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This may be the tiniest house in the tiniest state in the union! The “Rhode Island Red” was a custom build for a Rhode Island woman and it’s only 14 feet long. Somehow, the experts over at Rocky Mountain Tiny Homes managed to fit everything you could need in this itty-bitty THOW.
Against the back wall is the kitchen complete with a mini oven and fridge and live-edge countertops. Storage stairs curve up to the loft bedroom, and there’s a bathroom in the front. As pictured, it cost about $38,000.
Check out the photos and video tour below, and if you want a similar home you can contact the builder here.
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Professionally-Built 14-foot THOW for $38K
Images via Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses
14 Feet Long is Pretty Tiny!
Images via Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses
Love the mini stove/oven they fit in!
Images via Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses
Tiny retro fridge tucked into the stairs.
Images via Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses
There’s a little bathroom at the front.
Images via Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses
VIDEO: Rhode Island Red Tiny House Tour
Highlights:
- $38,000 before taxes and delivery
- Tiniest build in the tiniest state!
- Mini retro fridge
- Mini oven/stove
- Butcher block countertops
- Dickinson Newport propane furnace
Learn more
- AWAKES Tiny House by Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses
- Follow Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses on Facebook
- Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses Website
Related Stories
- Military Veteran’s 26ft Bradford Tiny House by Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses
- Vardo-Style 26ft Pioneer Tiny House for Ella
- Boulder 16-ft. Tiny House Plans by Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses
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Natalie C. McKee
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Sorry but this is not worth 38,000.00! They could have put in a lazy susan net to the sink and more cabinets.
Worth is relative, this is a custom builder who also is an architect/designer… You’re not just paying for a simple build with this builder… Everything he produces can be completely tailored to you and be a one of a kind creation…
It’s equivalent to going to a tailor or fashion designer instead of something off the rack at a thrift store… You’re paying for a service and getting more than just a generic product when it’s custom made…
Besides, there are always trade offs. A lazy susan makes it easier to get things in hard to reach spaces but you lose some space to fit the system and it doesn’t allow you to use the whole space.
Whoever commissioned this build probably simply didn’t want to make that trade off… But it probably wouldn’t change the price, significantly, for someone who did, benefit of custom is getting it the way you want and you get to choose what it is you are paying for to help alleviate the premium you’re paying for the service…
There are builder’s who cater to more budget pricing but trade off is more generic standard models and usually not many custom options. While it’s hard to beat DIYing, if that’s an option. Or go for something built to lower standards like RVs and renovate it…
James D., well said, as usual. I guess if I were going to add a thought, it would be that we can all count on the Tiny House movement to be able to provide what you want and what you are willing to pay more for. Same as always. But over the past several years and especially from what I hear, in the past year, the cost of lumber alone has doubled and on some species has tripled. So where this house might have been several thousand less in 2000, the price on it now, for all the good things you have listed, is spot on. And for that price I like it a lot!
I can verify that the cost of lumber has doubled (more than doubled in some cases). I build custom wood furniture and decor–mostly fancy dog crates–and pride myself on reasonable pricing; my profit margin has shrunk considerably as lumber that last year would have cost me about $75 now costs as much as $160 – $175. I’m hesitant to raise my prices, because my focus is people who want custom work but can’t afford to pay upwards of $1200 for a dog crate, but a single 2×4 that cost $3.25 last summer is now as much as $9.50.
Luckily the prices of some dimensions hasn’t gone up as much as that, but they have all increased.
And yes, the engineer/architect/designer alone can be as much as $4-$5k before a single line has been drawn or piece of material has been bought.
I respectfully disagree! Lumber is at an all time and has risen 180% in the past 15-16 months, steel has gone up, and inflation is driving everything else up as well. I’m currently starting to build 2 units. One will be a small square drop camper and the other a tiny traveler that is 22′ long overall. I have custom built both the trailers already and have $4,000 in just materials on the larger one. This doesn’t include the massive amount of labor hours I have in fabrication. Without knowing the exact particulars of this build, it still seems to me to be well executed and very reasonably priced. I’m sincerely curious, have you ever built anything similar? Ball parking my materials and estimated labor, I think my larger build will be more expensive than this.
I’m not sure if a little comfy seat could be added to create a little sitting area though I’m sure there’s a furniture hack to accommodate that, in which case I would have loved to have this while I was a single working woman/student. Actually, even without one I’d be happy to perch on my bed because micro homes are infinitely preferable to house sharing for part time antisocial people like me! I think you could even transition into coupledom here too – maybe parking two micro homes side by side before taking the plunge into a joint home. Actually, thinking about it, this set up might suit old married couples like my hubby and I too – I’ll put the cats and the kitchen in his so mine will be easier to clean!
Good ideas. Either way, a house this small couldn’t take long to clean!
