I'm really not a villain enjoyer. I love anti-heroes and anti-villains. But I can't see fictional evil separate from real evil. As in not that enjoying dark fiction means you condone it, but that all fiction holds up some kind of mirror to the world as it is. Killing innocent people doesn't make you an iconic lesbian girlboss it just makes you part of the mundane and stultifying black rot of the universe.

"But characters struggling with honour and goodness and the egoism of being good are so boring." Cool well some of us actually struggle with that stuff on the daily because being a good person is complicated and harder than being an edgelord.

Sure you can use fiction to explore the darkness of human nature and learn empathy, but the world doesn't actually suffer from a deficit of empathy for powerful and privileged people who do heinous stuff. You could literally kill a thousand babies in broad daylight and they'll find a way to blame your childhood trauma for it as long as you're white, cisgender, abled and attractive, and you'll be their poor little meow meow by the end of the week. Don't act like you're advocating for Quasimodo when you're just making Elon Musk hot, smart and gay.

Nanowrimo Preview

Sooooo, I decided to attempt Nanowrimo. I’m total shit at it but.... eh. Whatever. Also the story is shit, but Imma put it on here anyways.

Cassandra and Karen decide to take their fall break to a cabin in the Apalachian mountains. Cassi finds an attractive man who wont speak to her (or rather he finds her), and an attractive man who will talk to her (and calls her “Cher”) and a cute little puppy with bright blue eyes. And that;s all before things get exciting. 

Basically, this is shitty self insert fanservice. With attractive paranormal people and lots of sex. So.... 

18 and over only please.

WC: 3412

“Karen’s Whore House. You got the dough, we got the hoe. How may I direct your call?”

It was 3:05 on the dot, November 16th. The high school bell had just rang and Cassandra was finally free. Well, for ten days at least. She was probably more excited about the short, Fall break than any of her students. And, of course, the first order of business was to call Karen, the bestie. A grin spread across her face at the teasing tone.

“Is Karen there? It’s a hoe-mergancy,” said Cassandra, playing along.

“This is the Madam speaking.”

“Oh! Perfect! I’m hoe-ping you can help me.”

Karen stifled a laugh at the pun. “We can handle all matters, small and big.”

“Wonderful. Because I need someone large, broad and tattooed. Oh! And maybe a nice beard? I’m gonna need something nice to ride.”

That was the last straw. They both busted out laughing. Cassi hit her turn signal and continued down the long country highway back into the city. Once the laughter died down, Cassi let out a small excited squeal. “When are we leaving?”

Karen groaned a bit as she rolled out of bed, a small thunk heard in the background as her feet hit the floor. “Uh, I was thinking we could get dinner, wait out some of the traffic then head up after dark. “

“Perfect. Just lemme get home and make sure I’ve got everything and then I’ll head that way.”

With music blaring in the small gray suv, time passed quickly. As Cassi pulled up to the residential school Karen lived and worked at, she shot a quick “Here bitch” text in lieu of honking the horn.  Karen opened the back passenger door and slid her bags into the seat and floorboard.

“I’m so fucking ready to be out of this place.”

“Same. But first- foods.”

Karen half moaned her agreement.

“Where?”

“Cock-Out?” Karen suggested.

“Eh. Taco Hell?”

“Not before a road trip.”

“Valid point,” Cassi nodded.

“Oh!” Karen perked up, plugging her phone charger into the carport, “How about Zaxby’s?”

Cassi grinned as she put her car into reverse. “Sounds good to me!” She pulled out and headed towards the restaurant while Karen put on their road trip playlist. The two had decided, since their typical “Friendsgiving” plans had fallen through with the rest of their friends away with familial obligations, that they would take a trip to the mountains about two hours north of their small city to spend their break drinking, eating and enjoying the cool weather. If they were lucky, maybe they'd be enjoying a man or two as well.

After getting fuel for both themselves and the car as well as a few drinks and snacks for the road. Two and a half hours later the two pulled into the tiny town that boasted a fair bit of tourism depending on the season. Most of which were romantic getaways, honeymoons and the like, occasionally a biker club or caravan would stop for the night on their way through.

They pulled over at the largest of the town’s- of Aberdeenvalle’s- three gas stations.  Cassi stretched letting out a long, low moan. “Uggghhhhhhhaaa. Oi.” She shook out her clothes and arched her feet a bit. Karen mimicked with her own stretch and groan combination, adding a small yawn.

“Alright. Should be just a few miles from the check in place but I’m not sure how far the actual cabin is. I know it’s past all the newer camping sites.”

Cassi nods at Karen, who planned the whole trip, and shivers a bit as a cool wind blows past them. The early evening got cold fast in the Appalachian Mountains and Cassi was still in a thin gray cotton t-shirt and cute cuffed jean shorts. Karen was much more ready for the temperature in a thick red wrap and dark wash jeans. They enter the small store laughing and karen heads towards the bathroom in the back corner. Cassi grabs another large bottle of water, a few packs of jerky and walks to the counter to pay for that and the gas. The young guy behind the register nodded to her giving a standard “Hello, how are you today?”

“Hello,” Cassi smiled “And 15 on three, please.” She placed her items on the counter. He began ringing them up. “Other than leaf watching and drinking, what is there to do around here?”

He looked up at her, “Ya’ll stayin’?”

“Yep! Whole week.”

