Tiny Houses

All my life, I have dreamed of building a tiny house -- well, not just one tiny house. My dream has been to build a collection of tiny cottages on a single property that demonstrate different cottage designs and eco-technologies. It’s hard to believe that because of some lazy, non-egg-laying chickens, my dream is coming true!

For the past three weeks, my chickens have been living in their new home. Their new coop, built with the timbers from the original coop, is much closer to my kitchen - where I can keep a watchful eye on them and their egg laying practices!

I’ve gotten many inquiries about my communication experiment with the chickens. I am pleased to report this experiment a success – with at least two eggs each day! Two eggs is less than ideal for more than 20 chickens. I did, however, ask for a sign of cooperation from the chickens of laying at least one egg a day. Thank you chickens for offering two instead!

Under my supervision, and exploring their new outdoor space, my chickens are also demonstrating their ability to climb trees. Who knew that even plump chickens can get into trees? This habit has resulted in some escapees! 

Exiting themselves from their yard unintentionally by way of a tree, a few chickens have made a patch of dirt on “my” side of the fence for dirt bathing. They use it every chance they get before I can trap them and put them back in their yard.

With the chickens now settled near the house, my commute no longer includes a walk past the friendly looking coop. Instead, each day, I pass its skeleton. It looks so lonely, I began to wonder what would become of the former coop’s left-behind roof tiles and wooden posts.

One morning as I walked to work in the dark, bleary eyed at 6:40 am, I thought I saw a door in between the two forward facing posts. 

I blinked. A door? I looked again. No, it wasn’t. It must have been the sun sending one warm, encouraging beam my way, leaving the rest of the building in darkness.

I walked on. But I couldn’t get the image of that roof and those posts with a door out of my mind. Converting the chicken coop to a house seemed crazy at first, but in another way, it fit. I wasn’t totally construction illiterate and my love of tiny houses started in childhood! 

My interest in tiny house started at least by the age of 7. I devoured the Box Car Children books, as well as The Borrowers - a series about tiny people who live in a wall of someone’s home. At the time, I lived in a bedroom the size of a spacious closet. This was perfect for me! 

At 10, after moving to a new house, I promptly built a bed in the closet, converting the rest of the space into a “tiny home” within a home. I installed a make believe living room and kitchen – with tiny silverware and a small couch. 

At 12, I asked my dad to buy me a $5,000 tiny house kit for the back yard. He said “No!” thus ending my seven year obsession with tiny houses … for a time.

After college, I reignited my love of small homes and of architecture and design by getting a Masters degree in City and Regional Planning. I hoped to appropriately plan my tiny house village, should the day come for me to manifest it. I learned later that that is not exactly what an urban planning degree is designed for, but you can’t know everything ahead of time.

I also attended Jay Shafer’s two-day “Tiny House Building” workshop in Washington, DC. One of the first people to write about building his own tiny house, Shafer has been a pioneer in the American tiny house movement.

I took another big step by participating in a two-week tiny house design-build course at Yestermorrow in Vermont. There, I joined a team building a tiny house from scratch (or part of it) and I made the most wonderful friends.

You can tell that even building a tiny house is back breaking work!

Here we are ready to raise the first wall!

I also designed my own tiny house. Here are my models!

As I walked to work that day, and reviewed my personal history with tiny houses, I decided, YES! This was my chance! I would build a tiny house. I would transform that chicken shed into the prettiest tiny house Mexico had ever seen!

(Stay tuned!)