I absolutely love it!! If I had the money I would buy it in a heartbeat
She was robbed! I have heped on 3 builds -one 19, one 22 and one 26 feet and the most expensive one didn’t cost the owner more than $17k!!!
No, while I’m certain you believe that and you certainly can build something for under $17K. It’s not comparable to this as $17K for a 26′ THOW just isn’t realistic for anything from a commercial builder unless they’re building you an RV and not a Tiny House. Even a budget builder will charge more than $25K for a fairly basic 16′ THOW but most custom builders aren’t going to be charging budget prices…
Since, everything can be built to different standards, there’s no such thing as a set price range that everything must fall into. Costs will vary as much as the options, features, amount of labor, and level of quality vary and you’re going to pay more when it’s custom built for you…
For perspective, they would actually charge you far more to do custom in the RV industry. For example, custom Class A’s starts over $500K, custom Class B’s are usually over $300K, with a few exceptions, and custom trailers are typically over $100K, especially with anything approaching the build quality of a tiny house with thick walls with good insulation, etc…
While even something more minimally built but by a name brand like Airstream would charge more… A 16′ Basecamp is over $45K, for comparison, but has less space, isn’t designed to use 4 seasons, isn’t custom, and isn’t as durable as a similar size THOW would be… Yes, Airstreams are much more expensive than your basic RV but RV’s are usually built to far lower standards than a Tiny House. It takes nearly 8 to over 10 times the amount of labor to build a Tiny House vs building a RV, which also uses much less materials because RV’s are optimized to be lighter weight to be easier to tow. While Tiny Houses can be very heavy as they’re built like houses…
That said, you can get costs pretty low with DIY, as then you’re basically just paying for just materials and your sweat equity covers labor, but a commercial builder can’t do it for DIY costs. Since, commercial builders have to earn a living, have to pay their workers, have to pay business and insurance fees, cover medical coverage, pay their taxes, pay their rent and other costs of running a business, etc. Unless they’re a big company that can mass produce hundreds to thousands of units, they not going to get even close to DIY price ranges but even DIY can cost more if they put more into it, as again, not everything is built to the same exact standards and so some will cost more than others…
Add, anything built recently can cost even more because material costs have spiked the last year. Wood, especially, is at historic highs right now. Along with high demand in just about everything in the construction industry and it’s going to be awhile before that changes…
No, these were professionaly done by professional builders. They construct about 2 per month, and the latestest build was for me -at 12 by 20 and finished with appliances for only 14,000$ and made to normal construction standard codes.
Sorry, but I’m stating what is the norm for the industry. If you look it up, you’ll find that the average tiny home presently costs $45,000 with most people paying between $30,000 and $60,000.
Sure, a really mini house with hardly any amenities could cost as low as $8,000, you can also more than halve costs by DIY and using reclaimed materials, but a highly customized home could cost up to $150,000 or more, which includes higher cost of materials and not just higher labor costs… Size ranges for tiny houses can also range from as little as around 50 Sq Ft to 400 Sq Ft, with some going even bigger, which is just one of the many variables on the costs…
Understand, there’s a massive range anything can be built to. Even to code only means to minimal acceptable standards but anyone can shoot way past that and build it up to multiple times better than code requirements or just add more features and options than the standard minimum requires. So not everything you see is equivalent. Especially, again, when it’s custom…
A good example of how custom can increase the costs is normal residential home kitchen renovations. Sites like HomeAdvisor puts the average kitchen remodel price in the $12,567 to $34,962 range. A small kitchen remodel can cost as little as $4,000 and a lavish remodel can cost as much as $50,000+. Showing again, there can be a very wide that just about anything can range for what it can end up costing. I’ve seen just really high end custom kitchen cabinets done for over $30,000!
However, another thing to keep in mind is if it’s on wheels then to code doesn’t mean the same thing because that includes RV’s, which uses lower standards than residential building requires. Even Park Model’s, which people often confuse with Tiny Houses, are still only built to ANSI, which still doesn’t meet residential code standards, as it’s only meant to meet RV standards that are only intended for temporary usage, and is why the government set the 400 Sq Ft size limit that anything bigger has to, by law, switch from ANSI to HUD because only HUD ensures it’s built to residential building standards, applies to movable structures, and anything bigger than 400 Sq Ft is when they consider it’s main intended usage is as a residential home. Unlike local codes, which only apply to structures on foundations.
I can understand the confusion because Tiny Houses on wheels don’t fall into a specific traditional category and being on wheels has a lot of overlap with the RV market…
Until the 2018 IRC introduced Appendix Q for building codes for Tiny Houses on foundation that are 400 Sq Ft or less, there had been no codes for Tiny Houses and on wheels they are only required to meet RV standards.
