In this video,聽Ottawa-based woodworker and some friends assemble a weekend-getaway聽cabin in the forest.听The icing on the cake? A small bouldering wall.

The post This A-Frame Is Every Climber’s Dream appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

In central Colorado near the San Isabel National Forest, this cabin was built entirely with timber and materials from the ranch on which it sits. It鈥檚聽equipped with a wood stove, gas cooktop, sauna, outdoor shower, sleeping loft, and enough ice skates to outfit a hockey team. Filmmaker of walks us through the cabin and shows off his digs for the winter.

The post Colorado’s Most Idyllic Off-Grid Cabin appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

聽is delivered, Ikea-style, with all the necessary parts, making it聽easy to transport to remote locations聽without heavy equipment. The smallest聽module is 191 square feet and sleeps four, but additional modules can be added to create a 936-square-foot structure. You can also order add-ons like聽a聽full kitchen and fireplace to turn the shack into a proper home.听

The post Backcountry Hut Company Surf Shack appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

This 聽(from $90,000) lives bigger than you'd expect from聽246 square feet, thanks to a center breezeway that feels like it belongs at a聽roomy sidewalk caf茅.

A transparent roll-up door and tall windows create easy聽access to outdoor spaces, including the fold-down deck.听The elevated kitchen is cook-friendly, with a small dishwasher and granite countertops, while a clever eight-person dining table stows completely between meals. The loft sleeping platform holds a king-size bed, leaving room below for a full-size tub and washer-dryer combo in the bath.

The post New Frontier Alpha Tiny Home appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

If you believe less is more, it鈥檚 easy to see the appeal of the tiny-house movement: You鈥檒l spend less money living in a tiny house, use less energy, and spend less time inside. But if you鈥檙e not ready to downsize your entire life into 200 square feet, you can rent a tiny house for the weekend, thanks to a growing number of tiny-house hotels popping up around the country.

Getaway

New York and Boston

offers spots in more than a dozen tiny homes scattered in secret wooded locations, each within a couple hours of Boston and New York City. You won鈥檛 get a Wi-Fi password, but you will get a lockbox for your phone so you can entirely disconnect. These clean, wooden microhomes, first unveiled in 2015 by students at Harvard Graduate School of Design, range from 160 to 200 square feet and sleep two to four people. When you book your stay, you鈥檒l get an email letting you know the exact location of the cabin before your trip. (From $99.)

WeeCasa

Lyons, Colorado

At , you鈥檒l sleep near the shores of the St. Vrain River, a short drive to Rocky Mountain National Park, in a home smaller than 250 square feet. These 22 little cabins are outfitted with queen beds, kitchenettes, French press coffee makers, and tiny bathrooms. Visit in the spring or summer, and you can sync your trip with the Planet Bluegrass festival series. The resort also offers weekly and monthly rates, or you can score a pad just for the night. (From $139.)

Snake River Sporting Club

Jackson, Wyoming

Want a little more space? Wyoming鈥檚 now has four newly constructed 400-square-foot tiny homes on its property. The cabins have one bedroom, a kitchen, a small living area, and a deck that overlooks Wolf Mountain and the Snake River Canyon. Club amenities like fly-fishing outings, a climbing wall, kayaking, and more are included in your stay. (From $525.)

Austin鈥檚 Original Tiny Home Hotel

Austin, Texas

is a gathering of sleek tiny homes in an RV park in the outskirts of Austin. The homes are modern and nice鈥攗pgraded (but, yes, miniature) kitchens, lofted beds, and plenty of outdoor seating if it鈥檚 too cozy inside. The largest home, at 268 square feet, sleeps four. (From $129.)

Mount Hood Tiny House Village

Welches, Oregon

You鈥檒l have a view of Mount Hood from the porch of your tiny house at outside Portland. Ranging from 175 to 260 square feet, the homes come with stocked kitchens and feature cedar-plank siding, and they can somehow sleep five people and a dog. If you鈥檙e on the East Coast, a new sister resort, Tuxbury Tiny House Village, is opening with five tiny houses this August in South Hampton, New Hampshire. (From $129.)

The post Tiny Houses You Can Rent for the Night appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

There's one thing 听丑辞蝉迟 won't give up in his contract, and that's two weeks chasing powder in Alaska. His battle for work-life balance聽is one we all face, and Giffin says that by carving out time in the mountains he's able to put 100 percent聽back into the tiny house movement. Find more from and .听

The post DPS The Shadow Campaign: ‘Gone Big’ appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Remember not too long ago, maybe 2012, the slew of blogs and Tumblrs and films that heralded not just a new type of house but a movement, a post-collapse quest for simplicity and freedom, a rejection of waste and 鈥渟tuff鈥� and, just like Thoreau in his cabin of yore, a crusade to chomp life鈥檚 essence and suck its marrow? Museum-quality photo books showed how to stick it to the man in 400 square feet or less鈥攚ith the clean lines and blond oak that made us drool onto the pages of Dwell magazine. Of all the earthy trends to emerge since the crash鈥攍ocal food, urban farms, permaculture鈥攏one have captured adoration like tiny houses, spawning no fewer than seven reality shows. You won鈥檛 find a series about cloth diapers.

