The most common email I receive from readers of Coming Unmoored are questions on where they can find free tiny home plans.  Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, there’s not much out there in the way of free plans beyond what you can find in the way of designs for backyard sheds.  And even those seem to be limited.

In a prior article we featured the plans made available to the public by the artist Joseph Kenyon.

While I’m fascinated by the tiny home movement, I have no deep, burning design to draw my own designs beyond figuring out how to best configure the space in my own little place. However, I’ve been following Michael Janzen’s experiments in design over at his blog Tiny House Design. Recently Michael has become an absolute mad scientist when it comes to designing things in Google SketchUp.

Since he seems to have a real passion for design (while I do not), I suggested to Michael awhile back that he’d probably be contributing something of great value to the small home movement if he started making some of his designs publicly available to other small home enthusiasts.

I’m excited to say, Michael posted his first free 8 x 8 foot tiny home blueprint last week.  I encourage you to check it out and keep an eye out for additional plans in the future.

Additionall, f you have any suggestions of other sources for small home plans, we’d love it if you shared them!

Since I seem to have at least a small group of people who follow Coming Unmoored to hear about the updates on my house, I figured I’d share with you the outdoor light I finally settled on to hang over my front door.

It’s probably a difficult to picture yet, but I eventually want my little place to have the feel of a rather eccentric English cottage.  I’m hoping this choice of light fixture will help set the mood a bit.  In selecting a light for outside, I had the additional challenge that there’s not a lot of clearance where the light needs to hang.  That reduced my options of lighting substantially.

It’s not in-your-face noticeable, but I’m hoping the slightly erratic shape and frosted glass will help convey a degree of quirkiness.   The eventual look I’m aiming for could probably be described as  “Brothers Grimm on Water”.  (Somehow that sounds like an Icecapades show gone terribly wrong, but it’s the best I can come up with.)

The official launch date of Jay Shafer’s new tiny house book is April 1st.  However, for the next two weeks you can order an advance release copy via TinyHouseBlog.

The Small House Book is a collection of Shafer’s knowledge and thoughts on designing small homes.  It also includes his personal story and his portfolio of designs.

The book is priced at $36.95 and included several full color photographs.  It’s 7″ x 7″ in size, about a 1/2″ thick, and 197 pages in length.

Admittedly, I’m a huge Jay Shafer groupie, but I think every small house enthusiast should own a copy!  Mine is already on its way.

One of the regular readers of my blog and a fellow small home enthusiast, James (aka NomadRip in the Comments section), forwarded me the following video. I haven’t laughed as hard as I did while watching this video in quite a while.

The self-proclaimed Moron Brothers’ are bluegrass musicians who live on a self-built shanty boat which is featured in the video below.

Thank you, James, for reminding me that no matter how modest (and currently torn up) my little floating home may be, there’s someone out there living in something even more humble.

And I just have to say that even though their little shanty boat is a little more… rustic… than what I eventually hope to end up with, these two totally understand the appeal of living in a little house on the water.

I am also  more than a little tempted to send the video to my father and a few coworkers as an illustration of the place where I’m living.  However, I doubt that would help their difficulty in understanding my choice in a home.

Every now and then someone comes along to remind us that just about anything is possible.  Take for example, Michael Janzen.  Janzen made a pretty big splash last year because of his work with a very tiny house.  Janzen decided to leave his traditional home behind… in favor of a smaller one.  Of course, as we all know, finding a unique small house is always something special.  However, what made Janzen stand out is that he got his small house for free.

Janzen has been earning his tiny house through sheer ingenuity and resourcefulness.  Thanks to Craigslist, Janzen was able to collect all the materials that he needed to build his small 80 square foot home.  His story was even featured in The New York Times. And the story about  his “free house” is still going strong. Just last week, Janzen posted an update about his project on his blog tinyhousedesign.com

Janzen’s story is a great one because it underscores what is possible in tiny housing.  Much can be accomplished with tiny housing for some obvious reasons.  By needing less materials and land, it is possible to re-envision home building.  Because fewer resources are needed, new possibilities are opening up for would-be homeowners.  Janzen’s ingenuity has carried over to his tinypallethouse.com website, which promotes the idea of using pallets to build quick, cheap emergency housing.

Of course, competing with “free” is a pretty hard act to follow.  However, there are many low-cost alternatives to consider when looking for a tiny home.  Take for example, Bungalow In A Box.  This innovative company  in Maine is building some cheap and very sharp looking homes that can be delivered to locations.  Their 12′ x 16′ Bungalow is about $14,000 if you live fairly close to Maine.  If you need delivery, it runs $4 per mile.

Obviously, if you live in San Diego, you might want to consider another kit builder.  But if you are in New England and are considering a tiny house, make sure you check these guys out.  They can do custom designs and have built homes as large as 4,400 s.f., and other structures as small as 60 s.f.

With a little looking you can find an amazing variety of tiny homebuilders and individuals who have amazing ideas where tiny homes are concerned.  The notion of building a home from free material found on Craigslist should spark everyone’s imagination.

After my recent  trip to Portland to check on my floating home, I decided there were a couple of things I wanted to take care of prior to my pending move-in–like, say, having a source of heat and doorknobs with locks installed in the place.

