"Tiny House Nation" Casting Call

To daniel;
And to Nila also
I agree with you about the head room thing. Not something we would want to do every night at bed time.
That’s why when I designed and built our tiny house of 210sg ft on a gooseneck trailer, there is no headroom less than 6′.
Even in the bedroom area.
Jim
Bartelme Builders, Inc
Wisconsin

Dose a 198 sq foot house on a foundation at a total price of 15k including the price of the property count ??

My husband and I have been living in a 348 sq ft house for the past 15 years, but it’s an older home, on a foundation, with actual rooms & walls, so we can have privacy or quiet when we need it. Before that, we lived for 5 years in a 280 sq ft cob house we built ourselves in the country. While we built the cob house, we lived for 8 months in a platform tent we built ourselves and turned into a shed when we moved into the cob house. The platform tent had a loft bed, of a size very similar to the ones featured on the tiny house shows. My 6’+ husband didn’t have nearly as hard a time as one would think in a bed with about 4′ of headroom (and our romantic life didn’t suffer either).

Things that make tiny living work for us – #1. Rooms/walls. The open floor plan so popular on the home and garden TV shows is definitely not for us. We also have headphones that can be hooked up to the TV or computer so if one person wants to watch something after the other goes to bed, the person who is sleeping isn’t disturbed by the noise.
#2. Some well-chosen luxuries – we have a one-shelf dishwasher (can hold 2 people’s dishes, uses 2 gallons of water, run it once a day), a heated towel bar in the bathroom (a warm towel to put on before even stepping out of the shower is a delight)
#3. enjoying making alterations that make the house work better for us. We switched out a regular door between the kitchen and bedroom for a pocket door. On the kitchen side, we have floor-to-ceiling pantry shelves. In the cavity of the wall between the kitchen and living room, my husband built a broom closet. Yes, it’s only 3 1/2″ deep, but you can hang a broom, mop, dusters and so on, and below there are a couple of shelves for spray bottles and duster cloths. We put 2 wire shelves over the kitchen sink, which act as both a dish drain and storage. We put a small bathroom sink (the white rectangle one they use on many “Tiny House Nation” episodes in the bedroom, so we could have a clawfoot bathtub instead of just a shower. It works great because while one showers, the other can be brushing teeth, or doing shaving/makeup. We built a platform bed, under which is a 4′ long file drawer on wheels for the kinds of things you need to keep, like tax paperwork, but don’t need to access very often, under the foot end of the bed is a shelf that holds 2 guitars.

Have you built in Alaska yet? Looking to buy a couple of acres in the Kenai area and put a 500 sq ft solar powered cabin with a large wrap around covered deck on it. Want this cabin as energy efficient as it can be. Must have a well and septic also. We thought about a dog door as we have two very large German shepherds but do not want uninvited critters coming in.

My daughter, a single mom, has left a large house in Hawaii. She is fascinated by the tiny house and has a good idea of what she wants and what will fit. She wants 300sq feet with 2 lofts

There are times when we will watch your program talking about what we like and what we would change.

She does fashion, costume, and jewelry design so a working area will be needed. And a play area for a 4 year old.

Financing is her biggest problem. She has been approved for $82,000 but has. She was informed that even on a trailer they are not considered an RV. Any idea where financing can be found or a better choice of loan?

We would love to see something for older people no loft and large dogs! We were thinking of Kenai area but now think the gold country in California area. Log cabin look!! Pine trees!

We love watching your show to get ideas for our tiny house. What we have to work with is a cutesy 150 sf shed on a slab foundation behind the big house we just bought. Obviously, we’ll need a small addition to plumb the structure.

We plan to move into the tiny house and rent out the big one in front to pay the mortgage, as we are moving toward retirement and the reduced income that goes with it.

However, $45,000 is way too steep for us! Even with our 2 incomes, we barely qualified for the $65k purchase price on the property. The full-size houses in our neighborhood run from $40k up to $70k (if the lot’s oversized) so spending an additional $45k would be completely impractical.

But keep working your magic. It gives us inspiration.