What?

So what are we building? We're building a 'Fencl'. This is one of the tiny house designs from the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. We've altered the floor plan, and will use different materials in some places, but otherwise it will basically be like the house in the picture (but longer).

The house will have an upstairs sleeping loft, vaulted ceiling, and have about 115 square feet of living space. It will have a small kitchen, a bathroom, a desk space and living room. Of course, achieving all this, while avoiding feeling cramped, requires a carefully considered, efficient, floor plan.

In addition to being space efficient, we'll be energy efficient too. We aren't TV watchers and don't need many of the other common gadgets that tend to consume a lot of energy, so our electrical draw will be minimal. In fact, the way we are building our cottage will allow us to add modifications later such that we could, if we wanted, get off the electrical grid all together.

And, because the house is small, we can use high quality, mainly sustainable building materials, while keeping the cost low.

Finally, our house will be on a trailer. We'll be building it in the San Francisco Bay Area, but in September of 2009, Jeff starts a PhD program at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA. So once we're done building it - or close to it - we'll be moving our tiny house to Seattle!

This is a good time to mention that tiny houses are drawing a great deal of attention lately. If you check out our resource links you'll note that a growing community of folks across America are building their own tiny housing.

Some common reasons people build a tiny house:

• Ecological considerations
• Avoid conspicuous consumption
• Use of sustainable building materials
• Use of hypoallergenic building materials
• Joy of building your own house
• Efficient use of energy & space
  
• Focus on Quality over Quantity
• Economic considerations
• Use as a rental or in-law unit
• Mobility
  

Moving forward, this blog will document the building of our tiny house. We'll put up some pictures and give some details about why we choose this or that. We've found that reading other builder's blogs has helped us clarify our own process, so we intend to make our own experience available as a resource for others. But, note that we'll be starting slowing and then moving faster as we get into the summer.

So, what's next? We have a space, but we'll need to build our mini mobile cottage on something...