“Hmmm....” he handed her her receipt, “Not much” he shrugged. “If ya like to walk, there's a park with a nice hiking trail. Just don’t stay too close to nightfall.”

Cassi scrunched her face up and tilted her head a bit at his strange and vague warning but thanked him nonetheless as Karen joined her grabbing the bag and heading back out to the car.

“What was that all about?” Karen asks.

“I dunno,” Cassi shrugged, “Asked about shit to do, got a ‘don’t go out alone at night’ instead.” She grinned at her friend, one side of her face lifting and showing her teeth, “I mean, what kind of woman does he take me for? How else am I supposed to have fun?” Karen laughed with her.

“Slut,” she shot at Cassi.

“I know.”

They climbed back up into the car and slowly drove the last 20 minutes deeper into the mountains and pulled up to a large two story, wooden cabin with a brightly lit front porch and a small wooden sign with “Merritt Cabins and Camping” carven into it. A worn layer of paint making the letters stand out. Parking and turning off the engine, the girls smile and quickly jog up the steps to check in. An older man greets them in the spacious lobby.

He smiled gently, “Welcome ladies!” His shoulders were once broad and thick but his body now shrunk due to age. He had graying hair, cropped close to his tan wrinkled skin, soft dark eyes and a slight hunch, leaning on the polished wood slab counter. He was wholly warm and welcoming. Cassi, for one, was glad. She wasn’t sure quite what to expect. She trusted Karen to plan everything and although she wasn’t expecting some eldritch demon or a pack of werewolves to be at the front desk, there never was any telling with Karen so a normal cabin and not some hidden mountain BDSM dungeon was a pleasant surprise.

Karen talks to him while Cassi looks around a bit, admiring the log architecture and the rustic wood-based decor. She turned back around in time to see him pull a small map from the display set and unfolded it on the desk. Cassi peered over it beside Karen. It was surprisingly modern looking. Well organized and clearly marked, it even had restaurants and places of interests from around town- including the mountain hiking trail. He flipped it over and pointed to a blue square. “This is us, here,” he explained. “Your cabin is this one up here,” he tapped a red square farther up the mountain, “Two bedrooms, two baths, great view, over 2000 ft above sea level. ‘S’even got a fireplace. You’ll love it.” he grinned at us. He gave them easy directions and even marked them on the map so they wouldn’t forget.

Cassi smiled, “Thank you, Mr. Merritt.” She folded up the map and they went back to the car. Rolling down the windows to enjoy the fresh evening air and following his directions they were given in the dark, they pull up to a beautiful redwood log cabin. It was smaller, two story built right onto the side of the the mountain giving a beautiful view of the south east forests below the furnished wrap around porch. She pulled up to the front door and parked on the gravel, grinning.

The cabin was comfortably decorated. Not flashy or overdone but casual and warm feeling. Large windows covered nearly every wall, the red, drawn back, floor-to-ceiling curtains causing the setting sun to illuminate the living room on the first floor and the open planned kitchen. Upstairs was another, smaller living space and a small hallway that split the two bedrooms, each with a- Cassi and Karen discovered- gorgeous bathroom attached. Cassi took the master since it had a massive garden tub and Karen wasn’t a “bath person”, unlike Cassi.

Seriously. It was huge. Cassi was never a small woman. She was more than enough for anyone to handle with broad shoulders, strong arms and legs, large breasts, a thick waist and wide, rounded hips and thighs. She was a generous size 20 and this tub could easily fit three of her. She squealed when she saw it, hands clenched at her chest. She nearly jumped for joy.

But first, she was going to unpack. “Hey, bitch!”

“What?”

“What's the plan?”

“Uh… Drink?” Karen peeped around the doorframe into the bathroom, “Woah.”

“Ch- Yeah!” Cassi grinned, “Thanks for lettin’ me have the masters, boo.”

“I’m so using that before we leave,” she said, pointing to the oversized bathtub.

Cassi let out a small laugh, mostly snort really, “We could both use that- at the same time.”

Karen nodded.

“Anyways! What's the plan for tonight?”

“Drinking- I just said that!”

“Okay, okay, let's get everything in, shower and then we drink the night away! Then we can go get breakfast after we wake from the dead,” Cassi laughed.

They did just that. If someone had seen how much liquor and mixers the two women brought into the kitchen, they surely would have thought it was for a party, or at least a large family of alcoholics.  Bottles of vodka, rum, tequila and wine, three handles of fireball and a small bottle of everclear. They reasoned that should be enough to last them the week.

They got a head start- three shots for Cassi and one for the lightweight Karen- then played a few rounds of High-low. Karen smashed Cassi in five rounds, Cassi won three of her own. Then they moved on to an adjusted game of bullshit. Before they could even finish the deck in bullshit, they were both rolling on the floor laughing loudly at nothing. By this time Cassi had stipped down to a sports bra and short sleeping shorts and Karen was in a tank top and lounge pants. Cassi tended to lose clothes as she drank.

Cassi also tended to wake up early and without a hangover after a night of heavy drinking. Karen- not so much.

So, while Karen stayed asleep, Cassi went out to get a breakfast at the little cafe, figuring she’d eat then pick up a few groceries.

Her tight jeans and oversized red and black plaid flannel over a cream colored tank top was warm enough in the cool mountain air. Her favorite black combat boots kept her feet warm and were comfy to walk around the small town in.

