Who says a home can't be 200 square feet or less?

Here is the ABC News broadcast that aired last week on the house! Pretty awesome!

Check us out on local news channel 4 this week!

Last Thursday ABC Channel 4 news came out to the warehouse to check out the tiny house. This is the article they posted on their website and there should be a broadcast of our interview sometime this week.

http://www.abcnews4.com/story/16386340/tiny-house

One of our interviewers, Brian Troutman, is passionate about sustainable, green living and has a great blog on environmental awareness called Environmentally Challenged. It focuses on Charleston issues and is very informative. You can find it here:

http://www.abcnews4.com/category/207857/environmentally-challenged

Yay tiny houses!

Christmas Parade!

The tiny house makes it's debut tomorrow, December 4 from 2-5pm down King St. in downtwon Charleston! Come out and see La Casita in action!

The Skinny on The Tiny

Since we've got them, I figure I'll share a few Google SketchUp renderings of the Tiny House. SketchUp is free, and it is a really useful tool in considering the 2d plans spatially. A few details have already changed (window placement, mostly), and a few things need to be added (water heater, a/c unit, more detailed cabinetry diagrams), but they're too cool not to share.
Here's the house with no exterior walls (how?!)
The shelves in the foreground do not float, they are attached to walls that are currently invisible.
The blue couch is our real, actual couch! It's a really cool couch, and I wanted to model it and make sure it will fit in our space. I think I may have to surgically cut out a chunk of one leg, to accommodate for the wheel wells, but I will have that couch.
Here's a shot without the roof showing the closet arrangement in the bedroom loft. There will be significant clothes downsizing.

Through the kitchen into the living space. Shelves on the left of the far wall also serve as a ladder to Zach's loft-study, over the front entry.
To the left of Wayne is our alternating tread staircase/bookshelf. It's a central feature; I designed significant parts of the house around it! Maybe we can call it the Treppenhaus.
I'm excited to compare the renderings with the product as the build progresses!

Floor Pan Beginnings

Zach and I both woke up around 6:45 am yesterday, ready to dive into the TH build! First, a shot of the trailer without any of the decking. The lower part in the foreground is our detachable porch - 2' deep, and we can do a simple install of Ipe decking and call it a porch! When it comes time to move the house, we can just slide the porch out of the two rails, stow it in the house, and roll down the highway with a slightly shorter load.

First order of business was to lay out and rivet together the strips of aluminum flashing. This provides a mostly structural barrier against any debris that could fly under the house during towing, or any animals that might want to get up ins once it's in place.

All the flashing riveted in - shiny!

Rosie the Riveter: intimidating, or crazyface?

6mil poly sheeting goes down next, to act as an impermeable vapor barrier (except for where I dropped a floor joist and poked a hole, oops).

Floor joists are 2x6" Timbersil: a great, green product! Instead of being treated with toxic rot, insect, or fire retardants, Timbersil is impregnated with glass, making it extremely stable and wonderfully non-toxic! Ours were b-grade, meaning they were a little warpy, but totally useable, and also totally affordable.

All joints are reinforced with Simpson Strong-Ties, to make sure that when we go rattling down the highway, the house doesn't come rattling apart at the seams.

Upon cutting members for the floor box, I discovered that the trailer was not the requested 8'x24', but is actually 6" wider! The Department of Transportation doesn't allow anything wider than 8'6" to travel down the highway without special permits ($), so this thing is built to our absolute max width. It's not what was planned for, but I'm not going to argue with an extra 6" of width - that's an extra 12sqft of interior space!

After completing half the floor boxes, energy was flagging, but much was accomplished today!

An Announcement!

This is Zach, and his lady Margaret. We have been friends with Cedric and Andrea for about a year and housemates for about half of that time. We learned about this new approach to living through them and when the opportunity arose for use to build a space of our own, we just couldn't turn it down.

