1. Waterfront A-frame Tiny House

This tiny unfolding shipping container home is one of a kind, although it did disappoint me a bit. I’ll tell you why later.

Designed by artist/architect Adam Kalkin, it’s officially dubbed the Illy Push Button House and was created for Illy. At just 20′ by 8′ it unfolds into five different rooms. Yes, this design packs a kitchen, dining room, bedroom, living room, and library. And guess what? It transforms at the push of a button. Hence the name. If that’s not cool enough you should also know that it’s prefabricated using recycled and/or recyclable materials. This might be a tiny house that’s truly at the cutting edge of sustainability and innovation. But there’s a catch… It still needs a roof once it’s unfolded. I didn’t like that.

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Expanding Shipping Container Concept House Built for Illy

We have a video tour, interview and design overview that you can watch below:

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This tiny solar house was designed and built by the Minnesota Renewable Energy Society. I found them on Facebook not long ago and wanted to share their tiny home with you because it has three Silicon Energy PV modules, solar air heat, and even solar hot water.

The SIP (Structural Insulated Panels) came from The Chuba Company who you can also find on Facebook. If you’re not familiar with SIPs, check out this post. A company called Applied Energy Innovations also helped with the construction of this tiny house. It’s 8′ x 16′ and has additional storage in the back to store power with batteries. There’s also extra room there for hot water storage and any other extra systems.

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Tiny Solar House on Wheels: Passive Solar Designed THOW Built with SIPs by Minnesota Renewable Energy Society

Photo Credit Minnesota Renewable Energy Society

This solar tiny house was made possible thanks to Laura Cina, Joel Cina, Chris Burrington, Timothy Pendergast, Larissa Starr Maranell, Andrew Steven Richardson, The Chuba Company and Applied Energy Innovations.

Please enjoy the rest of this tiny home below:

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Since I am spending some time in Detroit, Michigan for the winter I decided to reach out to my cousin, Charlie Zink, who blogs about his adventures biking around the streets of Detroit and taking photos of the interesting things he finds there.

Charlie comes across quite a few amazing gems on his adventures so I asked if he had ever seen tiny or small houses in the city.

His search for tiny spaces yielded some pretty neat results. I thought I would share two of them with you today.

One appears to be a crudely made shelter and the other a small abandoned building that may have some use in the future. Scroll down to see more.

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Photo by Charlie Zink

I encourage you to check out the rest of Charlie’s Detroit tiny homes below:

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If you don’t like the idea of upstairs sleeping lofts you’ll love this tiny house design by Humble Homes.

It’s a multifunctional design with a genius slide out bed and storage system. In most tiny homes, there’s a sleeping loft above the kitchen to make the best use of space. The problem is, you might not want to climb up or down a ladder, especially in the middle of the night if you have to use the bathroom. So they’ve come up with an incredible solution which was to raise the floor of the kitchen and design and build a slide out bed underneath. Would you use this tiny house plan to build your home?

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Slide-Out Bed Tiny House by Humble Homes

I encourage you to watch the complete video tour below to learn how it works:

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Guest Post by Stew MacInnes of Maximus Extreme Living Solutions

My name is Stew MacInnes, I am the owner of Maximus Extreme Living Solutions, based out of Ogden, Utah.

My company manufactures self-contained living units, which in lay terms would probably best be described as eco-friendly, tiny homes that are on massive amounts of steroids! My work history and background would have probably suggested that I ultimately would not have ended up in this role as an owner of a manufacturing company. I have worked for more than twenty-one years in the real estate industry as a Principal Real Estate Broker and the Branch New Homes director for (at that particular time) the second-largest Coldwell Banker franchise in the United States.

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Images via Facebook/Maximus Extreme

I encourage you to read the rest of Stew’s article and look over the rest of the photos below:

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Would you consider living in this 550-square-foot small houseboat?

Affordable Floating Homes is a division of First Mate Builders and Olympia Construction. Mike Auderer designed and built this wonderful humble home on wheels from scratch so he can downsize from a four-story Victorian home according to Thurston Talk. It’s a two-story houseboat with all of the accommodations of the home as you’ll see in the photos below.

So far it has been featured on sites like Inhabitat and the OregonLive. In addition, it’s one of the first houseboats to earn the Built Green Certification.

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550 Sq. Ft. Floating Cottage/Houseboat

Images via Olympia Construction

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This is the third installment in my series, “How We Created a Delightful Christmas in our Tiny House.” See my first and second posts for the first five ideas.

The holidays sneak up and fly by when we keep a frenzied pace of checking off lists and rushing around for the big day. Growing up, I remember my Grandma, Mom and Aunts saying things like, “I’m done. Now I can enjoy.” Christmas was a chore until the work of shopping was done.

Simplifying our lives has helped us to take a different approach. Like our daughter, Ella, said, “I like the suspense and preparing for Christmas. The actual opening and tearing up of presents is sort of a letdown.” Savoring every part of the process with rituals and traditions, rather than rushing through, helps us to feel content once we are finished tearing up paper on Christmas morning.

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Create Your Own Rituals and Traditions From Faith, Friends, and Your Own Heart As You Slow Down

Images via Nehemiah Horst/Tiny Home Builders

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I got to interview Laura LaVoie of 120SquareFeet.com and feature her as one of our guests on here by transcribing the interview as well.

Laura lives with her husband Matt in an off-grid tiny cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. They use a composting toilet and a really unique showering system.

They built their home with no prior construction experience what so ever and left a big house in the suburbs of Atlanta to live this dream. Pictured below is their Tumbleweed house they built with the help of their encouraging friends.

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Images via Laura LaVoie of 120squarefeet.com

I encourage you to read the interview transcript or listen to the podcast on YouTube below:

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