She sat down in the cafe's outside seating, the metal cool through her clothes but still a relaxing feeling. She ordered a small breakfast, just oatmeal and fruit, not being able to stomach large amounts of greasy food with her stomach still full of liquor from just a few hours prior. And coffee. lots and lots of coffee. She joked with the waiter, an older jovial man with a strong accent and far too many pins attached to his suspenders for them to be comfortable, to just leave the pot. Three cups of coffee- with two sugars and two creamers each- in, her breakfast is interrupted.  A far too large hand quietly places itself onto the black metal chair across from her. She takes inventory of the deep scarring across the knuckles and the protruding veins. And the size. It wouldn't be a stretch for that hand to cover her entire face. Her eyes dart up to the interruption face- skipping his arm and chest completely. Cassi is momentarily stunned. He had dark green eyes, long hair pulled back into a tight - black, maybe dark brown in color? It was hard to tell. His beard was thick and short but obviously well taken care of. His jaw was strong and angular and Cassi could just make out a few silvery scars along his high cheekbone on the left side of his face. ​This is unreal. Cassi though, Seriously. What romance novel is this jackass from?? "Can I help you?" she asked. He just stared at her, taking her in, eyes roaming over and over her generous, curved figure; over each roll and lump, each scar and mark visible, he found. Not judging, Cassi could tell, just looking. So she looked back. Well fit, dark gray Henley with long sleeves, and the top button undone. His arms well built and waist, though obviously muscled, thick set and leading into wide-set legs covered in loose jeans. Cassi's eyes darted back up to his face. His fuckin' attractive face. "Right." she said shortly, "Good talk. " She turned back to her food and the logic puzzle she was completing, effectively dismissing him by ignoring him.  She heard a low, gravelly grunt that sent suppressed shivers up her spine before the hand removed itself from the chair opposite her. She watched him swagger away out of the corner of her eye . "Well," she murmured to herself, "that was weird." She finished and stretched, the paid for her food at the counter inside with a sweet, "Thank you!" She walked up the road to the little corner grocery store. It was a quaint and cute town. Cassi decided she like it. It was warming seeing how the people here interacted. Everyone seemed to know everyone and everyone seemed to get along. It reminded her of home, of her childhood- or at least the positive parts of it. The grocery store was brightly lit and filled with fresh, local produce and meats. It was strange and more market than grocer. She picked up the basics- milk, bread, butter, rice, a few fruits and veggies. The last thing she picked up was meat, making sure to pick up bacon for Karen. It was enough to last them but not too much for her to carry, albeit it would be with a bit difficulty. Right as she walked out the store, a few kids sped by on skateboards. They got a little two close and nearly knocked her over, She caught herself but, unfortunately, still dropped her bag of produce "Shit." She bend down on one knee to start gathering up her groceries. A hand shot out to grab a run-away apple. One that wasn't hers. Deja vu. She looked up to see her apple's savior and found, yet another, overly attractive man. This one was thinner than the last. He had tattoos from the wrist of his outstretched hand all the way up to the sleeve stretched over his bicep. Still had a sharp jaw, though significantly less square, a five o'clock shadow, bright blue eyes and light pink lips stretched into a charming smile. "Here, cher," he offered, scooping up more of the scattered produce and placing them back into the bag. "Oh..." Cassi caught herself staring, mouth open slightly. She shook her head a bit and smiled back, "Thank you! So much." "Oh no pro'lem. My pleasure, really." He took another bag from her, easing her load and then motioned her ahead. Cassi smiled and accepted his silent offer to help her. "You've got a bit of an unusual accent, cher- for these parts, at least," he started, "Where you from?" At least this one speaks Cassi thought and laughed to herself softly. "South Carolina. Born and raised. Up here with a friend for a little vacation. What about you?" "Naw, I'm a transplant, ma' self. I found I liked it up here, s'rprisin'ly." Cassi smiled at him as they got to her car, she unlocked the doors and placed the bags she had in the back seat, grabbing the bags the stranger had from his hands as well.  "Well, lucky for me then. Thank you...?" "Lucien. Lucien Corbeau." "Thank you, Lucien." "And what should I call you?" Cassi hummed to herself, making a show of looking him up and down, noticing the tattoos wrapping around his right arm in detail. "I think I like 'cher'," she grinned, "But you can call me tonight, if you'd like." Cassi grinned as she grabbed his warm hand and pulled it to her exposing the broad expanse of skin on the soft underside of his right arm to her. She bit the cap of a purple pen and tugged then scrawled her number along his arm. His grin matched hers as she spun on her heels and got into her car. By the time she got all the groceries unloaded and made some bacon, Karen had finally risen from the dead. Cassi smirked at her friend and started the coffee pot. "Goooood morning, sunshine!" Cassi sang. Karen glared in response and snatched a piece of bacon, plopping into the carved wooden chair. "Know what'll make ya feel better?" A grunt. "A shot." "Fuck that. No ma'am," Cassi snickered at her friend, Karen glared harder in return before giving up and eating more bacon. Cassi poured two cups of coffee and set one down in front of Karen. Her phone rang out with a ding before she should sit down to finish her own coffee. Karen sent her a glance as she opened the text message. "Who's that from?" Cassi sent her a sly look and shrugged casually. "Oh just some guy." Karen snorted, "Slut." Cassi shrugged. "So, is it Josh or KC?" "Neither." Karen playfully gasped, "Oh you are a slut!" Cassi laughed. "He helped me with the groceries! I dropped them!"