It appealed to me, someone who has lived in some of the tiniest homes out there鈥攁 Subaru wagon, a Toyota pickup, an SUV with the backseats removed. When it comes to car camping, I wrote the book. Seriously. It鈥檚 called Car Camping. What鈥檚 more, I own a 1965 single-wide that measures just 570 square feet, with pine cabinets like you鈥檇 find in a sailboat, on an acre outside Moab, Utah. I鈥檝e always thought that if I owned less, worked less, and spent less, I would be more free.

But my vagabond days are behind me, and as I sped toward the second annual in Colorado Springs last August, I was undergoing my own tiny crisis. My wife and I had bought a tiny car that got nearly 40 miles per gallon. We鈥檇 even upcycled a Mexican roof mutt into our own tiny dog, who consumed at mealtime less than one cup of kibble and canned pumpkin and whose tiny poops hardly registered at the landfill. Meanwhile we鈥檇 upsized to a two-bedroom bungalow鈥攐ur biggest yet. Even as I understood that appetites like mine were plundering the planet, I could not stop wanting a third bedroom. As for the car: it was the first I鈥檇 ever owned that was too small to sleep in, so if the weather turned bad I might have to get a hotel, and wouldn鈥檛 that indulgence offset the efficiency?聽

Was small actually beautiful? I was ti-curious.

In my imagination, the Jamboree promised a quaint circle of funky sheds inhabited by anarchists who鈥檇 pass the porch-bound evenings picking banjos, sipping moonshine, and comparing insulation R-values. But because last year鈥檚 hordes had packed the grounds of the Western Museum of Mining and Industry, backing up traffic, this year the Jamboree supersized to a field at the Air Force Academy. My subversive fantasies were deflated by the armed guard at the academy gates, who demanded my license, weapons, explosives, and drugs.听

I followed a stream of Tiny Jammers driving through the piny hills to the stadium, one minivan painted with TINY HOUSE OR BUST! FIND US ON FACEBOOK. We throngs鈥攏early 60,000 before the weekend was over鈥攆iled our vehicles into long rows, then stampeded toward the entrance on foot. Saturated with the carnival cloud of a pork smoker on wheels, ringed by Porta-Potties innumerable, a field of yellow grass and gravel was packed with dozens of trailers on blocks, lines of looky-loos at the steps. A string of booths showcased off-grid accoutrements from solar panels to composting toilets to twig-burning cookstoves.

I had a date at the Tiny Stage to get to the heart of this phenomenon. A roster of the movement鈥檚 Luminaries would clarify the Tiny House Philosophy, which, it turned out, had little to do with bookshelves颅as-stairs or sinks-in-closets. One philosopher, Kent Griswold, founder of Tiny House Blog, a gray-headed avuncular type in cargo shorts and sneakers, confessed that he didn鈥檛 even live in one. No matter. All could benefit from its principles:

Reduce your belongings.

Get out of debt.听

Do work that you love.

Sager advice has never been given; indeed, these very principles had guided my own adulthood. But if living tiny doesn鈥檛 require a dollhouse, then what were we all doing here?

The first Luminary I met was Nina Zamudio, whose tale was pure bravura. A native Californian, Zamudio had worked her way through college, was earning a good income, and had even bought her mother a home. She had achieved the American dream. Then she divorced and moved out of her 2,800-square-foot house in Orland to take care of Mom in Chico. Now 49, with lustrous black hair and an irrepressible smile, Zamudio told me that after her mother鈥檚 death, she鈥檇 spent months getting rid of everything. Her mother鈥檚 place was only 1,200 square feet, but the empty house felt hollow and lonely, her solitary voice echoing off the walls. She attended a workshop with Jay Shafer, a 52-year-old designer and builder hailed by Oprah Winfrey as the Tiny House Man, author and publisher of the 2009 movement bible The Small House Book. Transformed, Zamudio sold the house and rented her first tiny home. She moved to Texas, where鈥攈elped by a crew of friends and strangers鈥攕he built an eight-by-twenty-foot house on wheels. A church allowed her to park on its grounds. She found a new set of friends at the Dallas Tiny House Meetup group, not to mention a boyfriend.

