Jay Nelson’s work has been featured in Tiny Homes and Tiny Homes on the Move. Foster Huntington’s Toyota Tacoma camper was featured in Tiny Homes on the Move.
From Foster:
The car is a Suzuki SJ410. It’s the predecessor to the Samurai and has a 1-liter 4-cylinder enqgine.
The camper is made out of marine plywood and thin copper sheeting. The camper has a sleeping space that’s just over 6 feet long over the cab.
Jay Nelson designed and built the camper in two weeks with some help from some friends.
Yogan is an accomplished timber framer (and treehouse builder) from France. His work has appeared in our last two books. He will be traveling along the West Coast this summer and wants to hook up with builders, homeowners, homesteaders, and/or people of like interests. He’s open to any kind of arrangement, including working for room and/or board.
I’m coming in August, September and October to walk on the West Coast, from California to Seattle. My goal is to meet, visit, help, places and people where there are amazing shelters, cabins — in the woods, if possible.
If I could find a community of carpenters living in cabins in the forest, it would be perfect!
I’d also like to go to any carpenters’ or timber framers’ meetings.
I will be hitchhiking frequently with my backpack and accordion!
We don’t mean to brag, but according to Heavy.com, Shelter Publications has two of the top 5 best tiny house books:
The Tiny House Movement is growing rapidly in the United States. There are a lot of cultures around the world who have already discovered the greater simplicity, freedom and happiness that comes from minimizing your “stuff” load and living in a small home. In the U.S., though, the trend for years has been toward McMansions and the “more is more” philosophy: more space, more stuff, more debt, more hours at work, the list can go on and on. The Tiny House Movement provides an outlet and an alternative for people looking to have more creative control over their living spaces and, in turn, their lives. These five books are a good starting place if you are interested in tiny homes and want to learn more, are looking for some inspiration and ideas, or if you are an experienced tiny house dweller or builder. Read More …
Tiny Texas Houses were featured in our book Tiny Homes: Simple Shelter. Here are examples of more of their work. All materials salvaged. “For us, a Tiny House runs a 160 sq. ft. up to about 750 sq. ft., including the lofts and an insulated back porch. The Teeny Tiny House is generally under that mark on the bottom floor, going as low as 63 sq. ft. Here are a few of the tiniest houses that we have built that are great for a guest house, or for a child living at home that you do not want to become totally independent of the main house. Here are some of my favorite Teeny Tiny Houses that we have created so far.”
In 2007, we got an email from Yogan, a young carpenter in France. He said he’d started out with a Volkswagen van, worked alone, and was following in the footsteps of old carpenters, using “…noble wood.” He had a large Mercedes van that contained his portable tools, as well as a bed and kitchen for working away from his home territory. He’d seen our book Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter, and wanted us to see the treehouse he was living in. We featured Yogan in both Tiny Homes and Tiny Homes on the Move. Here’s a new creation from Yogan, a ship-shape elevated 450 sq. ft. tiny home located in France, with a deck shaped like the prow of a ship. Read More …
SunRay Kelley continues to invent, design, and build a plethora of buildings and vehicles. I asked SunRay and Bonnie to send us the latest, and here are videos of his campers and electric reclining bike. I don’t know of any vehicle that combines diesel, solar, and electric power like the RV shown at the right.
Lloyd Kahn’s book, Tiny Homes, featured Linda Smiley’s Laughing House, located in Oregon at the Cob Cottage Company. Linda is a director of Cob Cottage Company as well as a master cobber and therapist. She teaches Sculpting Sacred Spaces, Interior Design, and Natural Plasters and Finishes. Read More …
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.
Saw your call for responses to the upcoming Small Homes book. Exciting! I think our straw bale & timber frame home fits squarely into that category. It’s actually around 440 sq. feet of interior heated space, but with the porch and balcony it’s a bit bigger.
The prolific Jay Nelson has just completed a new vehicle. Jay’s nomadic creations are in both Tiny Homes and Tiny Homes on the Move. Here’s how he describes his latest:
Golden Gate 2, named after the last electric camper I built, Golden Gate 1. It’s a car camper made with salvaged wood and bike parts. It has a 90″ × 42″ footprint. Sink, water tank, stove, cooler. The entire inside is a bed.
Our book Tiny Homes has sold over 60,000 copies and with a recent surge of interest in the subject, is selling over 1,000 copies per month. We are getting a lot of inquiries from reporters and film makers about the subject; they want to contact people living in (or building) tiny homes.
I’ve taken to telling people I’m not the tiny homes guy, I’m the build-it-yourself guy, and that the important thing about the tiny home “movement” is not that all people should be living in tiny homes, but that the size of new homes should be getting smaller, rather than continuing to grow in size.
To wit: our next book will be Small Homes, and we’re starting to gather information. Size: 400-1200 sq. ft. or thereabouts (the maximum size in the Tiny Homes book was 500 sq. ft.). A small home is a lot more realistic for the majority of people than a tiny home.
We are asking people (you) to send us photos and details of small homes. Or leads to people living in or building small homes. In the near future we’ll do blog posts with this material, and down the line (1-2 years from now), we’ll publish the new book. Read More …
In Tiny Homes, we did two pages (pp. 110-111) on Ziggy Liloia’s cob cottage. In this excerpt from his website, TheYearOfMud.com, he explains how he built his reciprocal framed roof.
A reciprocal roof is a beautiful and simple self-supporting structure that can be composed of as few as three rafters, and up to any imaginable quantity (within reason, of course). Reciprocal roofs require no center support, they are quick to construct, and they can be built using round poles or dimensional lumber (perhaps with some creative notching). They are extremely strong, perfect for round buildings, and very appropriate for living roofs, as well. The reciprocal roof design was developed by Graham Brown in 1987. Read More …
In 1973 we published Shelter, which turned out to be station central for people interested in creating their own homes. Now, in the 21st century, we continue this dialog here online on shelter, carpentry, homesteading, gardening, and the home arts with this blog. We hope you will join us and contribute.
