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Dec 21, 2012 Tiny House Tour with Ella Jenkins-130-square-foot house

Ella Jenkins has been living in a space about the size of a shipping container since October—and loving every minute of it. She built her own 130-square-foot house with the help of a kit and her stepfather, and is now part of a growing trend of people who reside in “tiny houses,” miniature abodes that are modestly priced, eco-friendly and minimalistic. – Beth Greenfield, Shine Staff

Life in Little Yellow is wonderful. It’s actually very much like normal, but without the things that used to bug me about living in other people’s spaces. In fact, most everything that pissed me off or stressed me out in previous living situations is no longer problematic. I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes, I can move or change whatever, whenever, and everything I love is organized all nice-like under one roof.

Basically? I love my house. I had planned on loving it so it’s not a surprise, but I feel so relieved that I genuinely do because this would be a very extensive experiment if I didn’t.

It’s like the whole thing is one big relief. It’s a relief to have a simpler life. It’s a relief to have less things. It’s a relief to be compact and contained. Like a hug, I like to think that my house is quite like a hug.

The timing of my move north has been so serendipitous it’s crazy. 3 days after arriving, I had a job, made an awesome friend, and met my awesome boyfriend who happens to think Little Yellow is as great as I do. He’s a do-er and a fix-it type who really gets things done, a wonderful presence to have around.

So! Here’s a breakdown of how it’s going. If I’ve missed something, ask away!

Living situation:

I live on a little ranch down the hill from my landlords’ house in a pretty wee field with a nice set of bushes and trees just beside; a perfectly adequate distance so as to be totally left on my own. I have decent cell reception in my house, but no internet. Not having it was sort of a shock at the start, but appears to be very good for me. I get way more done and am far more creative without it that with. I have family close by anyway, so it gives me a grand excuse to visit.

My boyfriend is a friend of my landlords’ son, so he comes and goes without bother and there’s plenty space to fit several cars comfortably. I pay rent each month and work off a little by cleaning stalls a few hours a week, which I actually kind of enjoy. There’s something vaguely reflective and therapeutic about shoveling horse shit.

Storage:

Storage and space in this house amaze me. I have many things inside, but I don’t feel cramped and don’t feel the need to fill it any further. Everything I’ve needed to find a spot for has one. It sounds a bit ridiculous to write it out, but all I can say is that it feels big to me.

It feels so big that I can barely think of Little Yellow as being as small as she is, and certainly not tiny. There were 4 people eating dinner in here the other night (myself included) and it felt no different than having 3 people for dinner anywhere else.

Maybe it’s a magical house. Like that wacky carpet bag Mary Poppins had, where you could fill it far past it’s apparent capacity and still have room for your umbrella. Except my house isn’t made of carpet.

Food and water storage:

As you may know, I decided not to have a refrigerator in my house. Mostly because I didn’t feel I need one, but also because being without saves a goodly amount of electricity and makes you more creative with shopping lists and leftovers.

This is something that I didn’t experiment with before leaving the driveway, so my first attempt at fridge-free food cooling came after the first trip to the store. I had read good things about pot-in-pot (zeer) methods but unfortunately for me this did not work at all in my coastal climate. It failed spectacularly at keeping anything I put in there colder than house temperature and the terra cotta flower pot began to sprout some pretty disconcerting mold after a week or so. Conclusion? Nope.

So when my boyfriend came home one day with a standard cooler full of block ice, I begrudgingly went with it. It’s not the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on, but it works and it aint molding.

I also didn’t think much about drinking water. The hoses I bought are potable, but what comes out tastes nothing like something you’d actually want to drink. After re-filling plastic bottles for a while, I now have a pitcher system filled periodically by a beautiful 3 gallon jug with a copper handle that my boyfriend made (he’s a metal fabricator).

Kitchen:

My kitchen is wonderous. Wonderful. Wonder…empty. Well, not empty. Thought there might be another ‘wonder’ word, guess not. Would wonder-empty be the opposite of wonderful? Everything about my kitchen suits me very well. I have never a lack of counterspace, all my things are nicely organized, my dishes drip directly from my hanging rack to the sink, and I can cook anything that can be made with 2 burners. In theory.

Actually I do cook a lot now that I have someone to cook for, and my stove does a very admirable job. It smells more than I’d like it to, I think that’d be my only complaint. My boyfriend has recently introduced me to the marvel of cast iron pans and I cook mostly everything in one these days. Seriously, a pan you don’t have to wash? Sign me right the hell up.

Shower:

That shower is pretty darn great. You just have to step a little higher and squeeze a little tighter than normal, but my yellow curtains are such a nice sight from in there I’ve barely used it since I go in the ocean every day, but it’s there for when I need it and still gets used for its bathroom sink function.

The only thing I might have done differently is to make the drain angle down somehow so the water would be better directed out. As it is now, the water ends up pooling a little on the sides.