The two busted out laughing. The girls calmed down and Karen crunched on more bacon.  Cassi smiled and unlocked her phone again, finally reading her message.

"Hello, cher"

Cassi tapped out her reply quickly.

"Aren't you eager, Mr Corbeau?"​

"How could I not be?"

Cassi hadn't expected a response so quickly. Hm.

She ​ tapped a finger on the table for a second, thinking of how to reply. She kind of liked the excited attention he was giving her.

"I'm not sure. I mean, if I could meet myself, I'd be pretty excited too! Lol" ​ No, that's not right. She erased it. "Who knows?"  Better.

"I hope you wouldn't think me too eager then, if I ask you to coffee tomorrow night?"

"Hmmm... No I don't supposed I would."

"In that case, How does coffee sound tomorrow, cher?"

"Well I suppose, but only because I love coffee." Cassi laughed to herself.

They set a time and place to meet the next night, all the while Lucien calling her "Cher". The ridiculous pet name made Cassi smile. And then gag at her own girly giddiness.

"Aye yo, bitch!" Cassi called from the couch where she had posted up to text with Lucien.

"What?" Karen responded from the kitchen, around her bottle of water.

"What do you want to do today?"

Karen shruged, "I am not doing shit till I get a shower."

"Don't blame you there." Cassi thought for  a second, "How about we check out that trail? It feels fuckin' amazing outside today."

Karen shot her a look, "Oh I'm sure it did feel fuckin' amazing."

"Bitch." Cassi laughed.

The trail was beautiful. The entire mountain was, honestly. Cassi had packed her small backpack with a few bottles of water, her well supplied first aid kit, some snacks and a few photography supplies. Her tightly laced boots were comfortable on her feet and let her explore all the terrain the mountain had to offer. She kept her compact digital camera around her neck in case she found something spectacular. She

The two girls laughed and enjoyed the fresh air around them. After an hour of leisurely walking and stopping every now and then to capture a wonderful, they reached the 2 mile marker on the trail. It was now nearly 3 in the afternoon and Karen was ready to head back and take a shower. Cassi wanted to press on deeper into the mountain and hopefully get a few more pictures. So they compromised.

They walked together back to the base of the trail and Karen continued to the cabin while Cassi turned around and took a different trail.

My $3500 Tiny House, Explained

Meet “Timothy”, the new tinyhouse-style conference room at MMM HQ.

One of the nicest new trends of recent years is really the revival and rebranding of something very old: the smaller dwelling.

Over the last few months, I have built just such a structure, and it has turned out to be a rather cool experience. In fact, I’m typing this article for you from within its productive new confines.

Technically, it’s just a fancy shed. But it is functioning as a freestanding office building, a sanctuary, and would even make a pretty fine little dwelling for one person, if you were to squeeze in the necessary plumbing. It’s a joyful place to spend time, and yet it only took a moderate amount of work and less than $3500 of cash to create it.

The experience has been so satisfying and empowering, that it has  reminded me how much we rich folk are overdoing the whole housing thing.

The latest and most distant Las Vegas Suburbs – still expanding (actual screenshot from Google Maps)

For decades, we have been cranking up household size and amenities in response to increasing productivity and wealth. In the 1940s, the typical US household had four people sharing 1000 square feet, or the equivalent of one large garage bay of space per person. Nowadays, new homes average around 2600 square feet and house only three people, which means each person floats around in almost triple the space. We have also started placing these dwellings in bigger expanses of blank grass and/or asphalt, which separate us further from the people and places we like to visit.

The funny part of all this is that we prioritize size over quality. Houses are sold by the square foot and the bedroom and the bathroom, rather than the more important things like how much daylight the windows let in or how well the spaces all fit together. And we settle for the shittiest of locations, buying houses so far from amenities that we depend on a 4000 pound motorized wheelchair just to go pick up a few salad ingredients.

Meanwhile, smaller houses and mobile and manufactured homes have continued to exist, but they have sprouted an undesireable stigma: those things are only for poor people, so if you can afford it you should get yourself a large, detached house.

My Tinyhouse Dreaming

Ever since my teenage years, I have dreamed of casual, communal living. 1992 still ranks as possibly the Best Summer Of My Life, because my brother and I lived a leisurely existence in the utopian garden-and-forest expanse of our Mom’s half acre backyard complete with swimming pool, fire pit, and pop-up tent trailer.

We lived at the center of small, historic town, with very little for teenagers to do in the summer besides find a way to get beer, and find somewhere to drink it so we could play cards and make jokes and if we were really lucky, find romance. And in these conditions, Mum’s backyard came to the rescue of our whole social group.

People would show up in the morning and just linger and come and go all day, swimming in the pool, grilling up lunches and dinners, playing cards at night or watching movies in the impromptu movie theater I had set up in the old detached garage. There were last-minute multi-person sleepovers every weekend. Leftover spicy bratwurst for breakfast cooked over an open fire in the morning. The fond memories from this early-nineties teen utopia live on in all of us*. So naturally, I have wanted to find ways to recreate that carefree feeling ever since.

According to people who actually study this stuff, the key to a really happy community and warmer friendships seems to be unplanned social interactions: you need to run into people unexpectedly every day, and then do fun stuff with them. To facilitate this, you need to live close enough together that you encounter one another when out for your morning stroll. Smaller, cheaper housing is the key to this, as well as a key to spending a lot less money on isolating yourself from potential new friends.

