Or Beginnings

In the last 3 days, 3 newspapers have called for interviews, and asked the question, “How did Tiny Green Cabins start?” There is a stock answer of starting it in the fall of 2008. And while that is correct, at the same time an ending occurred that brought the birth of Tiny Green Cabins.

However, this answer is not quite correct and it is short, as on interviewer asked if I was always lived or promoted “green.”  And that brought an awareness that yes, and no.

In my teens, my path was forestry and conservation, and giving speeches for contests pertaining to conservation, wildlife, and forestry management.  The talk, “That Wicked Rain” was my favorite and discussed contributing pollution factors along the Peshtigo River as it

Lake Michigan

flowed from its source to Lake Michigan. 4-H was the organization that I belonged to, and forestry was my one of my choices, as well as working the local fairs, playing softball, and attending Camp Bird, Trees for Tomorrow, and many other seminars. I learned a lot about sustainable farming and healthy living as a young man.

And thinking that my career path was forestry engineering with paper and lumber mills, my classes were always preparing for college. Not one shop class. Yes, I loved building small projects around the farmstead, such as an addition, grain bins for feed storage along with chutes to a lower level, picnic tables, and minnow traps.  For each project, my dad would say to figure it out, draw some sketches, and put together a material list. His added instructions were to look at the list and figure out what could be salvaged and what had to be purchased.  The grain bins and chutes were all salvaged material from older builders. It had bins that sat on 2^nd floor with chutes to 1^st floor with a pullout slide for opening the

Canoeing on the Peshtigo River

chute allowing the grain to fall into a bucket. It was metal lined to keep mice out of it and saved a lot of time when feeding the goats, pigs, rabbits, and chickens that were kept on the 1^st level.

Over the next 40 years, I raised a family and followed a career path of college, sales, journeyman carpenter, estimator, quality, senior estimator, and design, engineering, and estimating manager with Universal Forest Products.  All of these careers merged into my starting of Tiny Green Cabins and is coming full circle to what started many years ago on a farm and in 4H in northeastern Wisconsin; living healthy and sustainably.

Following is an An excerpt from an article about Tiny House People on Tiny House Wisdom;

I am learning that Tiny House people are not alike. Some tiny house builders are engineers, like Bill Kastrinos, some are poets, as is Jim Wilkins, some are scientists, Jay Shafer comes to mind,  Abel Zimmerman is an artist, and Brad Kittel is a pioneer.  Of course I could go on, there are philosophers, salesmen and dreamers, and each one brings their own tiny view of the subject. These are inspiring, wonderful people who are creating and rebuilding our country and even pointing the way for sensible living.

” The most crucial piece is the process; communication, known expectations, documented specifications and build plans. A good, well drawn set of plans goes a long way towards getting what someone wanted, and yet leaves a lot of room for,  unexpected “surprises.” The carefully thought out plans connect specifications with the process of building which become a living document that communicates the spirit of the “build.”" – Jim Wilkins

This is from Tiny House Wisdom, to read what others think is a crucial piece to building a tiny house, click here.

After reading the article at Tiny House Wisdom, stop on back and post a comment about what YOU think is the most important aspect of a tiny house. The best answer that Jim likes will be sent the book by Lloyd Kahn, “Tiny Homes, Simple Shelter”

By David Harned

I've always loved the appearance of small buildings, especially houses.

black-duck-cabin

Many small things, proportionate to their larger neighbors, have more eye appeal. A small house, or a tiny house, has only the bare essentials to show the world, so the design is spare and direct, not cluttered. Their elements of style are not attached, they're built right in. A small building is easy to behold in a glance.

Good, small design can also be found in the automobile world. I don't own one, but a Mazda Miata has been a favorite automobile since it first came on the market. Built from the ground up to be exactly what it is, a two-seat roadster, it doesn't pretend to be anything more. It's not a multi function vehicle, and there will never be a wagon version of the Miata. Its shape reminds me of a Dinky Toy I had as a child.

There are at least two camps of tiny house lovers. One camp would adjust their lifestyle to make it possible to live in a house smaller than 500 square feet. Their house would have all the components of larger houses, living area, sleeping area, food prep and bath areas, but the floor plan would be so carefully designed that no space was wasted.

I'm in a second camp: I think about a tiny house as an auxiliary to a larger structure or as a special use building among other small structures.