Zamudio inspired me. Who doesn鈥檛 want to rebound from adversity with panache, to be reawakened at middle age, to forge meaning amid drudgery and isolation? Tiny Housers鈥� zeal approaches the religious. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not really about the tiny house,鈥� one told me. 鈥淚t鈥檚 about values, a way of life.鈥� Another said, 鈥淵our whole life changes when you live in a tiny house.鈥� As with any sect鈥攐r recovery group鈥攊ts core is the narrative of personal transformation, whether being saved or getting sober. Here the stories pivoted around Turning Tiny. Before Tiny, there was an unhappy marriage, unpaid bills, stifling office work, a home of 2,500 square feet or more; after Tiny came freedom, new love, debt relief, self-employment, and, of course, a handmade nest. When Tiny Jammers asked one another 鈥淎re you building?鈥� it was no minor inquiry but rather the existential question, and when someone responded 鈥淭hree months now,鈥� a giddy thrill bubbled into the air, because we knew she had been reborn.

Duly evangelized, I set out to view the homes. But instead of the art brut of mad visionaries, I found professionally built sales models. An attractive rig from Northern California鈥檚 Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, the nation鈥檚 first and biggest manufacturer, cofounded by Jay Shafer himself, was outfitted with a flat-screen TV, faux-log stove, air conditioner, and washing machine, charged by a rumbling generator and encircled by a bevy of attractive salespersons in shirts that read DREAM BIG GO TINY. Cost of this model: $91,000. Inside I heard one Jammer say, 鈥淒id we bring the snacks or leave them in the car?鈥� One of the 鈥渨orkshops鈥� was a pitch by Ikea reps.

Better to call this the Tiny House Trade Show? As for the gadgets, as much as I admire a diminutive toilet, serious homesteaders make humanure by pooping into a bucket of sawdust. And a twig-burning stove can be fashioned from a No. 10 peach can. If we are trapped in a cycle of earning and spending, I wasn鈥檛 sure that any purchase would free us.

A schism in the House of Tiny! While the Luminaries espoused buying less stuff, what was happening across the field was the peddling of merch, all of it cool, none of it cheap. While a panel of real estate developers discussed the potential profitability of tiny-home villages, a petite woman from Portland, Oregon, who lives in a 100-square-foot wagon leaped to her feet and hollered, 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the square footage of the homes you live in?鈥澛�

My unscientific polling suggested that most tiny-come-latelies were drawn in by television shows鈥攁nd indeed, casting agents infiltrated the Jam, passing out cards for Tiny House Arrest, He Shed She Shed,聽Tiny WhoreHouse, Tiny House Mogadishu, Tiny House Swept Out to Sea (maybe I made some of those up), and even Tiny House Hunters, which documents not building a wee home but shopping for one. I surmised, perhaps unfairly, that people on these shows are less interested in dismantling the consumerist paradigm than in getting on teevee.

I rushed to the stage for the first real celeb颅rity, a 36-year-old freeskier and carpenter named Zack Giffin who chanced into hosting Tiny House Nation, FYI network鈥檚 surprise hit that documents designing and building by reg鈥檒ar folks. Tan and blond and unshaven, Giffin took the stage in skate shoes. If Jamboree-goers were expecting bromides about rugged individualism, Giffin鈥檚 sermon felt more like Big Government liberalism, complete with 鈥渆conomic segregation鈥� and 鈥渢he stigma of low-income housing.鈥� He declared, 鈥淶oning is a good thing,鈥� an apparent blasphemy to a flock that detests regulation鈥攁 topic so tangled that I鈥檒l have to return to it later. Which is not to say that he dismissed craftsmanship. He praised Shafer鈥檚 elegant designs: 鈥淲ithout him, we wouldn鈥檛 be here.鈥�

Two hundred people lined up to get an autograph, take a selfie, or ask some tech question like 鈥淗ow do I install a P-trap under a tub so that it won鈥檛 break off if I hit a speed bump?鈥� Giffin spent five minutes with each, giving hints on hot roofs and DC inverters. His fans crossed the spectrum: bearded hipsters, married lesbians, a woman who literally rose from a wheelchair to embrace him, an active-duty soldier in a cowboy hat with bald eagles painted under the brim who, after waiting more than an hour, pressed a card into Giffin鈥檚 palm and said, 鈥淚 hit you up on Facebook but you didn鈥檛 respond.鈥�

鈥淥h, I鈥檓 sorry.鈥�

鈥淐heck out my YouTube site on bug-out survival.鈥澛�

Also in line was Zamudio, with a skinny fellow in cutoff tan jeans and a navy T-shirt and wide-brimmed felt hat. I speculated out loud that Giffin was the Jam鈥檚 biggest draw. Zamudio motioned to her companion. 鈥淭his is Jay Shafer.鈥�

The godfather himself! Shafer blushed at the praise and then shook my hand, his blue eyes twinkling, an impish grin above a chin of gray stubble. His gangly arms flapped at his sides, like a marionette in the wind.听

Shafer had been living tiny since long before the recession. In 1999, he built the first Tumbleweed, perfectly symmetrical with wood-plank siding, a nub of a porch, and a lancet window under a gable, a motif he described as 鈥�American Gothic meets the Winnebago Vectra.鈥� A movement was born.听

But before I had a chance to speak with him, he disappeared into the woods.

