Tag Archives: tiny homes

Women in Deconstruction

Tiny homes: Mohawk women build domestic violence shelter | CTV News

A government program designed to train women in carpentry and other trades inspired five women from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, located east of Toronto, Ont., to build tiny homes that will serve as shelters for those fleeing domestic violence. (CTV News)

“It just proves anybody can build. The trade is not gender-specific, my mom was a carpenter and she built our house,” Chief R. Donald Maracle told CTV National News.“It’s good to see women entering the trades.”

Source: Tiny homes: Mohawk women build domestic violence shelter | CTV News

Deconstruction

One house into three? House deconstruction team recycles large unwanted homes | Stuff.co.nz

Treena Gowthorpe and Kate Otter-Lowe are setting out to prove that a house can be deconstructed and recycled for the ...

Treena Gowthorpe and Kate Otter-Lowe are setting out to prove that a house can be deconstructed and recycled for the same price as demolition.

“You take a house that isn’t wanted in the community and deconstruct it. You carefully harvest all the materials from the house and then you use those materials and reconstruct it into tiny builds,” she said.

Source: One house into three? House deconstruction team recycles large unwanted homes | Stuff.co.nz

Reuse Design

Tiny Texas Houses from Salvaged Materials – Green Homes – MOTHER EARTH NEWS

These recycled buildings, offered for sale out of Luling, Texas (between San Antonio and Houston), are built of recycled materials, based on traditional designs. They have instant soul. This is a wonderful body of work by builder Brad Kittel.

Our buildings are 99 percent pure salvage. Everything — doors, floors, windows, lumber, porch posts, glass, door hardware, and even the siding — has been saved and re-used to create houses that we hope will last for a century or more.

Source: Tiny Texas Houses from Salvaged Materials – Green Homes – MOTHER EARTH NEWS

Reuse Design

Massachusetts student Sarah Hastings has been told home is illegal | Daily Mail Online

Sarah Hastings has been living in her 190-square-foot home on wheels, dubbed Rhizhome, on a parcel owned by another couple for the last year.

‘Through my interdisciplinary education at Mount Holyoke College, I brainstormed a way to do this; by graduation I had competed the design and construction of my own mobile tiny home and received high honors in Architectural Studies for my work.  ‘I sourced all of my material from salvage yards, craigslist, and local businesses within a 200 mile radius of my building site.  ‘Local professionals, friends, and my father contributed their skills and knowledge to my project, which ensured a safe and informed home.’

Sarah Hastings (pictured) was given a day to move out. She says she’ll try to find another location for her house

Source: Massachusetts student Sarah Hastings has been told home is illegal | Daily Mail Online

Reuse Design

Gregory Kloehn Builds Tiny Homes for Homeless

To date, Kloehn has built 35 miniature homes for the homeless in Oakland and San Francisco. All construction materials (except for the wheels and a few other odds and ends), are sourced from garbage. He also runs workshops and give lectures, teaching other artists and handypeople the tricks of the trade. Following his lead, other builders have made homes for their neighbors in Los Angeles, Tucson, Arizona, and even abroad.

Source: Gregory Kloehn Builds Tiny Homes for Homeless

Reuse Design

Minimalist Country Home Built From A Recycled Barn – Tiny House for UsTiny House for Us

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They call it the “Conceptual” house because of it’s experimental approach toward both construction and positioning. Their aim was to keep costs as low as possible by using local and recycled materials, and they chose the setting among the fragments of an old barn to create a sort of open courtyard feeling around the home.

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via Minimalist Country Home Built From A Recycled Barn – Tiny House for UsTiny House for Us.

Portland Area, Reuse Design

Salvaged tiny homestudio: tin can siding, paper bag wallpaper – YouTube

On a standard-sized lot in Portland, Oregon, self-taught builders Jeff and Brad built two tiny cottages using mostly salvaged materials. Each home is 364 square feet and with gabled roofs and front porches match the Victorian and Craftsman homes of the neighborhood, until you look closely.

via Salvaged tiny homestudio: tin can siding, paper bag wallpaper – YouTube.

Reuse Design

Tiny House Trend: The $250 Cob House | Designs & Ideas on Dornob

Interior of the Cob House

Michael Buck relied on pre-used, natural, reclaimed and mostly biodegradable materials, building his structure with earth, sand, clay, water and straw – a prehistoric method called Cob. He’s self-taught and drew up the plans himself. The floorboards came from a neighbor, the windows from an old van, the sheep wool used for insulation from a local farm, as did the cow dung. The straw was sourced from nearby fields and the clay from the building site in his garden itself.

