Build Small, Live Large Summit on Friday, Nov 6th

A couple years ago I participated in the Build Small, Live Large Summit, hosted at Portland State University. This Friday the event is happening again and it's sold out! If you didn't manage to snag a ticket you can still tour tiny houses in the Park Blocks. Meanwhile, for those of you who got one of the golden tickets, I'm excited to be serving as the moderator for the Space Efficient Housing Policy Roundtable. Here's a description:

Although demand is growing for small homes and creative residential developments, there are sometimes regulatory barriers to innovative, space-efficient housing options. Our panel of experts brings a wide range of experience with the very latest solutions in small housing policy, from affordable housing advocacy to regulations pertaining to tiny houses on wheels. This “fishbowl” style panel will acknowledge regulatory roadblocks to small housing, share how successful projects navigated those challenges, and brainstorm policy changes to help small housing options flourish.

Our session, which begins at 1 PM, will include five fabulous folks, with a wide variety of backgrounds, including affordable housing, development, real estate, and policy making.

Presenters: Liz Getty, Urban Nest Realty Rachel Ginis, Lilypad Homes Jean-Pierre Veillet, Siteworks Danell Norby, City of Vancouver, Washington Eli Spevak, Orange Splot

These are the folks I love geeking out with about the challenges we're facing in the regulatory landscape. I look forward to hearing their suggestions for policy changes that would support the creation of more small housing options. Please join us if you're coming to the summit!

The Guy Next Door

In June, when we hosted our monthly Tiny House Community Tour, we let everyone know that Tony’s tiny house, The Rustic, was available for rent. At the end of the tour, one of the fellas expressed interest in renting it, so I told him that we’d invite him over for dinner to get to know him better. He came over a couple days later for supper and a game.

By the end of the evening our whole community was pretty impressed with Isha, so the next day we invited him to move into the tiny house next door to mine. My only hesitation was that I had a little crush on him, but I didn’t mention that in our deliberations about Isha. I figured it would quickly dissipate as we lived together.

How wrong I was!

A couple days later, Isha began the process of downsizing from his 300 SF condo to Tony's 120 SF tiny house. He also started showing up for work parties and cooking us dinners on the night he claimed. We quickly learned that Isha is thoughtful, clever, witty, hard-working, organized, responsible, and articulate, not to mention a great cook.

My crush got worse. But I was going to be traveling for work nearly all summer. (See Five Weeks in a Carry-On and How to Travel with Just a Carry-On for more on that!) Surely the time and space away would help me get over Isha.

Wrong again.

Shortly after he moved in, Isha confessed a crush on me and told me it was futile to ignore all the ways we’re an excellent match. I knew he was right. So we decided that when the time seemed right he would check in with our landies to see if they would give our relationship their blessing.

Fortunately, our landies were thrilled for us. As Karin put it. “I love you both and I want you both to be happy, so I’m thrilled that you want to be together!”

Isha and I had all summer apart for a new-fashioned courtship (a game of 20 questions by email, google chats, Skype dates, texts, and phone calls). We found that absence truly made our hearts grow fonder.

Isha and I had our first kiss at the airport when he picked me up at the end of my travels. The past two and a half months, living in his and hers tiny houses at Simply Home Community, has been a blast!

I’m so lucky to have fallen in love with the guy next door! Now we’re scheming a tiny house for two. We’re planning to design this winter and start building next spring. Stay tuned for updates as our design develops and our relationship grows!

Tiny House Community Workshop in Ojai

TINY HOUSE COMMUNITY WORKSHOP | Friday, November 13th 1pm-5pm | Ojai, CA

• Are you a tiny house enthusiast or builder interested in forming a tiny house community?
• Are you a landowner who would like to start a tiny house community?
• Are you a city official interested in learning more about tiny houses and their potential in cities and towns?

Join us for a half-day workshop on tiny house communities and city zoning. All topics above will be covered during this comprehensive 4hr workshop.

Get your tickets to the Tiny House Community Workshop in Ojai here: http://www.vinastinyhouse.com/events/community-workshop/ 

Sol Haus Design is excited to bring two seasoned experts in forming tiny house communities. Lina Menard of Niche Consulting and Lee Pera of Boneyard Studios will lead participants through different models for how to form tiny house communities, how to look for available land, zoning considerations, and how to work with city officials and neighbors to set up a tiny house community responsibly.

Lina and Lee have both set up tiny house communities in the Pacific Northwest and in the Mid-Atlantic, so their knowledge covers both sides of the country! Come learn with us and explore opportunities for tiny house communities in California.

The workshop will be held in beautiful Ojai, CA at the home of Krishnamurti Foundation:

WHEN: Friday, November 13th from 1pm-5pm WHERE: Krishnamurti Foundation on 1098 McAndrew Road, Ojai, CA 93023 COST: $90 for 4hr workshop EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT: $80 If booked by Oct 31st.

Simply Home Community in Mother Earth News

Tonight I brought the most recent issue of Mother Earth News to Simply Home's Community Dinner so we could all marvel at how WE'RE IN IT! How exciting!