Recently I found聽myself looking at an ad for the most modern innovation in housing. 鈥淏eautiful design鈥攖op quality materials鈥攄ecorator-styled interiors鈥攏ationally famous appliances.鈥� The sell spoke of low cost, minimal upkeep, and high resale value. The woman on the retro sofa between a pair of art deco lamps was super hip.听

Would you be surprised that the ad comes from a 1960 issue of Trailer Topics magazine? I recognized the boxy windows and wood veneer of the Detroiter Mobile Home because I once rented one of the same vintage. No more than 400 square feet, it was perfect for this dirtbag bachelor and his fleabag heeler. Yet I dispute its promise of high resale. When the land beneath the trailer I rented was sold, my castle was literally scraped from the lot at great expense to its owner, who thought he had made a wise investment. According to federal housing regulations, mobile homes built before 1976 cannot be legally occupied unless grandfathered in.

Tiny houses have struggled against zoning codes, which set minimums of 1,000 square feet or more. Proponents bypass this by placing their homes on wheels, thus qualifying as RVs鈥攚hich can鈥檛 be full-time permanent dwellings. A community of four tiny houses in Portland has developed in the backyard of a conventional house, which dwellers pay rent for and use its shower and kitchen. Therefore, they contend, they are not living 鈥渇ull time鈥� in their tiny homes. Current options for a spiffy home on wheels are to fly below the radar and hope to avoid getting booted, move to some unregulated hinterland and contend with long commutes and isolation, or grapple with the law.

Some days, my wife and I fantasize about going to live on our paid-for acre by the creek in Moab: no rent, no mortgage. But the trailer just seems too small. As for upgrades: in bankerspeak, the trailer is not an asset but a liability. I can鈥檛 get a loan to enlarge it, and if I try to sell it, no bank will issue a mortgage. Unlike with a real house, the only incentives to repair my trailer are sentimental love and desperation. Due to a perfect storm of zoning, flood maps, and building codes, the only legal thing I can do to my trailer is scrap it and build a full-fledged house, which I can鈥檛 afford. Hence my attraction to the quasi-legal tiny.

That night聽I pitched my tent at the desig颅nated campground, a mowed field 30 minutes from the Jam on the flanks of Cheyenne Mountain, whose granite bowels house some of North America鈥檚 top-secret nuclear missile defenses. None of the Luminaries stayed here. I saw a grand total of two tiny houses: a professionally built Mobile Relief Office, marketed to insurers to process claims after disasters, and a minuscule trailer molded of lacquered fiberglass that belonged to a family from Denver. Its maiden voyage had warped its door. In the morning, a child gave me a tour, pointing at the drain on the floor that allowed showering.听

鈥淐an you sleep in here?鈥� I said.

鈥淵ou have to fold down some hatches and put in a mattress.鈥�

鈥淲here did you sleep last night?鈥�

鈥淚n the tent.鈥�

I met a young couple from the Midwest who were living in a van and who aspired to drive it to Portland, where they鈥檇 heard you could park on the streets without getting hassled by cops. They asked me to like them on Facebook.听

There seemed to be a fundamental flaw in the Tiny Dream: it promised financial freedom and affordable housing, yet in most cases it involved buying what amounted to an RV and still not owning land. Some adopters retreated to conventional homes, renting their backyard pirate dens on Airbnb: 鈥淲e are letting people into our home, in hopes to inspire others wanting to make the change to tiny a little easier,鈥� advertised one couple from Everett, Washington. Did they mention the $83 per night?

