as distributed for general public use.
The Collaborative Tiny House Project has a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to create curriculum for schools wanting to teach how to build tiny houses.
check out their Kickstarter campaign here.
and the Tiny House Giveaway on their Facebook page here.
seems like building a tiny house would be an awesome project for students – hands-on, practical, useable information. I hope they can make it work.
[this is a reprint of a feature article I wrote for our local newspaper, published June 1, 2015.]
Tiny Houses are built on dual-axle trailer foundations both for mobility and exemption from zoning and building codes. In August of 2012 when work dried up in Arizona we simply hitched up and moved our house to Santa Fe, NM. I blogged about our tiny adventures at http://clotheslinetinyhomes.com. photo by Carrie Caverly
by Carrie Caverly
In the land of “McMansions” where the average house size has swelled to 2,600sf, a petite countercultural version of home is rolling into the neighborhood: the Tiny House.
“Drawn by the prospect of financial freedom, a simpler lifestyle and limiting one’s environmental footprint, more buyers are opting to downsize—in some cases, to space no larger than 300 sq. ft.”—Tiny House Nation reality TV show.
Small living quarters are not entirely novel, or inherently hip, but they are enjoying wild popularity. No longer the sole realm of online bloggers, tiny houses are all over the media, featured on Oprah, in Forbes magazine, CNN, the BBC, and a slew of local news stations. There are two documentary films now: Tiny: The Movie, streamable on Netflix, and Small is Beautiful: A Tiny House Documentary, with select screenings starting in April 2015. There are three reality TV shows: Tiny House Nation, Tiny House Hunters, and Tiny House Builders. Fortune magazine lists micro dwellings in the top 5 home trends of 2015, saying “micro and tiny are huge.”
this is re-post of a great article written by Jay Austin over at Boneyard Studios. [I added the photos.]
“Perhaps the biggest barrier to smaller living is the misconception that tiny houses are illegal. They’re not. Here’s why.
But first, a disclaimer on what I am and what I am not. I am an individual who lives (yes, full-time), in a tiny house in the District of Columbia. I am someone who has spent more time than I’d ever hoped trudging through DC zoning and planning and coding regulations. I am someone employed by the US Department of Housing & Urban Development who spends a lot of hours each day talking to—and learning from—housing lawyers and the very people who set federal housing policy. I have a penchant for taking risks, an insatiable urge to disrupt stale systems, and a graduate degree in government and public policy.
click here to go to Country Living’s gallery of 44 tiny houses. Macy Miller got front billing – congrats Macy! Your house looks very beautiful. Our house is buried in there somewhere…
and Portlandia’s skit mocking “microliving” is hilarious! I especially liked the bathroom / home office. Tiny Houses are just asking to be spoofed.
By Carrie Caverly. October 30, 2014 (an article I wrote for Tiny House Magazine…) When we built our Tiny House in 2012 we wanted it to be temporary – a stepping stone toward owning our own self-sufficient home, mortgage free. And even though I struggled with living in 200 SF for a year and a half, I feel so much gratitude for our tiny house because (two years later) it actually did enable us to buy land and start building a modest home of our own, without borrowing money. 
Our first rental lot in Prescott, AZ. Set up for an RV, this site was tucked into a residential neighborhood and I cropped them out of this photo, but there are neighbors 50 feet away on both sides.
We’re back in the Tiny House after 10 months of renting a big house. It feels really good- small, sure- but good. Cozy, clean, bright and light.
Tiny House interior – we added some plants and artwork and it’s feeling quite beautiful and homey.
I might be over personifying an animal, but I think Rio is totally BUMMED to be back in the tiny house! haha. He doesn’t have any carpets to roll around and play on. Sorry buddy, you’re at the bottom of this totem pole. Maybe if you learned how to hang sheetrock??
Friday we placed a concrete pad for the Tiny House on our new land and this week we moved the house onto it’s new slab. The tiny house will be used as a guest house and is now connected to sewer (flushing toilet! hooray!)
The front entry courtyard with the tiny house in place.
We obscured the view of the gooseneck hitch with a dry-stacked CMU wall that can be disassembled when we want to move the tiny house. Shane will add a little shed roof over this masonry wall and it will be outdoor storage area and there will be a wall connecting the main house to this masonry wall.
The south side of our new house and the tiny house entry.
The tiny house is an integral part of our new house design – we were able to make our new house smaller (only 1 BR 1 BA) because the tiny house will serve as a Guest House. It also blocks wind and creates an outdoor courtyard shielded from the adjacent road to the west.
In the photo above you can also see our hot water solar panels in place! These will heat our domestic hot water and radiant floors.
We ended up orienting the Tiny House with it’s entry facing away from the main house entry because the views were better from inside the tiny house – we wanted the full height windows in the Tiny House living room to look at the mountains to the east, not the road to the west. It’s more private inside the tiny house this way.
Really amazing views from inside the tiny house.
The tiny house is connected to water, sewer, and electric and we’ll be moving into it at the end of September while we finish the inside of our main house.
Clothesline Tiny Homes 