It was fun to do the interview with K.C. Compton last spring and even more fun to see our tiny cohousing community featured in this awesome publication. Tony was especially excited because his parents actually met via the classified ads in the back of Mother Earth News several decades ago, so the magazine has a special place in his family's heart.

Check out the Mother Earth News article Joining Forces for More Sustainable Communities to learn more about our community and the six other awesome "Homestead Hamlets."

Westermorrow Tiny House Design-Build

On Friday we wrapped up the first ever Westermorrow class – a Yestermorrow Design-Build School course taught on the West Coast. The Tiny House Design-Build class, which has been offered just once a year in VT, has filled up so quickly recently (this past year’s class filled up in just 30 minutes!) that Yestermorrow decided to offer it again here in Portland.

What an amazing experience for all of us! Patti and Lizabeth road-tripped across the country to be here. Dee Williams came down from Olympia to co-instruct with us! And our students came from California, Utah, Virginia, New York, and Illinois. We even had a student join us from South Africa and another from Montreal, Canada! In fact, the only student who was actually from Portland was our client, Merek.

We set up in St. John’s, a neighborhood in North Portland, so that we were able to build at Green Anchors (where I built my own tiny house, The Lucky Penny). We had our studio space at The Colony. And half our class stayed at Caravan – The Tiny House Hotel where they were able to try on tiny living for two weeks while building and designing. Several of them said this was a great experience and two of the seven decided that maaaybe they don’t want to live in a tiny house after all. (They both ended up designing wee houses around 600 square feet - still small enough that they’d qualify as Accessory Dwellings here in Portland, OR and a fraction the size of the average home built in America today!)

We started out our studio time with field trips and presentations covering everything from plumbing and electrical systems to regulations and interior design strategies for small spaces. In the field we started out with safety and tool orientation and then built sawhorses to practice measuring twice and cutting once. By the second week our students were shifting between the build site and the studio to move the house as far along as possible while also creating awesome tiny house designs.

There were definitely some differences between teaching the class in VT and OR. It was strange to not be on a residential campus where sleeping, eating, designing, and drafting are all just yards from each other. But it was also fun being in a more urban setting. I missed being on the scrumptious Yestermorrow meal plan, but it was fun exploring St. John’s eateries (the food carts, Proper Eats, Signal Station Pizza, Super Burrito Express, Big Kahuna’s BBQ, the baowry, etc.) And the second week, once people were comfortable with the area, I switched back to Simply Home’s Community Dinners, which are one of my favorite things!

On the build site we constructed the shell of Merek and his partner Erin’s tiny house on wheels. Their little house has a ½ and ½ roof, meaning that part of the roof is shallower and part is steeper. This allows them to have plenty of headroom in the loft and a more interesting roofline. We nailed the framing together (apparently the Doug Fir we have over here is much harder than the spruce used on the East Coast – we bent a lot of nails as we practiced!) Over here on the West Coast it seems most tiny houses are glued and screwed together instead, so we weren’t aware of this difference! We got the walls framed, sheathed, and raised and the ridge beam, roof rafters, and the first course of plywood on the steeper pitched roof before we had to turn our attention to Presentation Day.

I LOVE Presentation Day! It’s always so inspirational to see what our students create with two weeks of tiny house design and build experience (and for 7 of our students this time the experience of living in tiny houses, too!) We had awesome designs this time around, including several tiny houses on wheels (with a huge variety of layouts and roof shapes and multi-purpose furniture) and a handful of clever ground-bound houses (including an off-grid cabin with creative sleeping for the whole extended family and a small home with space for motorcycles in the living room!)

It was an honor to co-teach with some of my tiny house heros: Dee Williams, Lizabeth Moniz, and Patti Garbeck. I’m appreciative of all the folks who helped make this happen, from Mark, Dan, Luke, and Katie at Yestermorrow, to Matt, Mark, and Kevin at Green Anchors and Rita and Dana at The Colony. I'm thankful that Merek and Erin entrusted us with the beginning of their little home. And I’m especially full of gratitude for our incredible group of 14 students for inspiring me all over again! I can’t wait to follow along on their tiny house journeys! Stay tuned!

Tiny House Design-Build Class Hits the News

In late July I co-taught the Tiny House Design-Build Class at Yestermorrow in Vermont with Lizabeth Moniz and Patti Garbeck. Over the course of 2 weeks our 14 students developed designs of their own and worked together to build the shell of a small shed house on skids. During one of our morning in the second week Alexei Rubenstein of Channel 3 News stopped by to see what we were up to. And our class made the news last week. Check out the Tiny House Class video clip from Channel 3 to see what Alexei saw when he visited! WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-

Tiny House Jamboree 2015

What an incredible weekend! In April, when Lee Pera of Boneyard Studios first invited me to speak with her about tiny house communities at the Tiny House Jamboree, there were 3,500 people signed up to attend. By the time she and I connected in the Denver airport and drove to Colorado Springs, there were 11,000 people pre-registered. So we figured a third of those folks would show up and that would be the largest number of tiny house enthusiasts ever in one place at one time. Little did we know. (No pun intended!) Turns out those of us who find tiny houses irresistible are in good company! By the time the three-day event wrapped up more than 40,000 people had passed through the gates of the Western Museum of Mining & Industry (which hosted the Jamboree)!