Now, after moths of planning and prep work, we have started down the same road Cedric and Andrea blazed before us; building a house for ourselves out of reclaimed lumber and building supplies from the Sustainable Warehouse. Through the immense courtesy and patience of Rebecca O'Brian, we had amassed most of the supplies of our build well in advance of the arrival of our custom made trailer.

Margaret and I have also been doing a lot of design work on how we would like the house to look and function. Margaret's amazing skills resulted in this:

A view of the inside:

For the foundation of the house we needed something very special. The wonderful folks over at McElrath Trailers really gave us a break on an awesome trailer with great features that allow us remove the house from the frame if we ever decide to stay some where for a long time or would like to use it to build a new house. Margaret and I ordered the trailer two months ago and on thursday we got word that it would be ready to pick up this weekend. As you can see, we were quite pleased to hear this.

We learned a lot about our trailer as we went along and Rick Conner from McElrath Trailers was very helpful and patient with us as we figured out what we need to get this project done right. He was about as awesome as it gets

We were so tired when we got home from the 10 hour day we just parked it in the warehouse and called it a day. Leaving it to rest in its new home.

Roof Raising Saturday, November 26

It's official! The roof is ready to be raised and we're planning a work party to help get it done! Saturday, November 26 from noon to 4 at The Sustainable Warehouse! There will be lots of different tasks at hand from putting the roof on (!!!) to painting windows to oiling the exterior and much much more! This is basically the race to get the house ready for it's Charleston Christmas Parade debut! Sunday, December 4 from 2-5 is the date and time of the public showing of the house and we are so so excited (as well as a bit nervous as everything that needs to get done in the next couple weeks!). There will also be spaces open in our spot for the parade so we need a few folks who would like to join the tiny house parade celebration. Perhaps a band or some bicycle friends (or a bicycling band) would like to join?

So please come out Saturday, November 26 and join us for refreshments, friends, dancing and roof raising fun!

Flooring!

So this past week we found out that the house we are renting is in the early stages of foreclosure! Nothing better than news like that to motivate us to get La Casita done as quickly as possible. This weekend Cedric and I put in the flooring for the loft. It is looking super great and we'll have pictures of it posted this week. It took about 5 hours and we did it in our own unusual way. We drilled it in to the downstairs beams rather than stapling it across the way you would normally do flooring. We'll be doing it the "right" way once we get started on the flooring downstairs. It looks really lovely and we'll be oiling the underside since it is visible from downstairs and we'll be doing some sanding to the top. Reclaimed flooring tends to have a LOT of splinters and rough edges! This week I'll continue to do some insulation so anyone who is interested in helping please let me know.




We've been getting a lot of nods from folks who've seen the City Paper article and we just want to say THANKS again to our friend Nikki Seibert for getting us published! It's been really fun meeting new people and talking up La Casita. Everywhere we go people seem open and excited about the undertaking and we are so glad to know there is so much community interest and support in the Charleston area for the tiny house movement. It's really the best time to be building this house and every day we feel so lucky to have been given the chance to do it! So please come on out to the warehouse if you haven't already (or come a 2nd or 3rd time!) and let us show you what La Casita is all about!

Happy October!

While Cedric is out of town I will be getting insulation put in. I was hoping to have a good start on this week but then I got a virus. Yuck. I'm feeling much better now and plan to hit the warehouse hard next week. If anyone is interested in coming out and helping I could sure use it! Any day after five o'clock and Saturdays 10-2 I'll be at the warehouse a workin' so send me a message if you can come out one day! That would be mighty fun! I'll even bake up cookies if you like!

We've pretty much have all the materials we need to finish the tiny house except a stove and a fridge! It's looking like we are going to be having our roof raising at Thanksgiving so all those who will be hanging out in Charleston for the holidays we'll keep you posted on the date (once it's decided).

Crunch Time!

What with all the redesign of the interior space we've lost about a week of work on our timeline. Cedric leaves for work in a couple weeks and is working hard to get the electric and plumbing finished before he's gone for six weeks! It's not easy to decide on a design, build it and then rethink everything. Cedric has had to tear our and redo a lot of previous work but he's done so with great enthusiasm and I'm so grateful for his positivity! The space is much better organized now and our changes are going to really add space and a sense of privacy to our home. I'll be stepping in at the warehouse more often and look forward to completing the insulation process and painting of the windows. I'll need lots of help so please contact me if you'd like to come out to the warehouse on the weekends beginning in October.