Interior of the Cob House

The Michael Buck Cob House in Oxfordshire, England, was built using an ancient technique

 

via Tiny House Trend: The $250 Cob House | Designs & Ideas on Dornob.

Urban Blight to Farms

Turning Blight into Urban Gardens and Homes | East Bay Express

Steven DeCaprio. - BERT JOHNSON

DeCaprio is the head of Land Action, a nonprofit that he created in 2011 to assist tenants with eviction defense. Two months ago, Land Action launched a campaign to build one hundred micro farms in Oakland over the next five years. The farms will be anchored by tiny homes — less than 120 square feet in size — that will house low-income Oakland residents.

The plan hinges on the use of so-called “tax-defaulted property” — land that is worth less than the taxes owed on it. In Alameda County, tax-defaulted parcels typically have been abandoned by their owners and can be publicly auctioned after five years. But attracting buyers willing to pay the back taxes and fines can be challenging.

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via Turning Blight into Urban Gardens and Homes | East Bay Express.

Reuse Design

Vintage teardrop trailer meets handcrafted steampunk design Steampunk Teardrop Trailer Dave Moult Exterior – Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

Dave Moult, of the UK, enjoys taking the old and making it new. Yet, he eschews modern design and instead opts for timeless 19th century ideas through his work. Moult invests many hours in his creations, including the rehabilitation of an old teardrop trailer.

Many of the details of the trailer’s interior have been crafted by hand. The original chandelier piece is born of a vintage tea pot and copper pipes. The illusion of a library is devised by using a clever wallpaper and much of the interior incorporates found wood, leather, and various metals. All of the leather present in the trailer is from an old couch which the designer purchased for the equivalent of $22.

via Vintage teardrop trailer meets handcrafted steampunk design Steampunk Teardrop Trailer Dave Moult Exterior – Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building.

Reuse Design

New Zealand Student Builds Tiny Home From Material Salvaged After an Earthquake

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Stefan’s home measures just 215 square feet and his main aim when building it was to create a comfortable home while keeping the building costs down. While the home is sustainable, Stefan does not consider himself a dedicated greenie or tree hugger. He simply did what he had to given the circumstances.

via New Zealand Student Builds Tiny Home From Material Salvaged After an Earthquake.

Structure Reuse

Tour the Coolest Converted Grain-Bin Dwelling on the Prairie – Adaptive Reuse – Curbed National

grain3.jpgPhoto via Collaborative Design Architects via Houzz

The original bin, which measures 36 feet in diameter and 20 feet in height, has stayed largely intact; inside it, the primary living space is enclosed in a 900-square-foot insulated box. There are, however, stairs that lead to the unfinished space below, which Morris currently uses as an art studio.

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via Tour the Coolest Converted Grain-Bin Dwelling on the Prairie – Adaptive Reuse – Curbed National.

Reuse Design

Australian Man Builds Tiny, Solar-Powered Retreat Using Almost 100% Recycled Materials | Inhabitat

Australian builder James Galletly, also known as The Upcyclist, teamed up with the Bower Reuse and Repair Center to design and build The Tiny, a small and cozy retreat constructed atop a box trailer and assembled with more than 95% recycled materials.

via Australian Man Builds Tiny, Solar-Powered Retreat Using Almost 100% Recycled Materials | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building.

Uncategorized

Little Relaxation Cabin Built From Mostly Salvaged Materials | Designs & Ideas on Dornob

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According to Diedricksen, the cabin wasn’t even planned – it just came along as kind of an afterthought during one of his small home building workshops. Being a long-time collector of salvaged and donated building materials, he had just about everything he needed on hand already.

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via Little Relaxation Cabin Built From Mostly Salvaged Materials | Designs & Ideas on Dornob.

Portland Area

Hearts and Sparks Productions | Here It Is (The small house Portlandia video)

 

Friends drop by to see another one of those small houses. Originally made with great affection for a Portlandia film festival, the video has continued to have a life of it’s own online, striking a cord with the growing tiny house community.  It has been featured in blogs all across the country including The Atlantic Cities (mistakenly attributed to the Portlandia tv show), The Mother Nature Network (where it’s compared/contrasted with an actual Portlandia sketch) and Curbed (where it’s described as “making the Portlandia writers wonder why they didn’t get to it first.”)  .

via Hearts and Sparks Productions | Here It Is (The small house Portlandia video).

