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Family Tiny House Made of Streetcars with Cob Studios in the Yard


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In this post I’m going to show you a family tiny house that’s made out of 1920s recycled streetcars.

And it gets even better than that. Not only is the home recycled but the family also has some cob structures in the back.

A man cave and a she cave. The main home itself comprises of several reclaimed streetcars.

One of them makes up the living and dining rooms. Another streetcar is where the bathroom, kitchen and bedroom is.

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At first this house was just 550 square feet but since then there have been some additions. The family is a mother with her three boys by the way.

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She purchased the property back in 1999. After learning permaculture and taking a few classes she began to fall in love with cob. The story gets better..

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So now there’s an 80 square foot micro cob house that’s used as one of the boy’s man caves. And the other is a round cob of around 200 square feet that she uses as her she cave.

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If you want to get the Cob Builders Handbook by Becky Lee you can order a copy here.

She built her cob structures (there are three total I believe) for around $500 or less. If she had chosen to build conventionally instead she would have spent up to $10,000.

Finally let me show you her treehouse then you can watch the entire video tour and interview below.

DIY Treehouse

treehouse inside-treehouse treehouse-view

Barrel Sauna

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Video Tour

I love how the house is just a one bedroom home. And that’s how it started out. That’s how she raised her three boys.

But over time a structure was built for every single individual so that each person can have their own privacy and space. I like how they used a variety of tiny houses to achieve this.

And they were able to do it very inexpensively. What a cool mom, right?

Well her boys are all grown up now and they’ve moved out. So she’s selling the homestead that took her more than 14 years to create so she can begin traveling the world and helping other people build their own eco-villages.

If you enjoyed this streetcar tiny house property with two cob structures and a DIY treehouse “Like” below and share using the social and email buttons below.

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Alex

Alex is a contributor and editor for TinyHouseTalk.com and the always free Tiny House Newsletter. He has a passion for exploring and sharing tiny homes (from yurts and RVs to tiny cabins and cottages) and inspiring simple living stories. We invite you to send in your story and tiny home photos too so we can re-share and inspire others towards a simple life too. Thank you!
{ 5 comments… add one }
  • LaMar
    January 24, 2014, 11:20 am

    I love the look and warming nature of Cob!
    Not hard to learn but takes some creativity in making the structure look nice which they obviously have. Great use of the street car and since these are being replaced by buses you might get one cheap in some areas.

    LaMar

  • Niki
    January 30, 2014, 3:53 pm

    I can’t get the web site to open!!!! I really would like to buy this property.

  • AmyCat =^.^=
    February 10, 2016, 3:04 pm

    The story is over 2 years old, so the property’s obviously been sold, and the inactive website taken over by an asian “cyber-squatter”. DO NOT keep promoting the dead link; you’re only giving page-views to a rip-off artist. And SHAME on you for not checking the links before “recycling” an OLD article! If you can’t find NEW content, at least check things like this before re-posting articles where the links are likely to be worse than useless! 🙁

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