DIY Tiny Houses; The Time has Come

Great article in the NYT on Wed about the small house movement. It certainly seems like its time has come. Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, weeHouse, and others are making their move and with great success. And while some companies would like to sell us the ‘prefab’ version of the small house, I am more interested in the DIY versions; a punk-inspired ethic using scavenged, used and abused materials and doing it all yourself.

Let’s face it, building a glorified shed is not all that difficult,
even for those of us with less-than-ideal mechanical abilities.

In fact, I bet I could tear down my old shed and build a killer
‘tiny house’ in about 3 weeks in my spare time. Empty threat? Anyone
want to wager?

From the NYT:

“It’s a very exciting moment,” said Shay Salomon, a green builder
in Tucson, Ariz., and the author of “Little House on a Small Planet”
(Lyons Press, 2006), “because it feels like a chapter of American
history might be ending, the chapter called ‘Bigger is Better.’ I’m not
the Gallup poll, but I hear the same story over and over: We got rid of
that big house, and now I have time to see my husband. Before, we used
to work all week and then we’d spend the weekend on the house.”

Gregory
Paul Johnson, a founder of the Small House Society in Iowa City, said
that the notion of very small houses becoming popular was “an
absurdity” five years ago. “But there are so many powerful forces at
work right now,” he added, “like rising energy costs and the mortgage
crisis. I think people want small homes because they cost less to
purchase, maintain, heat.”

Read the rest here…