Twenty-six modular cottages, built in a shop, then trucked to campus and craned onto permanent foundations for use as student housing.
The latest issue of Tiny House Magazine is out. Issue #164 is a good one to pick up for a little distraction — and to renew your dreams of living in a tiny house.
Images courtesy of Tiny House Magazine
After walking the Camino de Santiago twice — five weeks each time, as little as she could carry — Joanne came home to a Sydney studio and wondered why she had so much stuff. Then a workplace injury left her with a permanent injury and a mortgage she was worried about keeping. She sold the apartment. Her daughter and son-in-law offered a patch of their Blue Mountains land. Two years in, she lives mortgage-free. The main house ran close to AU$220,000; both tinies came to about AU$250,000, plus AU$35,000 of groundwork and a AU$20,000 deck.
Sixteen tiny homes on wheels — all under 400 square feet, skirting around them — circle a shared garden in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. You buy your own house and lease the space for currently $499 a month. Jenna at Tiny House Giant Journey walks Tiny Timbers Agrihood with founders Melissa and Shane, who live nearby (a family of six wouldn’t fit in a tiny house) and who built the kind of neighborhood people keep moving to the country for: debt freedom, healthy food, and actual neighbors.
I keep circling the same number: $10,700. That’s what Bree Steen spent — deck included — to build a 144 square foot off-grid cabin in the Maine woods. Less than a year of rent. No rent after that. Tiny Home Tours walks the 16×9 with her: a real kitchen so she can bake, wall bars so she can work out, and a lofted full-size bed so the main floor stays open enough to actually live.
I keep circling the same complaint about wedge campers: they’re light, they pack small, and once you’re inside you can’t really sit up and live. Welcome To The Outdoors walks the Topo Toppers Badlands — Thomas from Topo calls it the Badlander on camera — a pop-up aluminum canopy that sits in a pickup bed and tries to fix that tightness without jumping to the biggest, heaviest model in the lineup.
It’s the tempting middle between the simpler Mesa and the roomier Rincon. The host is upfront about his own stake: if you start a Topo Toppers purchase through his website, he earns a commission. Topo has no say in his conclusions.
When a tornado, hailstorm, or hurricane hits, Aaron has 24 hours to be on the ground. Hotels in those zones are often closed, full, or simply gone — so this catastrophe insurance adjuster turned his 2024 Honda Pilot TrailSport into the thing that still works: a no-drill mobile dwelling that is home until the world starts opening back up.
Patrick Botticelli of New Jersey Outdoor Adventures walks the build with Aaron in a tour of a ~27,000-mile, roughly two-year-old Pilot that was completely gutted and rebuilt so every module can unbolt from the factory seat-mount holes and move into the next vehicle.
Dave Whipple — Bushradical on YouTube — built a 10×16 off-grid cabin on remote land in the northern Midwest, racing early snow and sleeping in a tent on the property while he worked. The cabin is about 160 square feet inside, with a 5×16 porch out front, a wood stove, and tongue-and-groove walls and ceiling. Nothing fancy, he says. Just a simple little cabin in the woods.
Margo Fairchild started with an Amish shed shell — 12×20, $8,800, just floor, studs, and a roof — and finished it into her dream home in Central Virginia for about $47,000. Tiny Home Tours walks the house: a full-size tub, a queen loft, a diner booth that seats four, and a kitchen sized around the bathtub she refused to cut. She’s lived here about four years.
