Michelle & Brendan from The Off Grid Ireland Dream realized they shared a dream of living closer to the land, so they decided to build a tiny house together and move it from the UK to Ireland where they could afford to buy land to park it. Their tiny house is only 135 square feet and they’ve been living in it full-time for 3 years now.
Their off-grid systems include solar panels, an inverter and batteries, as well as a solar generator. They also have a gas generator for the greyest months in the middle of winter. For heat, they have a small diesel heater that is usually found in vans and trucks, and for water, they collect rainwater from their roof and filter it for daily use.
Image © Exploring Alternatives
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This is a tiny off-grid yurt in New Mexico that is only 13 feet in diameter. Molly Caroline bought the yurt secondhand for $2,800 USD including the wood stove.
It’s a traditional Mongolian yurt from a company called Groovy Yurts that was handmade and hand-painted in Mongolia using natural materials like wood lattice and cotton canvas. Molly lives off-grid in the tiny yurt on a piece of land that she bought with her two brothers.
Molly’s $2,800 Off-Grid Tiny Yurt Adventure
Image © Exploring Alternatives and Molly Caroline
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Have you ever wondered how much a tiny house costs, or been shocked when you found out the price of a tiny house? We’ve been sharing tiny house video tours on our Exploring Alternatives YouTube channel for years now, and one of the biggest comments we get is “Why are tiny houses so expensive?” A lot of people are quite surprised when they learn about the drastic difference between the cost of a DIY tiny house and the price of a professionally built tiny house so we sat down with D’Arcy from Acorn Tiny Homes to find out more.
Why Are Tiny Houses So Expensive?
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The Purple Heart Manor is an ultra-custom medieval-inspired tiny house built by Acorn Tiny Homes in Toronto, Canada. Built on a 43-foot by 10.5-foot gooseneck trailer, the home features a dramatic roofline, faux stone siding, a solid mahogany Tudor-style door, and custom stained glass windows.
The interior continues the medieval theme with a chandelier, Victorian vanity, and dungeon-style wallpaper. The homeowner’s love of purple shows throughout: purple tiles, purple ceilings, purple sinks, and purple accents in every room. The design also includes cat-friendly features, including an exterior catio.
Don’t miss other interesting tiny homes like this – join our FREE Tiny House Newsletter for more!
Medieval Exterior with Faux Stone and Tudor Door
Image © Exploring Alternatives
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The Baltic is a two-story off-grid treehouse in Ontario’s Haliburton Highlands built by Cam, a woodworker and furniture builder who studied sustainable treehouse construction at Yestermorrow in Vermont. Together with his wife Lauren, he founded Fort Treehouse Co. and built this structure using techniques that protect the host trees while supporting the building.
The platform is supported by two live maple trees using custom treehouse hardware, plus three steel posts—a hybrid approach that works with the available trees on the property. The treehouse features cob floors (sand, clay, and straw), a sleeping loft with king-size bed, heat recovery ventilation, and floor-to-ceiling forest views.
Don’t miss other interesting tiny homes like this – join our FREE Tiny House Newsletter for more!
Exterior with Hybrid Tree and Post Support System
Image © Exploring Alternatives
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Carina (Dirtbag Minimal on YouTube) built this spacious and minimalist DIY tiny house on wheels with no previous building experience!
It was a housing solution for her that fit into the gap between renting and buying a full-sized home, and another advantage of building a THOW was that she could move it wherever she wanted (as long as she could find a parking spot for it!).
Building her own 10 Ft. Wide Tiny Home on Wheels
Image © Dirtbag Minimal
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The Shiship is a really cool tiny cabin that was designed and built by Repère Boréal in Quebec, Canada.
It’s a simple structure made with a single high-cube shipping container and it measures 31′ long x 8′ wide, and 9’6″ tall. On the exterior, you can still see most of the original shipping container with lots of exposed corrugated steel and massive cargo doors at one end. It’s an interesting visual reminder that the shell of this cabin had another life before it was repurposed.
The cedar accents balance out the more industrial look of the container and make it feel more welcoming, and the massive wooden window frame at the other end is a dramatic feature that defines the outside of the structure and makes it pretty unique.
Image © Exploring Alternatives
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Hope you’re not afraid of heights because this tiny A-frame cabin is perched 40 feet in the air! The exterior is all windows and angles, including a diamond shape on one side, but the interior is full of curved details and has a cozy ambiance to soften the feel of the space. It was designed and built by the team at Repère Boréal in Charlevoix, Quebec, and they call it The Uhu.
Getting up into the cabin is a pretty cool experience: you climb an enclosed spiral staircase and once you reach the top, you cross a 20-foot bridge to get to the cabin’s front door.
Image © Exploring Alternatives
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This 1969 International short school bus was converted into the Old School B&B in British Columbia, Canada — a retro-styled tiny house built almost entirely from locally salvaged materials and decorated with thrifted vintage finds from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. A full roof structure was built above the bus to protect it from the weather and to cover the outdoor bathroom, porch, and whimsical garden areas surrounding it.
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