Alek's partner Lee snapped this shot as we wrapped up the Austin Tiny House 101 workshop. "Tiny!" makes you smile just like "cheese" does!
Last Thursday morning I caught a flight from Portland to Austin to teach a Tiny House 101 Workshop with Lee Pera and Alek Lisefski via the Tiny House Collaborative. Alek fetched me at the airport (and as Lee pointed out, as easy as it sounded to spot him when Alek told he’d be in a big silver truck (the one he purchased to haul his tiny house halfway across the country) that’s not the case in Texas where it seems half the cars on the road are not actually cars at all but big trucks!)
Alek delivered me to Whitney's Budget Casita in East Austin, which we claimed from the Airbnb listings for the weekend. Staying in a tiny house while teaching a tiny house workshop seemed quite appropriate. It was nestled into some new landscaping that promises to be quite lovely once it’s established. Since the tiny house is spacious with a full kitchen (with a five burner gas range!), TWO sleeping lofts, and a full size tub, it really didn’t feel tiny at all!
On Friday Lee and I got a hearty dose of tiny house envy when we explored the tiny house that Alek designed and built (and now occupies with his sweetheart, Lee Lee). Alek's blog The Tiny Project includes heaps of information about the build and decisions he made along the way. Tiny house envy seems to always happen when we visit each other’s houses, but we overcome it when we realize that as much as we can appreciate our colleague’s tiny homes, we really wouldn’t trade our tinies even if we could. Each of our houses is really well suited to our own lives and we’re grateful for them. (That’s not to say that a couple of us aren’t either planning to or already designing and building new tinies for ourselves, but that’s a different story!) That morning we drafted up our 2017 workshop schedule (which we’ll be sharing soon – stay tuned!) via a Skype call with BA who is in Minnesota for the moment. During the afternoon we prepped for our workshop and then we enjoyed exploring the lit-up art walk along Austin’s river before dinner.
Saturday we greeted our workshop participants at our awesome venue, Soma Vida. Participants flew from Connecticut and drove from as far as Tulsa, Oklahoma to join us for this workshop. It was, as usual, a treat to hear about their ideas for tiny homes, both on wheels and ground-bound. We shared inspirations, considerations, and information and as we helped them identify the big decisions when going small and explore some design ideas for their wee homes.
Saturday evening most of us make the trek over to Austin Live-Work so we could check out the scene there, which includes 19 tiny homes and a pond. Most of the tinies at Austin Live-Work are occupied full-time, but we were able to peek at two of them, which was a real treat since they’re so different from each other. Just less than two years old, this tiny house community is starting to put down roots and we look forward to seeing what happens at Austin Live-Work in the years to come!
On Sunday we kicked off with tours of two tiny homes and an Airstream trailer. The fun thing about touring Alek and Lee Lee’s house as well as Mark and Jennifer’s house in one morning is that the two are exactly the same size (20 feet long and 8 feet wide) and both have shed roofs, but their layouts are completely different. This was fun to tease out as we discussed layout considerations during a design session Sunday afternoon. We wrapped up with our now-traditional photo of everyone making the shape of their tiny house with their hands.
As always, the weekend got us inspired all over again and I’m excited that I get to work on my new tiny house, T42, this week!