I’ll be giving a slideshow and talk this Wednesday, Jan. 21 on the garden island of Kaua‘i, discussing our most recent book, Tiny Homes on the Move.
Got friends on Kaua‘i? Let ’em know.
At the Princeville Library, 6 to 7:30.
This is SunRay’s newest down-drafting sauna with a stove built from salvaged materials. The fire box is a 20″-diameter stainless steel piece from an industrial heating system. The heat riser is housed inside an old propane tank.
Flue gases spiral and rise until they hit the top of the tank and then are forced down between the heat riser and the tank until they are vented out the spiral chimney made of flexible stainless steel ducting.
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I’m printing contact sheets (ooops — thumbnails) of recent photos and running across some interesting things like this, from my trip to British Columbia last month.
The book on Godfrey’s art is just about out. www.godfreysart.com
Photo shot in San Rafael, Calif. by Dave Covey
This is one of my favorite little homes; everything about it seems right. I especially like the way the roof changes angles at the bottom, which directs rain out away from the building; also the shingle pattern above the windows and door makes it look like the house has eyebrows.
It was built by Jeanne-Marie; she based the design on the old stone barns of the surrounding countryside, but used wood rather than stone. The photo is by jean soum (capitalized as written), and it’s featured in our book Home Work in an article entitled “Archlibre,” on countercultural builders in France.
I’ve done some talks/slide shows on the subject “The Half-Acre Homestead in the 21st Century” and picked some time-tested tools that we use in our daily lives. Here is a link with access to each tool:
www.shelterpub.com/_homestead/tools.html
Shown is a little Italian-made grain grinder we use for making oatmeal flakes fresh from oat groats.
Bobby Heffelfinger created this rolling art studio in West Marin county, California, on a 2013 Ford F-350 truck with mostly recycled materials (left over from various building projects). He started with the truck chassis and built a flatbed with 2 × 2 steel square stock.
It’s immaculately built. It’s framed with 2 × 2 fir studs. Siding is 1 × 4 tongue-and-groove cedar. Curved rafters were cut out of fir 2 × 12’s. Roof sheathing is 1 × 6 redwood tongue-and-groove.
It’s 8 feet wide by 14 feet long. Inside, it’s 7 feet to the top of the arch. The roof is 18-gauge copper with standing seams. Windows were built out of redwood from an old water tank.
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When I was at the Mother Earth News Faire in Pennsylvania a few months ago, I bought a handmade knife from a mountain man — a guy who dressed in buckskins and made a variety of hunting, trapping, and outdoor tools. The blade was carbon steel, which I prefer over stainless steel. It’s softer and easier to sharpen, even if you have to care for it so that it doesn’t rust.
He told me that it was a Russell Green River blade, so I tracked it down, and ordered about half a dozen different shaped blades (from TrackOfTheWolf.com); they’re pretty inexpensive, $9-$10 each. I made the first one in the last few days with some manzanita wood I gathered (and dried out) a year or so ago. It’s a bit crude, but I learned a lot and am going to make handles for some paring and skinning knives.
In 1961, a surfing friend, John Stonum, was studying to be an architect at UC Berkeley, and designed this small building for me to build in Mill Valley, California. I wanted to build a sod roof (now called “living roof”), and we had journeyed up to the Heritage House on the Mendocino Coast to see their two sod-roofed cabins.
This was a post-and-beam structure, with posts 6 feet on centers, and oversized precast concrete piers for the foundation. A lumberyard in nearby Olema, California was going out of business and I bought a truckload of “merch” grade rough redwood two-by-fours for $35 a 1000. Not $350, but $35.
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Bernie Harberts was featured in Tiny Homes (pp. 188-189), documenting a 2,500 mile journey from Canada to Mexico, with a mule pulling a 21-square-foot gypsy wagon. Recently we got a letter from Bernie, as reproduced below. A month or so later he sent us two jars of applesauce cooked on his wood stove in a box stuffed with straw.
Another great video from Kirsten Dirksen of Fair Companies on tiny homes:
Deek’s website: www.relaxshacks.blogspot.com
“It only cost the Morrisons $22,000 to build their dream home. They now live mortgage-free, which has improved the quality of their life and the closeness of their marriage. Thanks to a brilliant design, this 207 sq. ft. space feels much bigger on the inside. The Morrisons have everything they need. There’s a spacious kitchen, with an oven, fridge, and sink. Definitely no lack of counter and shelf space here! They also included a reading area and an office desk that doubles as a dining table. Under the stairs to the loft is a big ‘closet.’ Not a single inch is wasted.”
Article at news.distractify.com/abby-s-marino/itty-bitty-house
I built a cottage for the local suburban farm outside Cleveland, Ohio. It took 2.5 of us and some weekend volunteers about three months to build. It is 200 square feet plus a bump-out window-bed and a 100-square-foot loft. The round poles and lumber came from the firewood pile on the property. We had an Amish miller come out with his trailer band-saw and slice up the bigger logs into live-edge boards for the ceiling and window bucks.
The walls are insulating clay-straw. The windows came from the local Habitat Restore. The interior is plastered with tinted drywall compound. The floor is local clay and stones sealed with hemp oil. The heat source is a small rocket mass heater. The chimney goes back and forth through the clay floor to heat it and keeps the building warm long after the fire is out.
…We used the clay — excavating to dig a swimming pond just behind the cottage. This summer we will do a two-week cottage building workshop at the same site for anyone who wants to learn how to build their own. Email Info@unclemud.com for more information.
–Chris McClellan
aka Uncle Mud
There are two things that I like about this tiny home:
This place is plain and simple on the outside, and thoughtfully laid out on the inside.
Brian Levy is leading his own quiet experiment on a pie-shaped, 5,000-square-foot lot in Northeast Washington. As new homes get larger and larger in many neighborhoods throughout the region, Levy is attempting to prove that less is more.
Levy’s house is 11 feet wide and 22 feet long, with 210 square feet of interior space. The house has a galley kitchen and space to accommodate a small dinner party. It also has a full-size bed — although he can’t sleep overnight there because of a provision in District law.”
Read More …
Peter and Donna Thomas were featured in our book Tiny Homes on the Move with their gypsy wagon. They recently sent us this photo and caption of their vintage streetcar:
Tiny home campsite made with our 1926 converted Melbourne W-2 streetcar as living room.
See YouTube for more about the trolley:
–Peter Thomas
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