By 2015, tiny houses had devolved into grist for a Portlandia spoof in which a hipster writes a novel while sitting on the john and his wife cuts toast on his back, plus unintentional parody like the actual Portland couple trying to crowdfund $30,000 to build a home, rewarding donors with homemade Christmas ornaments. 鈥淲ith the struggle of finding affordable housing,鈥� they reasoned, 鈥渨e feel that we need more time in this amazing city. The answer for us… tiny living.鈥澛�

Maybe tiny houses don鈥檛 make good homes so much as they make good stories. Christopher Smith and Merete Mueller, the thirtysomething auteurs behind the 2013 documentary Tiny, filmed their build in the high Rockies, made the festival circuit, and landed a string of speaking engagements. But without running water in the subzero winter, they hauled the thing to a backyard in Boulder before Smith lit out to Los Angeles and Mueller to New York. 鈥淚 would have been impressed to learn about a significant lifestyle change that lasted,鈥� wrote one disgruntled viewer on the film鈥檚 website. 鈥淚 am forced to believe that the film was simply about Chris making a film.鈥� To be fair, Thoreau hardly lived in his Walden cabin, either.听

Building a tiny house is to living simply as getting pregnant is to raising a child. The hard part is not the designing, building, blogging, and networking: it鈥檚 committing to a place and living within your means.

Back at the聽Jam, I asked around for Jay Shafer. I heard only the stuff of legend. Boarding a plane in California to come to the event, he had posted on Facebook for an airport pickup, and by the time he touched down, five strangers had volunteered. He offered one of them the extra bed in his hotel room, which was four times the size of his house. He tried to walk the three miles from the Drury Inn and Suites to the Jamboree, crossing six lanes of I-25 before turning back at the high fences of the Air Force Academy. I bumped into Zamudio and asked if Shafer was manning a booth.

鈥淛ay Shafer doesn鈥檛 need a booth,鈥� she said. 鈥淛ay Shafer is a booth.鈥�

My initial assessment of zero DIY homes turned out to be false. There was one. It was an 84-square-footer built by Dee Williams, a 53-year-old from Olympia, Washington, who in flip-flops and rolled jeans, with gray bangs and a quick smile, is perhaps the godmother of tiny houses. After being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease at age 40, she sold her regular house and built her dream, even penned a memoir. Hers was a singular attraction: the only house actually constructed and inhabited by its owner.听

The line to view it was long.听

鈥淚 hear you started all of this,鈥� I said.

鈥淣ah,鈥� she said with a throaty laugh. 鈥淚 heard about it from Jay Shafer.鈥�

I鈥檓 generally skeptical about the wonders of design. Thumbing through Dwell recently, its pages fragrant like money, I came across some fund manager鈥檚 off-grid compound intended to 鈥渃elebrate nature,鈥� and I thought: If you really want to celebrate nature, you could start by not building your goddamn house in it.

But being inside Williams鈥檚 house gave me a feeling of peace. Nothing fancy, nothing extra. The cedar walls hinted of contemplation. I stood with her for half an hour, talking about the freedom of owning few things, of her years in her van as an itinerant rock climber. A thundershower broke open and we stood together under an umbrella. Williams posed for pictures and answered questions. She rolled her eyes toward the sales models and said, 鈥淐an they squeeze a clothes dryer above the dishwasher?鈥� She watched the muddy unwiped shoes enter and exit. 鈥淟ook at those people taking umbrellas into my house,鈥� she said. 鈥淚鈥檓 going to close it up.鈥� And she did.

Shafer arrived, all sparkly eyes and elfin grin, clad in the same cutoffs, T-shirt, and flat-brimmed hat as the day before. He greeted Williams, then darted behind her house. I wandered back there. He was gone. I suspected that I was not dealing with a mere mortal but a magical being. I chased him into the woods.

Rounding the first stand of trees, where I guessed I鈥檇 discover him frolicking with a pot of gold at the base of a rainbow, I nearly bumped into him, and he recoiled in surprise. His fingers curled around a small green carton. I felt like a jerk for following him. I looked at the object in his hand.听

I said, 鈥淎re those menthols?鈥�

鈥淣o. They鈥檙e organic.鈥�

鈥淐an I have one?鈥�

Yoda was hiding from his Jedi knights to get a fix. As I smoked his tobacco, he told me that his new company and plans for a tiny village had stalled.听

鈥淟ife got in the way,鈥� he said. Although from a distance he could pass for 30, Shafer is past 50. I saw the lines around his gleaming eyes, the gray in his stubble. 鈥淚鈥檝e had a lot of AFGOs.鈥�

鈥淲hat鈥檚 that?鈥�

鈥淎nother fucking growth opportunity.鈥澛�

Shafer was raised in a large suburban house in Orange County, California. 鈥淚 never had a true sense of home,鈥� he said. After attending the University of Iowa, he got a master鈥檚 in fine art in New York City. But urban life didn鈥檛 suit him. He returned to Iowa City, where he taught art, living in a pickup and later an Airstream. Although he considers himself secular, as an artist he was drawn to sacred symbols and icons. 鈥淚 got tired of building shrines I couldn鈥檛 live in,鈥� he said.听