Weecasa resort (image credit Weecasa)

Need a few real-life examples? Right next to me in Lyons, Colorado, someone (I wish it were me!) thought up the idea of creating a resort out of tinyhouses called WeeCasa. Consuming less space than just the parking lot of a normal hotel, they have a beautiful and now highly popular enclave where the srooms rent for $150-$200+ per night.

Two friends of mine just bought a pair of adjoining renovated cabooses (cabeese?) in a Wisconsin beach town, with plans to create the same thing: a combination of a pleasant and walkable lifestyle with fewer material strings attached, and a stream of rental income when they’re not there.

Another friend built her own tiny house on a flat trailer platform, and has since gone on to live in a beautiful downtown neighborhood, both car-free and mortgage-free except for a small parking fee paid for stationing it in her friend’s back driveway. The monetary impact of making such a bold housing move for even a few years of your youth, is big enough to put you ahead for a lifetime.

Even my neighbourhood of “old-town Longmont” has recently inflated to the point of tiny starter home selling for $500k, for the same reason: people really want walkable, sociable places to live and house size is less important than location. While I’m in favor of this philosophy, I’m not in favor of anyone having to spend $500,000 for a shitty, uninsulated, unrenovated house. So we need a greater supply of smaller, closer dwellings to meet this higher demand.

But that’s all big picture stuff. The real story of this article is a small one – a single 120 square foot structure in the back of one of my own properties right here in downtown Longmont, CO. So let’s get down to it.

The Tinyhouse Conference Room

An interior view of our new workspace.

Nearing its one year anniversary, the “MMM-HQ” coworking space has been a lot of fun to run so far. It has been a mixture of quiet workdays, heavy workouts, evening events, and occasional classes and markets. (We have about 55 members and are looking for a few more, so if you happen to live in Longmont click the link above.)

But with only one big room as our indoor space, some members have felt the pinch of needing a quiet place to do longer conference calls or client meetings.  So the plan has always been to build a couple of new spaces, and at last I have one of them mostly finished. And I made a point of documenting the whole process so I could share any ideas and lessons learned with you.

What goes into a Tinyhouse?

As with any big construction project, I started with a spreadsheet of steps and materials.

Here’s the complete list of steps and materials. You can click for viewing or download an .ods version for tweaking.

To save time, I tried to think ahead and get everything in one order **- most lumber shops will do free or cheap delivery on large orders like this.  Of course, I ended up only partially successful and had to go back for missed objects, but I added those to my spreadsheet so your order can be more complete than mine.

At this point, it was just a matter of putting it all together, an effort which took me about 120 hours (three standard weeks) of work, spread out very casually over the past three months. Most of the work is standard house framing stuff, but just for fun we can step through it in rapidfire style right here.

The Super Simple Insulated Floor

Normally when building a small house, you’d dig a hole and pour a reinforced slab of concrete, as I did for the larger and fancier studio building at my main house. But in this case, the goal was fast, cheap and simple. So I just raked out a level patch of crushed gravel, compacted it with my rusty homemade welded compactor tool (“La Cruz”), and then started laying out pressure treated 2×6 lumber.

Here’s the 12×10 floor platform. Note the little support rails which allowed me to tightly fit in the foil-coated foam insulation between the joists. Most joints are done with simple 3.25″ galvanized framing nails, but I added Simpson corner brackets on the insides of the outermost joists for more strength.

Framing

Once I had those floor joists super square and level (hammering in stone shims under corners and joists as needed), I added a layer of standard 3/4″ OSB subfloor and nailed it down judiciously with the framing nailer to ensure a very rigid base. Then started to make the walls.

I used the floor as a convenient work platform for building the four walls. I built them flat and even added the 1/2″ exterior sheathing in advance, then tilted them up with the help of a friend or two. This method makes for heavier lifting but higher quality, because you get a perfectly straight and square wall almost guaranteed. Plus, it saves time because sheathing is a fussier job to do on an already-installed wall.

Once all four walls were set up and locked in place, I created the roof frame, which is really just a rather large wall. I did this on the ground, but had to compromise and skip the pre-sheathing step even though it would yield better quality, because we needed to keep it light enough to lift. If I had really strong friends or a telescoping forklift like real framing companies have, doing it all on the ground would have been a big win.

Framing and roofing.

A Metal Roof (of course)

I wanted a relatively flat-looking roof, so I cut wedge-shaped 2x4s and nailed them to the tops of the roof rafters before adding sheathing. This results in a slope of only 2%, but with a careful underlayment job and the seamless nature of metal roof sheets when compared to shingles, I have found it is nicely watertight. If in doubt, you can add more slope or use a rubber EPDM roof. The other advantages of metal: longer lifespan, lighter weight, and better protection from summer heat.

Insulation and Siding

Various wall layers revealed, insulation, lights, super frugal wood floor!

On top of those handy pre-sheathed walls,  I added 1″ foil-covered foamboard, then some stained cedar fenceboards to create the reddish exterior you see in these pictures. Although the cedar gets quite a few compliments, it was an experiment I wouldn’t repeat: the boards expand and contract in changing weather and leave visible gaps at times. Next time, I’ll use more wavy metal siding, or something prefinished with an interlocking tongue and groove profile.