My mother is coming out to visit in Albuquerque the beginning of April, so I decided to postpone moving my car up to Portland until after her visit.  (It was either that, or we’d be using Charlie’s decrepit Chevy Blazer while she was in town, and the thing burns through gas.)  Plus I had a project at work pushed back to this week.  Taking three days off work right now is problematic.

When I purchased my tiny home, the wiring and heaters were both from the 1960′s.  I replaced the electric panel and ripped out the old heater and stove as part of the initial renovations, but the electrician I used went out of business before the new heaters were installed.

I am happy to report that as of this morning, two new Com-Pak Plus zonal electric heaters have been installed in the front half of my house.  I’ll eventually need to install heating in the new back room as well, but I figure that can be handled at the same time as the rest of the electrical work that needs to be done there.

My house is not currently plumbed for gas and I plan on installing a wind turbine and possibly solar panels at a later date, so electric heating was the better option for me, albeit a somewhat less efficient source of heat.

While not so much a creature-comfort, new gutters also went on the place this week.  Next up is the locksmith.

I certainly haven’t minded up until now having neighbors poke their heads into my place to check on the work being done, but I’d rather it not happen unexpectedly once I’ve moved in.  (Plus, I also don’t need the browbeating I’m sure I’d get from my mother once she discovered I was  living in a place with no locks.  Never mind that there’s two separate security gates and a long walk down rampways before you even reach my place in the marina.)

Jay Shafer at Tumbleweed Tiny House Company has just release a new small home design, the New Vessica.

The New Vessica is designed with two options–the bedroom in the loft or downstairs.  It is 278 square feet or 372 square feet, respectively (not including the loft which is not considered “habitable space” in standard square footage calculations).

This tiny house is designed to be a stationary home, affixed to a foundation, rather than on a trailer like many of Shafer’s smaller designs.  It is also not a modular home, meaning it cannot be built and shipped to you like some prefab designs. This home is designed to meet International Building Code.  Estimated building costs are $100-$200 per square foot depending on the local cost of labor.

Through the end of March, the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company is offering a discount $200 on the plans for this tiny home.

Plans for this small house can be purchased through The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to what changes I want to make to my tiny kitchen.  In the process of researching options for small-space kitchens, I came across the Hansen Instant Kitchen.

This all-in-one design provides a full kitchen in a compact space.  It includes an oven, refrigerator, sink, and storage drawers (even under the sink).  All you need to do is connect the electricity and water and you’re ready to go.

The cabinets are made of FSC Certified oak with a natural or soap finish and it comes with a steel top.

Hansen Living is founded by Knud Kapper, a Danish architect.  They won the prestigious award at ICFF for Best Kitchen and Bath in 2004 and their kitchens have only recently become distributed in the U.S.  (They are carried by KitchenDesigner.org.)

Per an article at ApartmentTherapy, “Knud explained that when he embarked on designing Hansen’s product line, he asked some of the best chefs in Copenhagen what made them ‘laugh at the typical consumer kitchen.’ Then he did the opposite. The result is a collection of free-standing units with no overhead cabinets, but rather drawers below counters. Each drawer is lined with a metal perforated bottom to allow air circulation. The base pieces are raised on legs to allow access for cleaning the entire kitchen floor.”

You can see additional photos of Hansen designs over at the Hansen Flickr site.

I really like the use of space in this design, but I also like the idea of having overhead cabinets, as well.  If you have other small kitchen cabinet options to suggest, I’d love to hear them!

In the following podcast, the New Colonist‘s editors discuss living small including community, energy use, and sustainability.

The world of housing is on the verge of being changed forever.  New attitudes, new designers and new techniques are set to merge with a global re-evaluation of how, where and why we build homes.  New visionaries are on the scene and they are definitely shaking up the concept of what a house should and can be.  Slowly the idea of lugging tons of wood, brick and mortar out to a home site is beginning to fade.

One very interesting company that is having an impact on the tiny home movement is kitHAUS.  kitHAUS has some striking designs and great ideas, with homes ranging from 187 square feet all the way up to 289 square feet.  Their largest design is the K1, is currently available in California.  If you like lots of sunlight and want that “wow” factor in your home, then this tiny house delivers a substantial punch.  One entire wall is an essentially a massive window, measuring almost eighteen feet high and seventeen feet across.  If that is not enough light for you, then consider that the K1 has windows that wrap around an  entire section of the house.

In addition to a great design and a very modern look, consider for a moment that the K1 kit, which largely consists of aluminum, comes delivered on a truck ready for assembly and can be assembled in just a couple of days.  There is even an off the grid solar option by Ready Solar.  K1 just has that cool factor that will grab most people’s attention.  At $75,000 dollars it may not be the cheapest small home on the market, but it definitely one of the most eye catching.

If you are on a tighter budget then maybe you’ll want to consider the K4, which is about 187 square feet and costs approximately $43,000.  While smaller than the K1, the entire K4 kit weighs a mere 7,000 pounds.  There is even a solar heating and air conditioning unit that has been designed specifically for the K4.  Much like its larger cousin the K1, the K4 has ample light exposure and a very innovative design.  Many will appreciate the prominent shutters and the maple plywood walls.

Take a peep at the K1 and some of their other innovative designs at www.kithaus.com.  If you are considering a tiny house or a modular home, these sleek, modern designs might be a fine fit.