Tortoise Shell Homes on CNN
Bill & Sharon Kastrinos and Jay Shafer are on CNN today talking about their tiny houses. Bill and Sharon downsized from a 1,800-square-foot home and now live in a 154-square-foot Tortoise Shell home. Bill is a contractor and as the housing market imploded Bill & Sharon traded in their big house for a tiny one and started a tiny house construction company called Tortoise Shell Home. Jay Shafer is of course the founder of the well known Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.
Tortoise Shell Home – Best Tiny House Value
Bill Kastrinos’s tiny Tortoise Shell Homes have my vote for the best tiny house value. Bill builds a solid tiny house on wheels from wood or steel. The design is a simple pitched or flat roof with a bathroom, kitchen, and sleeping loft. You can order a complete house or if you’re a do-it-yourselfer you can get the framed house on trailer ready for your finishing touch.
Pictured here is the Naked Galapagos which costs about $7,500. A complete Galapagos costs just over $20,000. In all my looking I can’t find anything that offers so much value for so little money. You could build a simple tiny house on a permanent foundation with lumber for less but if you want your tiny house to be mobile Bill’s Tortoise Shell Homes are a great deal.
The steel framing option reduces weight significantly and improves strength. Bill’s is also a professional builder turned tiny house builder so the quality of his work is top notch. His shop is in Rohnert Park, California just north of the San Francisco Bay Area in Sonoma County. Photo credit Tortoise Shell Homes.
Naked Galapagos – Do-it-yourself Tortoise Shell Home
Kent Griswold (from tinyhouseblog.com) and I finally connected by phone yesterday. It was really nice chatting with a kindred spirt (blogger and tiny house enthusiast). I’ll have to make the two hour drive over to Sonoma County one of these weekends to visit. Seems like Sonoma is becoming the center of the tiny house world. Kent lives there, as well as Jay Shafer and Bill Kastrinos.
One of the tiny houses we talked about was Bill Kastrinos’s Tortoise Shell Homes. Bill has been in the home building business for quite some time but recently started up a business building tiny houses. While their detail is not as refined as Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, they are really high quality and the perfect base for the do-it-yourselfer… and it seems that Bill might be onto this because now he’s offering a tiny house for do-it-yourselfers.
The Naked Galapagos is a steel framed tiny house on a trailer ready for your finishing touches. If you’ve been taken with the detailed design of the Tumbleweed houses but are considering a Tortoise shell because of the lower cost you might consider buying a Naked Galapagos and decking it out with what you learn at on of Jay Shafer’s workshops. In fact maybe Bill and Jay should get together and collaborate and do it for us (hint hint). Imagine Jay’s design and attention to detail on top of Bill’s practical and affordable approach to tiny house building. Sounds like a marriage made in heaven. Maybe even a design licensing opportunity for Jay and a marketing engine for Bill.
But I digress… for more details on the Naked Galapagos check out tinyhouseblog.com. Kent has the full scoop directly from Bill. Photo credit to Bill via Kent.