Electrical was done exactly the same way you’d wire up a normal house, with outlets and switches in AC Romex-style wiring. But on a tinyhouse like this, you might choose to have it all terminate at a male outdoor receptacle on an exterior wall like an RV or camp trailer, so you can run the whole thing from a good extension cord.

Insulation was just basic batts in this case, but you can use spray foam for even better performance.  I drywalled everything using standard 1/2″ “lightrock” wallboard, hoping to keep the structure weight down in general, in case this thing ever needs to be moved with a forklift.

For lighting, I used these LED lights I found at Amazon at $4.20 per fixture.

The bare drywall stage – one of so much promise.

The Final Touches – Interior Trim, Furniture and Climate Control

At this stage in the construction story, I had something that looked like any other ready-to-finish example of modern house construction, and it was such a happy and familiar feeling. It’s a blank canvas but also a very solid one upon which you can create anything – an office, a bedroom, music studio, living room. Or if you’ve got the pipes for it, a kitchen or even a bathroom with a fancy shower.

Normally by this stage in building a house, you’ve spent at least $100 per square foot, so you can imagine the pleasantly Mustachian feeling I got when I arrived here at about $22.

So to keep the frugal trend going with the floor, I decided to try just smooth sanding the raw OSB with a good belt sander and clearcoating it with this really tough floor urethane. It came out looking pleasant, and is very durable and mud/gravel resistant. But I found the sanding was a slow process – throwing in a basic but attractive engineered wood floor at under $2 per square foot is probably a better idea next time at only slightly higher cost, unless you are building a big enough space to justify renting a real floor sander.

I made my own trim and window jambs by buying three 4×8 sheets of 3/4″ MDF and slicing them up on the table saw. Like the floor, this adds a bit of labor, but the benefit is you can get nice beefy trim in whatever dimensions you like (and even throw in some matching custom shelving and built-in cabinetry!) and save a couple hundred dollars per room.

The portable air conditioner occupies only one shelf.

For furniture, I picked out a mixture of stuff I already had, an Ikea desk frame from Craigslist, and a nifty chairside table from a local big box store.

Finally, I added some simple but effective climate control by just throwing a low cost portable AC from amazon up on the shelf (it vents through a 6″ hole I cut to the exterior). In the winter, I’ll just stash that little air conditioner somewhere and replace it with a silent oil-filled electric radiator for heat.

By plugging either of these machines into a wifi-controlled electrical outlet, I can even control the heating and cooling from anywhere using an app on my phone, as I already do for the various patio lights and ventilation fans I have in my life.

So do YOU want a Tiny House?

The real point of this article is just to share the idea that small structures can be very useful for many things. They are quicker and cheaper than creating a traditional house or building an addition onto one. They may allow you to have a guest house or home office or even an AirBnb rental in space that was formerly just a water-sucking part of your back lawn. Many cities allow you to place small things like this in your yard without requiring a building permit. And if you have the skills to build these things, you can even create an instantly profitable business cranking them out to satisfy the strong demand.

As for me, I’m hooked – later this year I’ll build a second one of these things here at MMM-HQ. And perhaps I’ll even get a chance to help someone build yet another in a tropical seaside location this winter, as part of my ongoing “Carpentourism” habit.

Happy downsizing!

—

*except my Mum, who still regrets letting so many teenagers run free and attract the ire of the older neighbors and occasionally the police department. Sorry Mom..  but also, thank you so much!

** I also took advantage of the large chunk of spending for a tiny bit of “travel hacking“, picking up an Amex Platinum card that gives me about $1000 of cash/travel credits only if I can spend $5000 within the first three months. For travel hackers, timing the acquisition of a new rewards card to coincide with a chunk of planned spending can be a useful way to squeeze the travel budget into an existing renovation budget.

    from Finance http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/06/30/tinyhouse/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

My $3500 Tiny House, Explained

Meet “Timothy”, the new tinyhouse-style conference room at MMM HQ.

One of the nicest new trends of recent years is really the revival and rebranding of something very old: the smaller dwelling.

Over the last few months, I have built just such a structure, and it has turned out to be a rather cool experience. In fact, I’m typing this article for you from within its productive new confines.

Technically, it’s just a fancy shed. But it is functioning as a freestanding office building, a sanctuary, and would even make a pretty fine little dwelling for one person, if you were to squeeze in the necessary plumbing. It’s a joyful place to spend time, and yet it only took a moderate amount of work and less than $3500 of cash to create it.

The experience has been so satisfying and empowering, that it has  reminded me how much we rich folk are overdoing the whole housing thing.

The latest and most distant Las Vegas Suburbs – still expanding (actual screenshot from Google Maps)

For decades, we have been cranking up household size and amenities in response to increasing productivity and wealth. In the 1940s, the typical US household had four people sharing 1000 square feet, or the equivalent of one large garage bay of space per person. Nowadays, new homes average around 2600 square feet and house only three people, which means each person floats around in almost triple the space. We have also started placing these dwellings in bigger expanses of blank grass and/or asphalt, which separate us further from the people and places we like to visit.

The funny part of all this is that we prioritize size over quality. Houses are sold by the square foot and the bedroom and the bathroom, rather than the more important things like how much daylight the windows let in or how well the spaces all fit together. And we settle for the shittiest of locations, buying houses so far from amenities that we depend on a 4000 pound motorized wheelchair just to go pick up a few salad ingredients.