Reuse Design

Rustic Way Saunas – Reclaimed Wood

Rustic Way Sauna 5911

Rustic Way Sauna 4   There are no shortcuts in the realm in which Dan and The Rustic Way operate. The keys to producing products of the highest quality that are cherished for generations are really quite basic: ˜scouring the Midwest region, and beyond,for the best sources of reclaimed wood ˜taking utmost care in dismantling/deconstructing aging structures to preserve as much usable wood as possible in its natural, weathered condition˜and then relying on two decades of experience-proven techniques to massage the reclaimed wood — through planning, hand-sanding and multiple layers of finish to enhance what’s already there, bringing out the beauty nature created in 100-plus years of life.

 

 

 

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Rustic Way Saunas.

Reuse Design

Zen forest house: 11K, handcrafted, small home in Oregon – YouTube

We posted about this once already – but this tour is so worth another visit!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32WtDb3c3ws?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]

Brian Schulz wanted to see “how small of a house I could make feel big”. Inspired by the traditional Japanese minka homes that rely on local materials and steeply sloped roofs to create affordable, open structures, Schulz created a home using materials salvaged or sourced from within 10 miles of his home.

via Zen forest house: 11K, handcrafted, small home in Oregon – YouTube.

Portland Area

Salvaged tiny homestudio: tin can siding, paper bag wallpaper – YouTube

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5j4PL-2Jlc?feature=player_detailpage&w=640&h=360]

On a standard-sized lot in Portland, Oregon, self-taught builders Jeff and Brad built two tiny cottages using mostly salvaged materials. Each home is 364 square feet and with gabled roofs and front porches match the Victorian and Craftsman homes of the neighborhood, until you look closely.

via Salvaged tiny homestudio: tin can siding, paper bag wallpaper – YouTube.

Reuse Design

Reclaimed-Material Nomadic Pod Was Built for Under $2K – Micro Homes – Curbed National

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All it takes to make one is a bit of faith, the willpower to disengage yourself from humanity’s torrid love affair with square footage, and in the case of this 70-square-foot nomadic living pod, about $2,000. All that and a cache of reclaimed materials was all that a class from Green Mountain College in Vermont needed to build the Optimal Traveling Independent Space, or OTIS.

GreenMountainOTIS2.jpg

via Reclaimed-Material Nomadic Pod Was Built for Under $2K – Micro Homes – Curbed National.

Reuse Design

Whole Village of Tiny Houses Makes Boneyard Studios a Unique Urban Retreat | Inhabitat

An EPA geographer, Pera and the rest of the crew have invited hundreds of Washingtonians to visit Boneyard Studios, where they can learn everything there is to know about designing, building and living in homes that are no bigger than 200 square feet. They are also working hard to convince city officials to revise outdated zoning codes so that they can actually live in their low-impact homes full time.

Lee Pera, Brian Levy, Minim House, Tumbleweed Houses, Tiny Houses, Tiny Homes on Wheels, urban design, DC tiny homes, recycled shipping containers, tiny house village in washington DC, green design, sustainable design, eco design, Boneyard Studios, mini homes in nation's capital, tiny homes challenge zoning laws, rainwater capture, AIA merit award, solar power, organic garden, alley lot homes in DC, alley homes, urban infill, The Matchbox, The Pera House, Foundry Architects, Element Design+Build, Indulgent Restraint, Urban Density Lab, Tony Gilchriestvia PHOTOS: Whole Village of Tiny Houses Makes Boneyard Studios a Unique Urban Retreat | Inhabitat – Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building.

Reuse Design

▶ Micro-homesteading in WA with 10K microhome (84 sq ft) in friends’ yard – YouTube

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSGvBJEoNv8&feature=player_detailpage]

 

Dee Williams used to live in a 2,000-square-foot, 3-bedroom home. Then she traveled to Guatelama (to help build a schoolhouse) and when she came home her house felt too big so built herself a home that fit. That turned out to be a 84-square-foot foot home on wheels that cost her $10,000: $5000 for the materials (mostly salvaged) and the other half for the solar panels and low-E (low thermals emissivity) windows.

She spent 3 months building her new home in Portland, Oregon and then hitched it to her truck and parked it in the backyard of her good friends Hugh and Annie in Olympia, Washington. For the first 7 years she moved in and out (removing the back fence), but for the past two years her wheels haven’t moved.

via ▶ Micro-homesteading in WA with 10K microhome (84 sq ft) in friends’ yard – YouTube.