Toilet:

Ah, my toilet. Such a lovely thing it is… It does look a little lovely, actually. I rebuilt the horrific hexagonal box around it the day before I left the driveway, out of nice 1x redwood left over from my fascia boards. I’ll have you know that wooden toilets can be quite sightly As far as function, it’s honestly not that bad. I really resented this part of my house for a while, but I have to say that it has become very ordinary to me now.

It don’t believe it to smell more than any other form of toilet would in so small a space; a little earthy if anything. Sawdust-y, you might say. I also have 3 windows at the hitch (bathroom) end of my house, and any whiffs one might want to waft away are gone within 10 minutes of their opening. Nifty, eh?

Sleeping loft:

I love my loft. I love it so much that if I have to sleep away for so much as a night I get at least a little sad. When it’s sunny in the mornings, my entire ceiling fills up with buttery yellow light that shines through the crystals in my windows and casts a thousand rainbow beads across my walls. Did I mention that there’s an ocean view from my window? It’s a small section of the ocean and there’s a house, a hill and a tree in the scene, but it’s still an ocean view and THAT is cool.

Cleaning:

I can honestly say that I’m not a very tidy person. It’s one of those things that’s followed me around my entire life and seemed to make everything I inhabit for any amount of time look like a freak hurricane passed through. Without fail, my spaces have ALWAYS been a tip. Which is why I’m so bemused that it’s not that way at all in my house. There is something about it that just makes me want to clean.

I sweep my floors, wash my dishes, scrub my counters, organize and tidy on a totally regular basis. I keep my clothes folded, I don’t throw things on the floor, and I fuss over the littlest things left out. My car? Total mess. Not likely ever to change, but my house? Golden. I’m actually quite the homemaker

Expansion and more expansion:

When my darling yellow door got made, I remember one of the selling points my neighbour mentioned about the wood we used being that it was extremely dry, and therefore unlikely to warp. In the exceptionally dry climate of Frazier Park, this was totally true. No warp-age whatsoever.

Of course then I move to a soggy, coastal climate and that’s the end of that. It started out that I just couldn’t close it quite right. Then the next day I could close it and then the day after that I couldn’t get it open again. By the time I stopped procrastinating and finally got around to it, we had to cut nearly an inch off the lock side because the tongue and groove boards had expanded so much.

That meant taking out the plates, knob and lock, skilsawing the length, resetting all the hardware and putting it back up again. And sticking some seriously long screws at both ends to keep that thing from thinking it can change, ever again. Expansion sucks. The only plus side is that my floor used to squeak something terrible when you first walked in and now it’s silent as fully expanded wood with no freakin’ place to move

Working on this project through the build year, I got so bogged down in the process that I think I almost forgot that when it was done it would be my home. Every time I drive in and see the tiny little A frame smiling at me with its tiny little porch light I get all proud and fuzzy.

I’ve found my house to be an unusual crossroads of exactly what I wanted and exactly what I needed. Perhaps I’m still in the honeymoon phase with Little Yellow, but I wouldn’t live in anything else for the world.

a 23 year old musician and artist just out of college. During the last year of my degree in Scotland I caught the bug and have since become infatuated with the practical coziness of tiny houses. I worked my tail off, saved my money, bought the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company’s 130 square foot Fencl plans and despite my complete lack of carpentry know-how, I shall build one, it shall be marvelous, and I shall call it Little Yellow This blog will detail–in scatterbrained form– the various adventures and disappointments likely to commence. While not a phrase I typically find myself saying, I feel with the magnitude of this project that the following is effective. Yeeeehaaw!

The not so short:

For my four years at university, I went to Scotland and studied traditional Scottish harp music and the Scottish Gaelic language and songs. An oh-so practical degree to have 5000 miles away from the source, but there you go. As much as I loved my grand adventure, after several years of dripping weather, my homesickness for California sunshine was undeniably present.

In July of 2010, while couch surfing at a friend’s house (well, I was actually stuck inside without the keys) I resigned to realistically look at my California future. The more I perused Craigslist housing for an area I fancied living in and the more I thought about the work that goes into surviving with $1000 rent, the less my floaty, creative, work-to-live ways seemed likely to tick the necessary boxes.

Luckily, in the subsequent avoidance of the whole subject after my sticky realization, I came across a video on the yahoo! homepage which stated ‘See a man who lives in 89 square feet’. See I did, and within 30 minutes I was in.

I was too excited to care that it was 2am in my sister’s world, and promptly called to rouse her and her husband from their dreams with grandiose plans of building and living in 130 square feet.

So whatdaya think??

After some initial concerns I began to hear the excitement I was hoping for in their voices. The next day, I got an email from my brother-in-law; he’d been up until 4am researching, had bought Jay Schafer’s Tiny House book and was easily as obsessed as I was.

