Since releasing the FINISHED PHOTOS of our tiny house last August we have received a LOT of inquiries. We currently spend 10-15 hours per week answering e-mails, social media questions, interviews and publication requests about all aspects of our lives and project. As time consuming as this has been, we keep doing it for free, to give back to the community. A few years ago we were the ones wanting to learn as much from as many people as possible and we recognize that the accumulation of knowledge and networking that came with our own three year tiny house journey means that we have evolved into a resource ourselves.

The question we get the most is: ‘do you sell your plans?’

The answer has been, and most likely will always be, No, we do not sell our construction plans. But the reason why may surprise you. We are not protective over our design and are not looking to hide information. If that were the case we would not have spent an immense amount of additional time and effort above and beyond the already demanding task of designing and building our tiny house, to thoroughly document, curate, edit and share all of our information through this blog. And of course we would appreciate the additional passive income that a $250.00+ per construction document download would bring us.

But the reality is, our construction documents do not exist and we do not have the time to properly distribute them if they did. In other words, we conceived our tiny house on napkins, fleshed it out in more detail on graph paper, and then used computer software in the later stages. We never completely finished our ‘construction documents’ and then utilized the benefit of d.i.y. construction, to change things on the fly for a variety of reasons. This leaves our drawings out-dated and in-accurate to the current built version of our home. The time consuming task of creating a distributable set of construction documents is unrealistic in the face of also being first time parents in the very home that we designed and built. [ More on that amazing adventure in the next post:) ]

Time is limited; we want to continue to focus on each other, our growing family, and all of the things we love doing. This means the inevitable customer service demand that comes with selling construction documents to a primarily d.i.y. clientele is not something we can commit to at this time.  If we are going to do something, we are going to do it to the best of our ability and with all of our heart. Selling a product and ignoring the customer service side of it is not ok.

We have witnessed plenty of disappointment after people purchase ‘construction documents’ and believe they will be step by step lego instruction-esque directions, which could not be further from the truth. Even with building plans in your hand (which can range from $99.00 to $1,200.00 for a tiny house depending on quality, level of detail, and amount of customization) there is a wealth of knowledge that must be acquired and utilized to turn those lines on paper into a physical and inhabitable space.

This is not to discourage you, only to set realistic expectations from the start, which is always the best way to start any project. We spent 14 months’ worth of weekends building our tiny house. We also spent on average, 30 additional minutes for every hour of construction time, researching and learning about the next task of construction, ordering and acquiring materials, etc… This means we spent around 900 hours building our home, and ANOTHER 450 hours figuring out HOW to build our home.

While we firmly believe that you’re capable of learning all of the information needed through diligent research online and in your community, if you want a more structured d.i.y. construction education we recommend the resources put forth at MINIMOTIVES.com and TINYHOUSEBUILD.com. The people behind those two websites also live in self-built tiny houses, are avid d.i.y. tiny house proponents and are invested in the tiny house movement and community.

So with all of that said, and as a sort of middle ground, we have worked to create an updated, clear document that shares the more pertinent information about our tiny house design and layout. When combined with our 145 page e-book and days worth of reading on our blog, you have every resource, piece of advice, tip, photo and video that we have to offer. We have poured our hearts, along with a lot of our time and energy into this project and the documentation of it. We hope some of you find it useful and/or inspiring.

Follow the link below to have a high-res PDF download link sent directly to your inbox.

FREE HIGH RES. DOWNLOAD NOW: CLICK HERE!

Considering your interest in our floor plans, you have probably already stumbled upon our extensive photographic and video documentation of our tiny house. But just in case you haven’t and are wondering what these lines on paper can become in real life we have shared and linked to some pertinent information below. Most questions you have will be answered in the 2.5 years worth of blog posts so we encourage you to use the search function and get lost/inspired inside our little website! 🙂

CONSTRUCTION PHOTO GALLERY

FINISHED PHOTO GALLERY

INTERACTIVE 360 SPHERICAL PHOTO GALLERY

OUR E-BOOK: ‘BUILT WITH OUR HANDS’

OUR WALL ASSEMBLY IN DETAIL

(CLICK TO EXPLORE THE PHOTO BELOW)