Out Tiny House Origin Story is one of EPIC proportions!
Well, maybe?
I think it’s an origin story more about us waking up, realizing that the traditional “American dream” isn’t all that dreamy after all.
Our trailer is ordered and will be here mid-April with the intention of getting started right away on the build. Our lease is up in the middle of September, so our ideal goal is to have our tiny house move-in ready by the end of August/beginning of September.
We’re really hoping to get the community involved with the build, as we’re expecting to do most of the work ourselves and with the generosity of friends and people we meet along the way (we’re not planning hiring tons of labor to help due to budget).
There is a cool facebook group for the people in Davis and Sacramento who are interested in tiny houses and living more minimalist lives. Find it here: Davis-Sac Area Tiny House Enthusiasts
So far, we’ve met some awesome folks on the group, many of whom seem to be generally interested in tiny houses, and living simpler lives. About 12 of us from that group met in February at a coffee shop and there happened to be a handful of folks who actually had placed an order for their tiny house trailer. How cool! So that happened to get the ball rolling and caused us to light a fire under our butts to figure out which trailer manufacturer to use.
We went up to Portland, OR for Alicia’s birthday to stay in an 8.5ft by 24ft tiny house that was on AirBnB to see if the size and feel would work for us, and it was amazing. There are certain aspects of that specific tiny house we want to incorporate into our own SacTinyHouse build. Check it out here on AirBnB: Alberta Rustic Modern Tiny House
Basically, once we came back from spending time in our AirBnB tiny house, we knew there was no going back. While we were up in Portland, we visited Iron Eagle Trailers. They’re a custom trailer manufacturer that Dee Williams works with in her PAD (Portland Alternative Dwelling) community. The trailers were very well built, beautiful, and structurally sound as all get out, but the problem would be that neither of us are excited about driving a trailer 900 miles or so from Portland to Sacramento, so we had to think about our costs. Buying in Oregon meant no sales tax, plane tickets up, renting a truck, paying sales tax when we registered it in California, gas for the rental truck. Yikes. There goes out whole tiny house budget right there… And the Iron Eagle affiliated retail locations were higher priced than the headquarters, plus sales tax, plus the 200 to 500 miles we would have had to transport it. So we continued searching and met an amazing couple at that facebook meet-up group who used Carson Trailers in Gardena, California. We weighed the pros and cons, and ultimately ended up placing our order with Carson Trailers on March 11th, 2015. A little later than we originally hoped, since we wanted to place the order by mid to end of February, but hey, we placed the order, right!
Now we’re in the process of reaching out to potential sponsors, making friends interested in tiny houses, etc. Our goal is to have our build complete and move in ready by the time our lease is up in the middle of September.
Loads of stuff to do, but we’re very excited.
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The DIY Tiny House idea started in 2014. A complete DIY process, Will and Alicia did everything themselves from drawing up the plans, building the framework, electrical, plumbing, and finishing touches and appliance selections.
Over several years, they documented what it was like to live in a Tiny House, conducting very thorough research on how to solve the many issues and problems which come up. In 2019, they sold their Tiny House as their lives continued to evolve and change.
You can continue to follow the lives of Will and Alicia at @ironwillruns on Instagram.