Breaking the news to my mother was as simple as if I’d told her I wanted to make eggs for breakfast. She was on board from the moment the words left my mouth (having sewed her own tepe and lived in a cow pasture for a while in the 70’s) and with my step dad’s acquiescence to help me build, I had the approval of everyone immediately involved within 24 hours.

Other people weren’t quite so readily convinced. “Why don’t you buy a mobile home?” “You think you can do this? What if it falls off?” “Surely that’s too small to live in” “You know this is going to be hard” and probably most commonly, “Why?!” I remained unphased and the vision of my own, transportable space kicked the negativity from my mind.

In my spare thinking time, there was little else that filled my imagination. I pictured 7 ½ x18 in every room I walked into. I woke up pretending was in my loft and drank cups of tea dreaming of my window seat.

But then comes the doing part, and having the means for said doing is an unavoidable prerequisite. Though I’ve always been a bit frugal, my college years made me even more so and I was able to save on top of paying my general expenses. I played my harp on street corners whenever it wasn’t raining, made and sold jewelry and worked various food service jobs when I came home for periods of time.

I also moved out of my parent’s house when I was 16 to start working so I still had some leftover from that. At least in college, it did help too that I ate out about 5 times and don’t drink alcohol…

As soon as I knew a tiny house was what I wanted I got super determined and with every little thing I thought to buy, I’d have to consider what in my house that money could buy me instead. I ended up heading into the build with no debt, and (boy I hope) enough money to complete it.

I bought Fencl plans in April 2011 (while still in Scotland), went to the workshop with my dad in August when I returned, bought a trailer the next week and started in September with no idea what I was doing.

The building of my tiny house has been the single most rewarding and terrifying thing I have ever undertaken, and I’m so grateful to have the help and support (and driveway!) of my parents for the whole process. My dad has been absolutely instrumental to Little Yellow’s success and without his endless tools, lectures and know-how I’d likely have no house at all or a very crooked one and a few less body parts. My mother works out of town often, but is the best and most enthusiastic photographer/cheerleader for our progress whenever she’s around.

Though I’m jobless at the time being, I still make jewelry from sea glass I gathered in Scotland and play my harp outside shops before I get the boot for ‘illegal panhandling’. It’s a little nervewracking, but it means I have the freedom to make my own schedule and take time to work on my house.

I chose the name Little Yellow (Buidhe Bheag) because to me, yellow means sunshine, daffodils and California. In Gaelic, the colour yellow (buidhe) is often used as a positive emphasis symbolizing happiness, luck or beauty. A person who is “pretty, yellow” (brèagha, buidhe) is very pretty indeed, and the phrase “I am yellow” (tha mi buidhe) means that one is well, happy or satisfied.

When the building ceases, I plan to find somewhere by the sea where I can set my boots down for a time and pursue what I love without the worry of financially decapitating rent. Little Yellow is the embodiment of all that I hold dear; she is practical, beautiful, and slightly imperfect. What more could I ask for?

—Ella Jenkins

For now Shafer, encouraged by the movement’s growth, has big plans for tiny housing. “I want to make this dream of living simply available to more people,” he says. To that end, he has developed a set of new designs that are easier not only to build but to modify later. He’s in talks with an RV manufacturer about mass-producing his houses. Even more ambitiously, Shafer hopes to build the nation’s first tiny-house development — a village he has dubbed the Napoleon Complex.

As envisioned by Shafer, the development would be zoned as an RV park but would operate as co-housing, with about 50 houses — none bigger than 500 square feet — sharing recreational and workshop space and encircling a central green. That mix of public and private areas, he says, is ideal for tiny-house inhabitants, who don’t have the room to throw a party or stow a washing machine.

To Shafer’s delight, Sonoma County officials are enthusiastic about the idea, since a development like the Napoleon Complex could provide affordable housing without further straining land and water resources.

A legally permitted house in Asheville could be smaller than mine. Another tiny house was built in town last year with a 12 feet wide by 18 feet long (216 square feet) footprint. A design might even approach the city’s 150 square feet minimum limit by interpreting the code language to allow the “kitchen area” to be part of the “one habitable room” (and receiving concurrence from the permitting officials).

I chose to build a fixed house, rather than a trailer-based dwelling, for several reasons:

• I’m an urbanite and I’d rather live in town so I can walk or ride a bicycle to get places than drive a car very far. But it’s pretty hilly here in Asheville and harder to find an in-town backyard into which you can physically move a tiny house on a trailer.
• I didn’t want to worry about getting caught violating housing codes by living in what the local governments would consider a recreation vehicle.
• I didn’t want to own, or need to rent or borrow, a large truck each time I needed to move a trailer-based house.
• A fixed house provides equity, potential rental income and better resale value.
• I wanted the creature comforts of a large shower and full-size range.
• I wanted outdoor rooms with more permanent features, such as a porch dimension,” except kitchens.