I asked him if he鈥檇 been on any of the tiny-house shows.听

鈥淚 was on Oprah.鈥�

鈥淲hat was that like?鈥�

鈥淟ike watching Oprah on television, but in 3-D.鈥�

During a commercial, she told him that he had inspired her to get rid of one of her mansions. 鈥淚 wish she would have said it on camera.鈥�

Shafer went on to describe design in a language I had not heard at the Jamboree鈥攐r anywhere. 鈥淚ntegrity is my word for God,鈥� he said. It was wrong to conceal structural elements or disguise materials, and purely ornamental features were like a comb-over. Both attempted to convince us that the homeowner (or the hair owner) felt secure but of course revealed insecurity. 鈥淢y best designs come only when my ego gets out of the way, when the higher power flows through me.鈥� He had a sense of humor about it all, too. 鈥淚 spent weeks trying to design a dining table that would convert into a coffee table. Finally, I figured out that all I had to do was turn the thing on its side.鈥�

He described himself as a 鈥渕eaning addict,鈥� always looking for higher significance in material objects. 鈥淎 gate in a picket fence that opens onto a narrow path that leads through a yard to an open porch that covers a door,鈥� he said, 鈥渋s a set of symbols we recognize as signposts guiding us through increasingly private territory toward the threshold of someone鈥檚 clandestine world.鈥�

I finally got it. I had not understood why Williams鈥檚 house felt so authentic while so many of the blocks on wheels felt awkward or false. This subculture, although it seemed to be about nifty gadgets and Murphy beds, was at its heart the expression of our longing to find our place in the universe, to become as beautiful and functional as nature itself.

I heard a lot聽of talk at the Jamboree about 鈥渉ome.鈥� A young waitress from Jackson, Wyoming, faced with leaping rent, had bought鈥攆inanced, actually鈥攁 Tumbleweed house for around $90,000 and hauled it to some friends鈥� property where it couldn鈥檛 be seen from the road. I looked at the pictures. It was awesome. And it had solved her problem of affordable housing.

But a mobile structure, no matter how lovely, is like a car: it loses value. Land, however, is permanent and, for the most part, gains value. I wondered how much of the tiny-house craze was simply a reaction to the historical forces that have made land impossibly expensive. Indeed, Shafer,聽

Williams, and Zamudio were each parked on someone else鈥檚 property, a situation offering fine lessons in building community, in our interdependence on fellow man. But that doesn鈥檛 achieve my own dream: to piss off the porch onto my own damn land and owe the bank nothing.

Which leads us to the movement鈥檚 holy grail: legality. The hot Jam topic is changing code. Shafer has proposed using the zoning of an RV park to create a village of bungalows. Builders in Colorado have run with the concept, developing permanent, legal tiny villages in the towns of Salida, Walsenburg, and Fairplay. 鈥淭his is not just a movement,鈥� said Darin Zaruba, owner of EcoCabins, organizer of the Jamboree, and developer of the Whispering Aspen Village in Fairplay, which is already taking $1,000 deposits for lots. 鈥淚t鈥檚 becoming an industry.鈥澛�

The cities of Fresno and Ojai, California, have permitted backyard tiny houses, often as rentals to help homeowners pay their mortgages. If the movement is to have widespread impact, its adherents will have to master not just carpentry and wiring but the tedious jargon of planned unit developments and accessory dwelling units. They must step out of the shadows and into city hall. In November a crew of Luminaries, including Zach Giffin, descended on Kansas City for the International Code Council hearings, where the nonprofit ICC writes building codes adopted across the country. They won preliminary approval for the first set of tiny-house building codes, covering everything from emergency egresses to low颅overhead staircases. The changes don鈥檛 apply to homes on wheels or affect local zoning rules鈥攂ut proponents said they鈥檇 cleared a first major hurdle.

Nonetheless, the thrill of freedom reigns. Those who do first and ask forgiveness later seem to win as often as those who seek permission. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 stress about zoning and code,鈥� Zamudio told me. 鈥淚 wanted a tiny house and I didn鈥檛 give a shit.鈥�

That night a series of thunderstorms soaked the Jam. I drove to the Drury, which jutted out of a shopping center with all the proportions and geometry of a ten-pound brick of government cheese. No vacancy. The closest room was in Denver, 60 miles away. I returned to the field at the base of Mount Apocalypse and stuf颅fed my muddy feet into my damp sleeping bag.

My midwestern van friends were gone. I checked their Facebook page. They鈥檇 posted a 40-second video, without commentary, shot from the window of a moving vehicle, of the landscape of the West, where so many have chased a dream of a better life: yellow flats framed by brown mountains, a dust devil swirling in the distance.

