At the end of October in 2019 a post about the Mid-Atlantic Tiny House Expo crossed my feed. I first brushed if off, thinking it was far away, but when I saw it again I realized it was being hosted outside of Philadelphia near my college. 

I was stoked and ordered a $12 general admission ticket for Saturday November 12th. 

I came with a camera and binder, eager to go to my first tiny house event and tweak my tiny house plans a little more. 

One matter I hoped to clarify was how I want to divide the vertical space between my kitchen and the bedroom loft above it. According to my builder, my trailer will use a low-drop feature which makes the bottom of the trailer closer to the ground. As a result the trailer sits at 20" and the house sits on top, up to the 13'6" clearance. (Tiny houses need to be at or under this limit to be road legal.)
Being able to stand in tiny houses, schoolies, and vans was super useful in order to understand what the space feels like. From my notes, I'd want the kitchen to have a height of 6'6" and the loft to have a height of 3'11" or more. Having plenty of head room in the loft is very important to me!

I also loved the conversation with those showing off their personal homes and small company spec-homes. 

I talked for a long time with a couple from New England who had started a tiny house company after they built one for themselves. They told me that the profit margin on a tiny house AirBnB business is low, among other pointers about appliances, lofts, and flooring. 

A couple starting a build on a schoolie was there, as well as a mom of three who uses a van as a summer vacation home for her and her three children. They use harvesthosts to find 'free' places to travel to, with the stipulation that you buy something fresh from the farm stand or vineyard which hosts you. 

In an upcoming post, I will share photos from this event and more info I gathered. 

Crossed paths with this video today and love the function of this tiny--- a future amenity for travel, for guests and family, as an AirBnb, etc.

I see many young people designing a tiny house but expecting to sell it once there is a kid or two in the picture... but I think if you design it well there's a huge benefit to holding onto a THoW even if you end up with a separate primary residence. 

For more info watch the full vid: 

When I was a pre-teen I wanted a loft bed. I figured out that if I had a loft bed I could fit everything I wanted in my room underneath this bed. 

I grabbed a lose piece of printer paper and drew a design. Under a loft bed, I put a desk, a dresser, and a bookshelf. There, I said, it has everything I need. I wanted to put all the furniture in my bedroom under a loft bed to make all the empty space in the large bedroom look ridiculous, just open carpet. 

Although my parents never did buy a loft bed for me, I was very excited about my efficient, compact design. I mark this as the start of my interest in tiny houses. 

Later on, in high school, I found out about tiny houses and was hooked. I later learned that there was an entire movement about them, but first I just knew that a small, compact space would work for me. 

I also really enjoyed designing a tiny house and thinking about features I would like in my own. 

One year in high school I spent Thanksgiving break pouring over images on a tiny house blog. The blog (I'll link it if I can find it) had hundreds of pages of blog posts and each one contained roughly 5-6 images of a tiny house. Over my break, I went through each post on the site and saved the images I liked. 

I also joined reddit groups, watched many tiny house tours, and scoured websites and blogs. 

I researched hook-up options, builders, appliances, and other important considerations. 

I bought a tiny house stencil kit. It is meant for architects and builders, however when they were going out of stock I managed to contact the seller to see if I could buy one of his last copies. I'm glad I did. The stencil kit has many stencils, to scale, containing all kinds of stairs, sinks, roof slopes, trailers, and various features. It is a great tool. 

I also benefited a lot from grabbing classroom chalk from a college lecture hall and drawing my tiny to scale in the parking lot behind the science building. I also borrowed a 2 meter stick (yes, twice as long as a meter stick) from the intro physics lounge and it was super helpful in this process, although a tape measure would certainly work as well. 

For the most part, my design was very similar to the early Tumbleweed Tiny House building company's Walden, without the porch, and with some customization. 

By the time I started talking to the builder I selected, I was 18 years old (I think, maybe 19) and in college. For now I will keep the builder's name private. They have been beyond kind and patient to me. We discussed the tiny I had designed and met several times. They were able to draw my plans in the Sketchup software and give me an estimate. We were set to move forward... if only I could settle my financing. 

And financing proved to be a big problem! It turns out that lenders hate young people. So despite the fact that I had good credit, being 19 I had a very short length of credit history. I had no expensive items to use to secure my loan and my parents would not co-sign a loan. Most lenders expected that my parents would be jumping at the bit to cosign with me, and unfortunately my relationship with my parents would not permit it. It also did not help that I am a college student, working part time for most of the year, and with a low wage at that. 

I first went to my bank and they said they could only let me borrow for $5, when I needed to borrow at least 45,000. (They pulled my credit score for this). I researched other banks and credit unions near my college and in my hometown. I made many phone calls. I went in several times to Patriot Credit Union in my hometown to discuss a loan but they were unable to let me take out as large of a loan as I needed without collateral or a cosigner. 

My builder found two options, which I tried as well. I believe they pulled my credit again for one of these. Neither worked out, unfortunately. One of these options wanted the house delivered before they were involved where my builder wants payment before delivery. So in short my dream was put on pause. 

Since then, I have gone to a tiny house expo (will post about it) and sometimes scan recent tiny house tour videos on Youtube. I am fairly happy with my design although I make small changed sometimes. Mostly, I think about making it a little bit longer. 

In addition, I slowly simplify my design to cut out the customization. The easiest way to afford a tiny is to make it more affordable. That is to say that in my first conversations with the builder, I expected a turn-key drop off. I had designed my house to the level of the lived-in homes I saw online, designing how I wanted things to be painted, where I wanted a rug, and all sorts of silly customization. I had seen a mobile desk on rollers I had my eye on (in a Minamalise tiny house tour Youtube video), one that could function as a table at the foot of the bed or a desk that could be used from bed and I wanted one. My builder was going to charge something on the order of $1000 for this project, and the pricetag made me reconsider. So little things like paint and custom furniture I have removed from the build. I certainly want my builder to take care of the framing, electrical, and plumbing, however I also think I can cut 10k off the total by adding my own touches on my own time. 

I do plan on using this builder in the future but am saving money where I can in the meantime as financing has proved to be a problem.