Meanwhile, smaller houses and mobile and manufactured homes have continued to exist, but they have sprouted an undesireable stigma: those things are only for poor people, so if you can afford it you should get yourself a large, detached house.

My Tinyhouse Dreaming

Ever since my teenage years, I have dreamed of casual, communal living. 1992 still ranks as possibly the Best Summer Of My Life, because my brother and I lived a leisurely existence in the utopian garden-and-forest expanse of our Mom’s half acre backyard complete with swimming pool, fire pit, and pop-up tent trailer.

We lived at the center of small, historic town, with very little for teenagers to do in the summer besides find a way to get beer, and find somewhere to drink it so we could play cards and make jokes and if we were really lucky, find romance. And in these conditions, Mum’s backyard came to the rescue of our whole social group.

People would show up in the morning and just linger and come and go all day, swimming in the pool, grilling up lunches and dinners, playing cards at night or watching movies in the impromptu movie theater I had set up in the old detached garage. There were last-minute multi-person sleepovers every weekend. Leftover spicy bratwurst for breakfast cooked over an open fire in the morning. The fond memories from this early-nineties teen utopia live on in all of us*. So naturally, I have wanted to find ways to recreate that carefree feeling ever since.

According to people who actually study this stuff, the key to a really happy community and warmer friendships seems to be unplanned social interactions: you need to run into people unexpectedly every day, and then do fun stuff with them. To facilitate this, you need to live close enough together that you encounter one another when out for your morning stroll. Smaller, cheaper housing is the key to this, as well as a key to spending a lot less money on isolating yourself from potential new friends.

Weecasa resort (image credit Weecasa)

Need a few real-life examples? Right next to me in Lyons, Colorado, someone (I wish it were me!) thought up the idea of creating a resort out of tinyhouses called WeeCasa. Consuming less space than just the parking lot of a normal hotel, they have a beautiful and now highly popular enclave where the srooms rent for $150-$200+ per night.

Two friends of mine just bought a pair of adjoining renovated cabooses (cabeese?) in a Wisconsin beach town, with plans to create the same thing: a combination of a pleasant and walkable lifestyle with fewer material strings attached, and a stream of rental income when they’re not there.

Another friend built her own tiny house on a flat trailer platform, and has since gone on to live in a beautiful downtown neighborhood, both car-free and mortgage-free except for a small parking fee paid for stationing it in her friend’s back driveway. The monetary impact of making such a bold housing move for even a few years of your youth, is big enough to put you ahead for a lifetime.

Even my neighbourhood of “old-town Longmont” has recently inflated to the point of tiny starter home selling for $500k, for the same reason: people really want walkable, sociable places to live and house size is less important than location. While I’m in favor of this philosophy, I’m not in favor of anyone having to spend $500,000 for a shitty, uninsulated, unrenovated house. So we need a greater supply of smaller, closer dwellings to meet this higher demand.

But that’s all big picture stuff. The real story of this article is a small one – a single 120 square foot structure in the back of one of my own properties right here in downtown Longmont, CO. So let’s get down to it.

The Tinyhouse Conference Room

An interior view of our new workspace.

Nearing its one year anniversary, the “MMM-HQ” coworking space has been a lot of fun to run so far. It has been a mixture of quiet workdays, heavy workouts, evening events, and occasional classes and markets. (We have about 55 members and are looking for a few more, so if you happen to live in Longmont click the link above.)

But with only one big room as our indoor space, some members have felt the pinch of needing a quiet place to do longer conference calls or client meetings.  So the plan has always been to build a couple of new spaces, and at last I have one of them mostly finished. And I made a point of documenting the whole process so I could share any ideas and lessons learned with you.

What goes into a Tinyhouse?

As with any big construction project, I started with a spreadsheet of steps and materials.

Here’s the complete list of steps and materials. You can click for viewing or download an .ods version for tweaking.

To save time, I tried to think ahead and get everything in one order **- most lumber shops will do free or cheap delivery on large orders like this.  Of course, I ended up only partially successful and had to go back for missed objects, but I added those to my spreadsheet so your order can be more complete than mine.

At this point, it was just a matter of putting it all together, an effort which took me about 120 hours (three standard weeks) of work, spread out very casually over the past three months. Most of the work is standard house framing stuff, but just for fun we can step through it in rapidfire style right here.

The Super Simple Insulated Floor

Normally when building a small house, you’d dig a hole and pour a reinforced slab of concrete, as I did for the larger and fancier studio building at my main house. But in this case, the goal was fast, cheap and simple. So I just raked out a level patch of crushed gravel, compacted it with my rusty homemade welded compactor tool (“La Cruz”), and then started laying out pressure treated 2×6 lumber.

Here’s the 12×10 floor platform. Note the little support rails which allowed me to tightly fit in the foil-coated foam insulation between the joists. Most joints are done with simple 3.25″ galvanized framing nails, but I added Simpson corner brackets on the insides of the outermost joists for more strength.

Framing

Once I had those floor joists super square and level (hammering in stone shims under corners and joists as needed), I added a layer of standard 3/4″ OSB subfloor and nailed it down judiciously with the framing nailer to ensure a very rigid base. Then started to make the walls.