And what a great crowd! There was incredible energy since everyone I talked to was curious, excited, and exploratory. The tiny house curious folks were just beginning to dabble in the tiny house scene. The tiny house enthusiasts came with sketch books, cameras, and tape measures so they could get serious about their design ideas. One woman even showed up, checkbook in hand, ready to take a leap of faith into the little life! I met people from nearly every state and a few other countries. (Oh hey, #famousfrieda!)

On Saturday morning during our presentation, Lee and I shared 5 Models for Tiny House Communities and 5 Steps to Create a Tiny House Community. I also got to watch and listen as other presenters shared their expertise. Molly Orendorff shared clever tips for decluttering, Damon from Trailer Made explained tiny house foundation fundamentals, Kai Rostcheck of Tiny House Dating played matchmaker for a tiny house dating game, Zack Giffin of Tiny House Nation described the increasing interest in the little life, and so much more! I even got to watch as Andrew Odom performed a vow renewal ceremony for a couple’s ten year anniversary. (And the best part? Their three year old held my hand! Eep!)

Part of the time I tabled with Patrick from Artisan Tiny House, who created my SIPs kit and kits for two sets of clients whose houses we put up this spring. Part of the time I tabled with some other great folks who designed and built their own homes and are now helping others do the same: Lee Pera of Boneyard Studios, Alek Lisefski of The Tiny Project, Vina Lustado of Sol Haus Design, and BA Norrgard of A Bed Over My Head. When I wasn’t tabling, speaking, listening to speakers, or exploring the tiny houses, I had great conversations with great people: Gabriel Craft of Small and Tiny Home Ideas, Gabriella Stupakoff Morrison and Andrew Morrison of hOMe and Tiny House Build, Byron and Dot Fears from Simblissity, James Taylor from The Company Store on Wheels and Orlando Lakefront at College Park (an RV park turned tiny house community) and hundreds of others!

Yesterday I spent the day with Robin, a design client of mine here in Denver. In addition to identifying next steps for her house, she also took me to see Wee Casa and invited me to speak at the Denver Tiny House Enthusiasts Meet Up. That was oodles of fun, too!

It’s thrilling to see so many people exploring intentional living through tiny houses. I don’t think the timing could be better for Ramping Up Niche Consulting LLC. I’m honored to have been part of the first Tiny House Jamboree. We’re hoping that as soon as Darin Zaruba of EcoCabins (and his team - hey, Angela Alcorn, Coles Whalen, and Marcus Alvarado!) have a chance to get some sleep they’ll decide to host the second annual Tiny House Jamboree. I’ve already marked my calendar for the first weekend of August in 2016. See you there!

Mistakes Manifesto

As I continue work on my tiny house, The Lucky Penny, I think a lot about the mistakes I'm making and what I can learn from them.

When I taught the Tiny House Design-Build class at Yestermorrow this summer, my co-instructor Lizabeth Moniz encouraged us to share mistakes and solutions with each other in our evening and morning construction reviews so that we could all benefit from the lessons learned. Ever since, I've been thinking a lot about mistakes.

Over the past sixteen years I've assisted with the construction of 23 houses, including 12 tiny houses on wheels. In the process I've learned an enormous amount about building. I've also learned a great deal about myself.

And one of the things I've learned about myself is that I wish I were already a better designer and builder. I wish I didn't make so many mistakes. I want to be better at this already, thank you very much. But mastery takes time. And a willingness to make mistakes and learn from them. (My host family in Italy could vouch for this philosophy. I said all sorts of preposterous things in my efforts to communicate in Italian. But I got better at it in leaps and bounds because I was willing to be wrong - over and over again!)

I worked with some builders once who refused to talk about the mistakes they made. They didn't want anyone to believe they ever made mistakes. And I can understand that feeling. It's about pride. And it's about reputation. But wouldn't it be nice if addressing our mistakes and lessons learned was better for our reputation than trying to hide our imperfections?

I'd rather all of us could fess up and say "Oops! Look at that. I messed that up big time!"

Because the great thing is that a mistake that's confessed and addressed has a fix along with it. Occasionally the fixes are just redos. And it's obnoxious to tear out a hard day's work to redo it. But often the fixes are innovations. The solution we come up with after we've made a blunder is often better than the original idea. (Plan F: Take 2, for instance, was better than Plan A!)

Maybe it's working as a woman in the male-predominate construction industry that makes me both hesitant to admit my mistakes and also too quick to downplay my expertise. On the other hand, perhaps it's precisely that same gender conditioning that compels me to share these challenges for the greater good. I know several other female tiny house builders and bloggers - like Kate from NajHaus and Laura from Laura's Blog who have been brave enough to share their struggles and successes.

So when I wrap up construction of The Lucky Penny this fall, I plan to share ALL The Mistakes, because maybe you can learn from mine. I figure if I can save you some time you can make plenty of your own mistakes. Just be sure to tell me about them so I can learn from your mistakes, too.

Hurry up! Make some mistakes. Than confess and address them. Let's learn from each other!