Reuse Design

HobbitatSpaces.com – We’re Big on Small Spaces – Custom Small spaces – Studio, guest house, eco-friendly living : Hobbitat.com

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A HOBBITAT JUST FOR YOU!

Our passion is for small structures, thoughtfully designed using today’s technologies wrapped in reclaimed and repurposed materials. Our goal is to create healthy, energy efficient spaces that inspire living. Each of our Hobs are as individual as our clients, they each tell their own story and convey a style unique to their owner.

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via HobbitatSpaces.com – We’re Big on Small Spaces – Custom Small spaces – Studio, guest house, eco-friendly living : Hobbitat.com.

Reuse Design

Cob Building Basics: DIY House of Earth and Straw – Green Homes – MOTHER EARTH NEWS

Cob and reclaimed building materials go hand in hand.

This is a great article in Mother Earth News in which they mention using reclaimed concrete (Urbinite) as a perfect material for cob building foundations.

Cob house in California

Photo By Chris McClellan

Today, building your own house is the exception to the norm, and it is almost unheard of to build with local materials. Instead, houses are built by specialists using expensive tools and expensive, highly refined materials extracted and transported long distances, often at great ecological cost. Industrial materials have many benefits — performance, predictability, speed and ease of installation — but they have in common that they must create a profit for the companies that manufacture them. The average number of members in U.S. households has dropped by more than half in the past 50 years. Yet, over the same time period, average home sizes have more than doubled. We are more comfortably housed than at any point in history, but practically enslaved by the payments (the word “mortgage” is French for “death contract”). Fortunately, we have other choices.

Creative details are sculpted into the cob façade of a home during environmentally friendly remodels.

via Cob Building Basics: DIY House of Earth and Straw – Green Homes – MOTHER EARTH NEWS.

Reuse Design

Try Before You Buy: Tiny Cabins by Hobbitat at Ecotourism-Friendly Blue Moon Rising

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Recently featured on Tiny House Talk, tiny home builder, Hobbitat, was started just over a year ago by Maryland custom home builder and historic restoration specialist, Bill Thomas.

Since 1995, Bill and his wife, Sue, had been designing and building homes as Blue Sky Ventures and, in 2011, they began constructing little buildings with reclaimed materials and decided to shift focus with Hobbitat when they began work on thirteen cabins for the Blue Moon Rising eco-tourism retreat on Maryland’s Deep Creek Lake.

Initially called “Hobs,” the rental cabins have been dubbed “Waldens” after Henry David Thoreau’s masterpiece. Prefabricated off-site using materials that are local and sustainable, reclaimed, or recycled, each Walden is distinct in personality and design.

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBmopcXcRGw?feature=player_embedded]
via Try Before You Buy: Tiny Cabins by Hobbitat at Ecotourism-Friendly Blue Moon Rising.

Portland Area, Reuse Design

Sauvie Island Tiny House

Jessica Helgerson and Yianni Doulis purchased this gem of a tiny house back in 2008 with the intent of living in it full-time with their two small children. The tiny house sits on a five-acres of land on Sauvie Island which is about 15 minutes north of Portland.

The house was remodeled with reclaimed materials and now serves it’s fourth role since it was built in the early 1940′s. The homes original use was to house shipyard workers that worked in the local area. When the area flooded in 1948 the house was floated down river to Sauvie Island where it became a goose-neck station. After that it became a rental house and now a tiny house for four.

Jessica and Yianni’s small home only has a footprint of 540 square feet and has a green roof for added insulation.

via Sauvie Island Tiny House.

Reuse Design

The charming $200 micro houses made from junk | Mail Online

Microhome

Made from scavenged materials, Derek Diedricksen’s tiny houses cost just $200 to make.

What the little wooden dwellings lack in space, is made up for in style thanks to plenty of decorative detail.

His smallest structure stands at just four feet tall at its highest point. It comes complete with a strained glass window, an empty jar serves as a second window.

The 33-year-old uses parts of discarded household items to ensure each home has basic functions, the glass from the front of a washing machine is converted in a porthole-like window while a sheet of metal becomes a flip down counter.

The $200 Microhome

Assembled in his back-yard, the carpenter has built the portable shelters ranging in size from just four to 24 square feet.

‘I’ve always been obsessed with tiny architecture. For my 10th birthday, my father gave me a book, ‘Tiny Houses,’ by Lester Walker, an architect, ‘ he told the New York Times.

The $200 Microhome

via The charming $200 micro houses made from junk | Mail Online.