I used the floor as a convenient work platform for building the four walls. I built them flat and even added the 1/2″ exterior sheathing in advance, then tilted them up with the help of a friend or two. This method makes for heavier lifting but higher quality, because you get a perfectly straight and square wall almost guaranteed. Plus, it saves time because sheathing is a fussier job to do on an already-installed wall.

Once all four walls were set up and locked in place, I created the roof frame, which is really just a rather large wall. I did this on the ground, but had to compromise and skip the pre-sheathing step even though it would yield better quality, because we needed to keep it light enough to lift. If I had really strong friends or a telescoping forklift like real framing companies have, doing it all on the ground would have been a big win.

Framing and roofing.

A Metal Roof (of course)

I wanted a relatively flat-looking roof, so I cut wedge-shaped 2x4s and nailed them to the tops of the roof rafters before adding sheathing. This results in a slope of only 2%, but with a careful underlayment job and the seamless nature of metal roof sheets when compared to shingles, I have found it is nicely watertight. If in doubt, you can add more slope or use a rubber EPDM roof. The other advantages of metal: longer lifespan, lighter weight, and better protection from summer heat.

Insulation and Siding

Various wall layers revealed, insulation, lights, super frugal wood floor!

On top of those handy pre-sheathed walls,  I added 1″ foil-covered foamboard, then some stained cedar fenceboards to create the reddish exterior you see in these pictures. Although the cedar gets quite a few compliments, it was an experiment I wouldn’t repeat: the boards expand and contract in changing weather and leave visible gaps at times. Next time, I’ll use more wavy metal siding, or something prefinished with an interlocking tongue and groove profile.

Electrical was done exactly the same way you’d wire up a normal house, with outlets and switches in AC Romex-style wiring. But on a tinyhouse like this, you might choose to have it all terminate at a male outdoor receptacle on an exterior wall like an RV or camp trailer, so you can run the whole thing from a good extension cord.

Insulation was just basic batts in this case, but you can use spray foam for even better performance.  I drywalled everything using standard 1/2″ “lightrock” wallboard, hoping to keep the structure weight down in general, in case this thing ever needs to be moved with a forklift.

For lighting, I used these LED lights I found at Amazon at $4.20 per fixture.

The bare drywall stage – one of so much promise.

The Final Touches – Interior Trim, Furniture and Climate Control

At this stage in the construction story, I had something that looked like any other ready-to-finish example of modern house construction, and it was such a happy and familiar feeling. It’s a blank canvas but also a very solid one upon which you can create anything – an office, a bedroom, music studio, living room. Or if you’ve got the pipes for it, a kitchen or even a bathroom with a fancy shower.

Normally by this stage in building a house, you’ve spent at least $100 per square foot, so you can imagine the pleasantly Mustachian feeling I got when I arrived here at about $22.

So to keep the frugal trend going with the floor, I decided to try just smooth sanding the raw OSB with a good belt sander and clearcoating it with this really tough floor urethane. It came out looking pleasant, and is very durable and mud/gravel resistant. But I found the sanding was a slow process – throwing in a basic but attractive engineered wood floor at under $2 per square foot is probably a better idea next time at only slightly higher cost, unless you are building a big enough space to justify renting a real floor sander.

I made my own trim and window jambs by buying three 4×8 sheets of 3/4″ MDF and slicing them up on the table saw. Like the floor, this adds a bit of labor, but the benefit is you can get nice beefy trim in whatever dimensions you like (and even throw in some matching custom shelving and built-in cabinetry!) and save a couple hundred dollars per room.

The portable air conditioner occupies only one shelf.

For furniture, I picked out a mixture of stuff I already had, an Ikea desk frame from Craigslist, and a nifty chairside table from a local big box store.

Finally, I added some simple but effective climate control by just throwing a low cost portable AC from amazon up on the shelf (it vents through a 6″ hole I cut to the exterior). In the winter, I’ll just stash that little air conditioner somewhere and replace it with a silent oil-filled electric radiator for heat.

By plugging either of these machines into a wifi-controlled electrical outlet, I can even control the heating and cooling from anywhere using an app on my phone, as I already do for the various patio lights and ventilation fans I have in my life.

So do YOU want a Tiny House?

The real point of this article is just to share the idea that small structures can be very useful for many things. They are quicker and cheaper than creating a traditional house or building an addition onto one. They may allow you to have a guest house or home office or even an AirBnb rental in space that was formerly just a water-sucking part of your back lawn. Many cities allow you to place small things like this in your yard without requiring a building permit. And if you have the skills to build these things, you can even create an instantly profitable business cranking them out to satisfy the strong demand.

As for me, I’m hooked – later this year I’ll build a second one of these things here at MMM-HQ. And perhaps I’ll even get a chance to help someone build yet another in a tropical seaside location this winter, as part of my ongoing “Carpentourism” habit.

Happy downsizing!

—

*except my Mum, who still regrets letting so many teenagers run free and attract the ire of the older neighbors and occasionally the police department. Sorry Mom..  but also, thank you so much!

** I also took advantage of the large chunk of spending for a tiny bit of “travel hacking“, picking up an Amex Platinum card that gives me about $1000 of cash/travel credits only if I can spend $5000 within the first three months. For travel hackers, timing the acquisition of a new rewards card to coincide with a chunk of planned spending can be a useful way to squeeze the travel budget into an existing renovation budget.

    from Money 101 http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2018/06/30/tinyhouse/ via http://www.rssmix.com/