The appearance of tiny houses is so much more appealing to me than most larger houses, that my ideal home would be a compound structure. It would be a grouping of special use buildings created as needed. There is an excellent example of such a place in Fine Homebuilding magazine and republished in Taunton's books. The central house has a modest but complete food prep area immediately adjacent to a common living area. Upstairs in the same unit are a couple of small bedrooms and a bath. The office is a separate structure off to one side and connected by footpath; the main bedroom and bath is yet a third structure on the other side of the central building. The combined appearance is not imposing and sits on the land beautifully.

My sister lives in a compound of sorts. She and her husband raised their two sons in a smallish, two level house with a master bedroom upstairs and the kids area below. They shared a bathroom. The kitchen, dining
room and living room were also on the main level. The house is surrounded by gardens, and the whole property is surrounded by a tall hedge. On the property is an office for the family business (a classic tiny house), and just a few feet away is the workshop where her husband has built cabinets for twenty years. The boys grew up trimming the hedge and cleaning the shop to earn their allowances.

Just as the first example had a separate bedroom building and separate study building, this compound living provides all the space necessary without everyone living on top of one another twenty-four hours a day.

A tiny house may never be the place to spend all one's time. Like the tourist hotel room, "We only sleep there". This is why the tiny house as a study room appeals so much.

In Lake Vermillion near Ely, Minnesota, there's an outcropping the old maps call, "Black Duck Island". The current owners have renamed it after its most famous occupant, the Reverend Bradley, a popular, Baptist
minister from Chicago who spent his summers there.

The tiny island is dotted with several tiny houses and one main house. Reverend Bradley had one tiny building, which he called his study cabin. Built by a member of his congregation, it sat at one end of the island
looking west over the water. It's about twelve feet wide and sixteen feet long; it has windows on three sides and a front door on the narrow end. Inside are a simple table, bookshelves and a camp bed for napping. Reverend Bradley wrote his summer sermons in the study cabin.

This perfect little building served its purpose well. It had nothing in excess and lacked nothing for its time. Even now it would be an easy task to add the modern essentials and not spoil the demeanor of the
place.

Why do I like tiny houses? They are simple, human sized structures right for their purpose and pleasing to the eye. Their only greatness is achieved by their occupants.

Tiny House Fuel Stop1

Tiny House Fuel stop

Shortly after this picture and coming into Council Bluffs, Nebraska  we hit a brush wolf. It appeared in front of the bumper and I felt it hit and bounce off the truck underside and hit the cabin in tow. To read more of this tale, click here

Tiny House Windshield Time

Tiny House almost there

Tiny House Delivery

Tiny House delivery with Owner

One of the things I always enjoy is meeting the buyers of our cabins in person. A lot of times this occurs on the delivery of the tiny houses to their new home. This delivery had a nice surprise waiting for us. In writing down the phone numbers, we inverted the area code with the local phone number, and my co driver spent an hour surfing the web to get a number. At one point, he asked, “do you know who he is!” and I said, “yes, Alyn Rockwood, why?” John, responded “He is an mathematical genius, painter, and wrote a book, and I think he purchased this cabin to write his next book in!”  And he is right. Alyn purchased the cabin as his writing and painting studio that could be hidden away in the Colorado Mountains to pursue his passions.

The book is “How Noble in Reason” and can be purchased online at Amazon.

Tiny House Author - Alyn Rockwood

Brief Summary

Artificial Intelligence has already pervaded our lives in so many subtle ways, but how will humans react to the creation of a completely sentient super computer: a hyper-intelligent brain without a body who is as omniscient and omnipresent as the internet itself? How will people approach something that is distinguishable from a human only in its appearance? Rockwood imagines the ramifications in this futuristic novel where Dr. Andreas Rasmusson, inventor of Cornell University’s “A,” “B,” and “C” sentient computers, is caught up in a whirlwind of conspiracies surrounding his research into Artificial Intelligence that implicate him in the assassination of his revolutionary sentient computer and best friend, “B”. Tracked by the government and estranged from his friends and wife, Rasmusson exiles himself to his cabin in Colorado, but even there, plagued by fatigue and paranoia, he isn’t safe as he searches for the truth. This fascinating novel explores the controversial topic of our inevitable future with sentient computers.

Alyn has invited us back to Boulder to do an event and press spot for the cabin.