In other news, our house is officially named! You may have noticed references to 'La Casita' in some of our previous posts. So much of our inspiration for this project has come from our time spent in Spain. We both love the Andalusian and Catalunian styles of architecture, especially when moorish influence is present. Trying to incorporate these styles into a 6' x 16' space can prove challenging but we thought we could at least provide a spanish name for it! La Casita simply means 'the little house'. Casa=house and when you + -ita, which means little, you drop the -a and end up with an endearment.

Roof Raising Postponed

Update: Hurricane Irene is headed to the Carolina coast so we've decided that it would be best to move the date for the roof raising to another weekend. We talked about it and since hurricane season lasts through October we will keep the house in the warehouse and complete all the interior jobs first. Roof raising will be in November sometime (we'll keep you posted). Cedric bought green tin roofing today that was leftover material from a job out in Ravenel, about 30 minutes down Highway 17. Cedric starts work on the bicycle tours at the end of September til mid-October so progress will be considerably slowed during these weeks. We've started some interior work and are working on finding materials for the details (like having hot water!). Pictures to be posted soon!

Tiny House Talk

It seems everywhere we go people wanna know about tiny houses! It's really exciting to be in the midst of a movement that is taking off! Check out this article in The New Yorker.
It's a short article laying our the bare bones of the movement, how it started and whose doing it. I'd like to expand on it with our own motivations and goals.

We fall into 2 of the 3 categories described in the article, one of which being young people who want to own a house without being imprisoned by debt or even a set physical space and we want to live more lightly upon the earth. With the economy quickly receding (once again!) we find ourselves excited about our personal choice to build a tiny house and help inform those who are interested in living in more economically sustainable ways! Hard times can forge incredible paths to alternative living and we can't wait to see the movement continue to gain momentum as more and more folks move from the consumer-centric mindset to a more frugal and, personally for us, more enriching lifestyle. We want to be able to support those who are just coming into the movement by possibly hosting a south eastern conference for those individuals and businesses that are striving to create the change that needs to happen in our societal mindset. We hosted a discussion at this year's Permaculture Gathering in Celo, North Carolina and met several people in the area building tiny houses or who were interested in starting a project. It felt really energizing to talk and exchange information with knowledgeable folks and be able to share what we've discovered as well!

If you want to see it all in action, come out next Saturday, August 27 from 10-2 to help us raise the roof on our tiny house! Refreshments will provided and tours of the The Sustainable Warehouse will be on-going. See you there!

Housewrap and last windows

The housewrap and most windows are in. Still working on the Dutch door for the side door, so not ready to finish the
Tyvek on that section.

Each window is flashed, making a tight seal between the house envelope and the window frame. On the inside, some Great Stuff insulates the windows and seals them tight to the frame.

After much searching, we now have all the windows we will need for the house. Two little awning windows I got out of a deconstruction project will go into the dormers, providing great cross-ventilation of our loft bedroom.

The Beginnings: Part deux

Up until yesterday afternoon I had only seen the tiny house in pictures and drawings. Cedric and I went to the warehouse and I stood on the 2ftx2ft space that will eventually be our doorstep. Reality really hit me and I stood facing a space that surprised me with it's size. When we said tiny house, boy did we mean tiny! I had a moment of apprehension which was promptly flooded with excitement. Cedric showed me the windows and the wood he's found for the house and we discussed several details, including the layout of the kitchen and the dimensions of the bathroom. We plan to have workdays on the weekends when I am available to help so that I gain some understanding of the construction and what is going in to the house. Standing on the threshold of that soon to be doorstep, and my imagination, I recalled all the reasons for my choice in this venture with Cedric.

