A closer look at the Sonoma Shanty tiny house plans
The Sonoma Shanty is an affordable tiny house solution that came out of a collaboration between Kent Griswold and Stephen Marshall of Little House on the Trailer. This is actually one of the projects that was born from a meet-up a few of us had last year at Jay Shafer’s place in Sebastopol, California. You can buy a kit or complete tiny house from Stephen or a set of the plans from Kent if you’d like to build it yourself. Here’s a peak at what you’ll see in the plans.
The Sonoma Shanty – Workshops, Kits, Plans, Tiny Houses
If you’ve been a reader of Tiny House Design and Kent Griswold’s Tiny House Blog for a while you might recall that a small group of us bloggers, designers, and builders got together for a visit at Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny House in Sonoma County, California. Jay called it, a meeting of the tiny minds. You can read more about that gathering here and on Kent’s blog.
One of the results of that meeting was the birth of a collaboration between Kent and Stephen Marshall of Little House on the Trailer. The Sonoma Shanty is a simple 8′ by 15′ tiny house that can be built without permits in many communities because it technically meets the definition of a shed. The basic structure can be built quickly for the cost of about $1,200 in materials. Continue Reading »
House of Cards -or- DIY Tiny House Kit
After posting the latest design variation for Nine Tiny Feet I got a few requests to make the house more lightweight. This seems like a pretty good idea since that project is really about getting the most value from the least amount of space. Initially I was thinking this only meant square footage but it seems perfectly logical to make it lightweight too. If I could find a way to make it super lightweight nine tiny feet could even be pulled by a bicycle.
But I digress…
These recent reader comments got my brain cooking up ways of building inexpensive ultra-lightweight panel walls. Then on Sunday night a very simple approach to making panels occurred to me. The design below is not for a nine square foot house, although I’m considering something like this for Nine Tiny Feet too. This design is 49 square feet and could be built for about $1200 in new materials, (less if you’re resourceful and scavenge a little).
Timberlast Kits
I just spotted this on TinyHouseBlog.com. Timberlast if now selling timber frame kits that are a complete enclosed shell for a tiny house. You finish off the interior and mechanical systems yourself. Everything is pre-cut and can be assembled in a few days. You can buy them as insulated or non-insulated kits and they start at about $20,000. Photo credit Timberlast.
Bungalow in a Box
I stumbled on this tiny house kit builder while looking at YouTube a while back. Bungalow in a Box builds panel-frame kits that setup in a day or two. You build the foundation and they deliver the panels to your site ready to lift into place. The video on YouTube shows one being erected in the snow.
Panel-framing is a bit of an unusual wall construction technique. They build up the walls in sections using 2×4 boards but not in the usual way. In fact I’m going to consider doing something similar (now that I’ve stumbled on this again) for my own Tiny Free House. It looks like this might be a way to reduce the amount of material needed to build walls with short pieces of pallet wood. Maybe?
Anyway, these folks are in Woolwich, Maine. The kits are fairly affordable but they are exterior shells only, you finish the interior. Aside from being very cute the speed of assembly seems to be the best and most unique feature. Photo credit Bungalow in a Box.