As for those聽AGFOs: After feuding with his partner, Shafer lost ownership of Tumbleweed Tiny Houses in 2012, before the company tapped its current bonanza of 80-plus employees building 15 homes a month in its Colorado Springs factory. Jay left with a $30,000 debt that he has still not paid. Tumbleweed鈥檚 lawyers accused him of willful trademark infringement and advertising 鈥渒nockoffs鈥� of Tumbleweed products that Shafer himself had designed. Then, in 2016, after seven years of marriage and two sons, Shafer and his wife split up. Despite what you might guess, the reason for divorce was not that all four were crammed into 98 square feet. The family had bought a very small fixer-upper and planted Shafer鈥檚 tiny house in the yard, which he used as an office. Until just a few months ago, when he hauled his home to an orchard, he鈥檇 been sleeping in a tent, crashing on friends鈥� couches, pulling food from dumpsters. He told me he hadn鈥檛 earned any income in the past year. 鈥淪ome people set up social颅media accounts for me, but I stopped looking at them,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 stopped responding to e-mail.鈥�

Shafer鈥檚 tale is the inverse of his acolytes鈥�: the tiny house came first, followed by debt, despair, unhappy marriage. In keeping with his belief in the integrity of raw material, he was candid about his hardships. He would no more disguise heartbreak than he would structural columns.听

I kept thinking of the story鈥攑erhaps a myth鈥攐f the Rolling Stones鈥� 1964 visit to Chicago鈥檚 Chess Records, the label that recorded Howlin鈥� Wolf and Bo Diddley. By then, white boys had turned the blues into the booming industry of rock and roll. Keith Richards told a biographer that at the studio, perched on a ladder with a brush, was his hero, Muddy Waters. 鈥淗e was painting the goddamn ceiling, dressed all in white, with white paint like tears on his face, 鈥檆ause he wasn鈥檛 selling records at the time.鈥� I told this story to Jay Shafer, and he nodded and said, 鈥淚 can understand that.鈥�

On the final morning, Williams spoke on stage. She said nothing about woodworking or circuit breakers. She talked about her limitations, all the things she didn鈥檛 know how to do, how her friends had stepped up. She spoke of mortality, the passing of loved ones, the decay of her body, the acceptance of her ultimate death. She wanted to face it without artifice or delusion. She wept freely, and Shafer and the Luminaries camped in the front row wept with her.听

Maybe the big isolated homes, long lonely commutes, stacks of bills, endless hours bound to a screen鈥攖hey aren鈥檛 the disease but the symptoms of something more pervasive. A sense that we don鈥檛 belong; that our place in the world is without meaning; that we can鈥檛 dissolve the boundaries of individuality and connect to the divine, to nature, to each other.

When the people鈥檚 choice prize was announced, I inspected the winning house. The siding appeared to be wood, but when I ran my fingers across it, it was cool metal, stamped with fake grain.听

The people had spoken. They preferred the comb-over.

Contributing editor Mark Sundeen聽() is the author of The Man Who Quit Money and The Unsettlers.

The post The Tiny-House Revolution Goes Huge appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

There aren鈥檛 any individual rooms at the WeeCasa hotel in Lyons, Colorado. Instead, guests stay in one of 22 tiny homes on the property. The homes vary in size: some are large enough to sleep five adults while others only sleep two. Each comes equipped聽with a kitchenette and full bathroom.

The post WeeCasa appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

You've probably seen them:聽camper vans, Airstreams, and old RVs chugging down the road, heading off to some impossibly remote mountain pass, trout stream, or Wal-Mart parking lot, carrying the sorts of adventurers who are more concerned with experience than聽the size of their house. What they've given up in possessions and comfort, they make up for in enthusiasm and聽opportunities聽of the open road. talked to four of these wanderers to find out why they chose to live like this, and how they customized their trailers, vans, tiny homes,聽and RVs. Here, he presents stories from their lives聽on the road.听

The post Life on Wheels: Stories from the Road appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

In November 2014, city council members in Walsenburg, Colorado, a crossroads community located 90 miles south of Colorado Springs, eliminated a longstanding zoning code prohibiting buildings smaller than 600 square feet. They wanted to make room for so-called tiny homes, the trendy structures that have become popular with everyone from millennials to baby boomers seeking simpler, less cluttered lifestyles.

Tiny homes are often mobile, but Walsenburg鈥檚 intention was not to provide year-round RVers a place to plant their Astroturf welcome mats and satellite dishes. Instead, the town wants to attract new taxpaying residents with permanent structures connected to local utilities. Before Walsenburg, only one other town in America had done away with its square-footage minimum: Spur, Texas, a small settlement about 300 miles west of聽Waco.