For some years now I have been coming in to an expanded awareness of my complete abhorrence of the environmentally damaging living patterns of my society. I am most interested in living off the land in a way that poses the least possible damage to the planet. A tiny house greatly reduces the footprint I make upon the world. With our goal of 90% reclaimed lumber and materials (windows, doors, fixtures, ect.) we hope to further diminish our impact by reusing materials that would otherwise go to the landfill. Our friend Rebecca is vital to this goal. We also envision the majority of the house powered with solar and wind energy, a composting toilet that requires no plumbing and the application of water catchment methods to provide a water supply. I can not imagine a better way to live up to my ideals. A smaller space is not only less of a burden environmentally but economically it is extremely frugal. No rent, hardly any bills and minimal maintenance are among other tantalizing reasons to choose this style of living.

After living and working on organic farms and realizing the impact my living makes on the land, I knew that the American style of suburban living and use of excessive resources was not what I wished for my life. I can not in good conscience continue to live in a way that destroys mother nature and my life goals include educating the next generations on the importance of changing our lifestyles. The population of the earth only continues to grow along with serious environmental impacts accompanied by resource conflicts and disastrous effects upon land and sea. I don't want to be a part of this cycle any longer. I want to wane my dependency on oil and the energy grid in this country. I find mining to be a deep offence to the earth and nuclear could be a viable and efficient option if disposal methods were properly conducted, however, we know that not to be the case. Why not use what is naturally given to us? Why not become more independent and less destructive? I can't find a reason not to so here we go, Cedric and I, on a journey to try and live a new consciousness, one that provides us with a deep sense of contentment that what we do in this lifetime reflects what we hope future generations will come to find enriching and rewarding lifestyles that respect the earth as well as provide rich experiences to the human race.

The Beginnings: Part I

Bienvenidos! Welcome! Bienvenue!

Cedric and Andrea here with the latest on our path to conscientious living on earth. This is our first blog entry and we expect most folks reading this will be family and friends but for all those others that visit we'll open in an overview of how the tiny house movement caught our attention.

We've lived in all sorts of situations, from single family farms in tiny villages, to international ideas factories in large towns, to olive orchards on isolated mountains and communal house sharing in the city. What brought us to this point? Here's a little history of our path to revelation that tiny house living was our next BIG adventure!

In 2009 we left for an adventure seeking out the rural life as volunteers in Europe, mostly Spain and Belgium (Cedric's home country), through an organization called WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farm). We had an amazing 10 month experience living and working in all sorts of rural/urban settings learning to work the earth. The more we learned, the more we realized that a communal living situation was what we enjoyed the most. We discovered this when working with a wonderful group of catalunians in Montblanc, Spain. A group of young people were living and working communally to bring an organic CSA to their area. We stayed with them for 2 months and they inspired and helped us to realize the kind of living situation we most wanted. We returned to Charleston, SC excited to buy land and start a community farm of our own but slowly our ambition waned in the realization that those we wanted to work with were not committed. For several months we had an energetic slump bred of disillusionment, depression and the death of a few friendships. It was a really difficult time for us as individuals and as a couple but slowly we began the search for alternatives to our desire to work and live in community.

Tiny space living was not a new topic really but a continuation of a previous situation for Cedric. From infancy to three years of age he lived on a 38 ft steel sailboat his parents handbuilt. At 3 1/2 he moved back to Belgium and lived in several small apartments throughout Wallonia. Upon moving to the States at age 14 he entered a lifestyle based on excess and fiendishness, as is the American way. In 2005, after graduating from USC, Cedric rebuilt a 27 foot sailboat and lived on the Charleston Harbor til the beginning of 2008. His next living space was a 350 sq ft upstairs apartment in downtown Charleston. Now living in a 84 sq ft space, it just seemed like the next logical step to build a tiny house on wheels.

So that's Part I of our history into the tiny house movement. Look for part II later on this week pertaining to Andrea's discovery of why a tiny house could satisfy her sustainable, conscious living desires and her need for community and how the spark that launched enthusiasm, floor plans and renewed vision was inspired.