In Colorado, the small units could be a solution to a chronic mountain-town problem: lack of affordable housing for the people who work there. That鈥檚 how Rod Stambaugh, founder and president of , sees them. His plan: to build the world鈥檚 first tiny-home subdivision and revolutionize the rural economy in the process.

鈥淭iny homes are the only solution that can save some of these declining rural communities or provide quality affordable housing in鈥he mountain communities that are booming,鈥� he says.

Stambaugh has researched tiny homes and what he calls 鈥渢he decline of rural America鈥� for years. Since founding La Junta, Colorado鈥揵ased Sprout in December 2013, he鈥檇 been looking for a way to build not just one-off structures but entire tiny-home developments. But everywhere he saw potential, zoning codes precluded the subdivisions. 鈥淲e got tired of banging our head against that wall,鈥� Stambaugh says.

Soon after Walsenburg eliminated its size restriction, Stambaugh, a 55-year-old businessman who made his money in the mobile electronic payment industry, bought about 4.5 acres of agricultural land in town, and then had the zoning changed to residential. Sprout plans to build 32 units on the land, as well as a community center and outdoor movie theater. Demand has been strong for the tiny homes, which range in size from 262 to 672 square feet (some tiny homes are as small as 120 square feet), says Stambaugh, who expects them to sell for $60,000 to $130,000.

The Walsenburg community isn鈥檛 the only subdivision Sprout is planning. In Salida, a town of 5,200 that鈥檚 ringed by 14,000-foot peaks and has no square-footage minimum in its zoning code, Stambaugh bought 19 acres on the eastern bank of the Arkansas River. He鈥檚 submitted an application to build 200 tiny homes with 96 storage units on the land.

Unlike in Walsenburg, the Salida units will have long-term leases, starting at $750 per month for the 262-square-foot homes and increasing to $1,400 per month for the 672-square-foot units, Stambaugh says. That's not exactly dirt cheap, but it's better than nothing.

鈥淲hat Sprout is putting out is not necessarily affordable for the cross-section that we鈥檙e trying to provide housing for,鈥� says Dan Osborn, Salida鈥檚 community development director. 鈥淏ut we think it鈥檚 going to help our community, so we see it as a positive.鈥�

Stambaugh says other Colorado mountain towns interested in building tiny-home communities to address housing shortages have approached him, though he declines to name the towns.听In Breckenridge鈥攚here top employer Vail Resorts , a move that incited talk of a strike鈥擬ayor John Warner recently broached the idea of a tiny-home community with the town council, to mixed reviews.听聽

Stambaugh believes tiny homes could also help people displaced by natural disasters. This fall, he聽relocated temporarily聽to Lake County, in Northern California, where wildfires destroyed 1,500 homes and the governor declared a state of emergency. Residents received a three-year reprieve on minimum-square-footage ordinances. Stambaugh, optimistic that the temporary change will become permanent, is pitching the idea of a tiny-home community like the ones he鈥檚 planning to build in Colorado.听

Of nearly a dozen sources interviewed for this story in Salida and Walsenburg, none had heard of any opposition to tiny-home subdivisions. Businesses support the idea because it gives their workers more places to live. Bob Morasko, CEO of Heart of the Rockies Regional Medical Center in Salida, which employs 400 people, says it鈥檚 common to lose employees because they can鈥檛 find housing.

鈥淥ur vacancy rate is zero,鈥� says Leslie Walker, a longtime Realtor in Salida. 鈥淚 think tiny homes are a great idea.鈥�

Less than a mile away from Sprout鈥檚 Salida site, a mobile-home park sits at the entrance to downtown, raising the question of just how different a tiny-home community will be. But no one seemed worried about the aesthetics of a tiny-home development. 鈥淚f you think it鈥檚 going to cheapen a community, you鈥檙e really quite wrong,鈥� says Dave Roesch, planning and zoning commission chairman in聽Walsenburg, citing the high-end materials used to build them (most of Sprout鈥檚 homes feature cork floors, metal roofs, and cedar interiors).

So how much impact can tiny-home subdivisions make in these towns? Roesch believes the additional housing could help grow Walsenburg鈥檚 population significantly. Twenty-six hundred people live there, but he鈥檚 received calls from potential residents across the U.S. who are interested in moving to town now that the square-footage minimum has been eliminated.

鈥淲e have the resources for 30,000,鈥� Roesch says. 鈥淭he potential is remarkable.鈥�

Osborn, in Salida, is more guarded yet still optimistic. 鈥淭ime will tell if they鈥檒l be successful,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ut the more units you can get on the market, it鈥檚 always going to be a benefit.鈥�

The post The World鈥檚 First Tiny-Home Suburb, Coming to a Colorado Mountain Town Near You appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.