This didn’t stop most builders still building them to residential building code standards to the best of their ability but that also meant they weren’t usually going to be as low cost to build as an RV…
Options like Park Models have existed for decades but have more in common with RV’s than tiny houses and are among the examples of products you can find that may look like a tiny house but have reasons why they would cost less… Among other reasons for costs to vary…
Regardless, whenever comparing prices, always keep in mind whether or not the comparison is equivalent and that something could have just been built to very different standards and/or had more or less put into it than something else did…
I’ve followed the tiny house industry for years, including the overlap with traditional housing market and the construction industry. There’s more than a few hundred builders I’ve followed over the years. So I’m pretty sure everything I’ve stated is accurate, but I’m always willing to be proven wrong. Perhaps you found a builder who is the exception to even most other budget builders, which would be a great find if true…
So, if you’ll name your builder, I’ll look them up and see how they compare…
$14k for materials, or including labor? Let’s see some pictures and see if it compares!
As far as I can figure based on the available measurements, this is about 112 sq. ft. So at $38,000, that’s about $340/sq. ft.
So a 1000 sq. ft. house at this price would be $340,000? Sitting on land, which you own.
This is cute, but it really is over-priced. The “industry” has gone over-the-top.
No, you’re just making a common mistake with nonequivalent comparison. Since, you would not be paying for all the same things, or gaining all the same benefits, and cost per Sq Ft doesn’t scale linearly or factor details like build quality, attention to details, efficiency of design, and how much is actually put into it as it was only meant to compare similar properties but can quickly become grossly inaccurate when comparing very different properties.
Like you would pay much more for a car that’s even smaller but provides you with very different benefits, for example… Along with other differences like real estate prices aren’t based on just the cost of the house but the perceived market value of the whole property, including the land, location, and local economy and thus buying an existing home can be much less than building a new one, especially for a property that is newly developed…
So there’s lots of differences in the market like between new and old, used and run down vs the latest net zero smart home, etc.
Just the difference for what Tiny Houses can offer covers things like being much easier to move, which allows them to support things like a mobile lifestyle that could not be supported in larger structures, it’s much easier to custom build a tiny home, it’s more common to offer functionality like off-grid living that normally is not included with larger houses, you actually get what you pay for instead of being at the whim of the ups and downs of the real estate market, it’s much easier to avoid losing a tiny home to fire, storms, or for failing to pay property taxes, you have more control over where you can live, how you live, can better choose what you’re actually paying for, etc.
There’s just always trade offs and there’s no magic solution that solves everything, which leaves choices in how everything is dealt with that produces different pros and cons but the key difference with Tiny Houses is not so much scaling down the one time cost of purchasing the home, as most assume, but all the other costs that go along with home ownership and cost of living expenses.
Since, those long term costs add up to multiple times the purchase cost of the home for the life of the property and are what effect your ability to choose how you live. For example, nationally, the average cost of just maintenance and basic home owners costs is over $9000 for the average home owner, which doesn’t factor other costs like utilities, cost of furnishings, how much of your time and percentage of your income the home takes up, etc.
Tiny living reduces nearly all long term costs, and that’s one of the reasons why there are so many success stories with people who even going into debt being still able to pay it completely off in just a matter of up to several years instead of decades. Some even saving so much that they can afford to buy a large house later or just better able to afford the lifestyle they prefer that they otherwise couldn’t…
So it’s a lot more complicated what people actually get out of a tiny house than just the house itself…
However, it’s not the only way to achieve such goals and it won’t work for everyone as nothing will, people are just too diverse and can be in too different situations. So it’s just one of many options to consider but each options has to be considered for it’s own unique trade offs for which will work best for any given person, in any specific situation, and thus what will ultimately be the appropriate choice, which can still change over time…
Like paying that much makes less sense if you only need a basic home and none of the other benefits a Tiny House can offer or it may not make sense if you need different benefits to fulfill different needs that the tiny house won’t support. But it can make sense if that’s the way to get what you actually need and have the benefits you want out of it.
Like the difference between a bicycle and a car, if only traveling short distances the bike is a lot cheaper but if traveling long distances or need to carry more than a vehicle makes more sense even though it will cost more.
Same is true of different size houses with different designs, functions, and amenities… Details and context matter, as there are always trade offs!
John Gudmundson. No Comment.
$17K for what, materials? Custom trailer? Top of the line components or locally sourced odds and ends? Seems about impossible for anybody to be making comparisons unless there are 2 identical builds side by side.
The price seems very reasonable to me, especially when you look at the appliances, the custom build, the finish work, and the beautiful materials.
I really like seeing tiny tinies, like this one that are well done. Is the counter to the right of the stove meant to be a bar for eating at? The angled wood on the floor underneath, is that for the feet to rest against? If so, thoughtful detail.
The cupboard to the right of the fridge – what is that going to be used for?
I wonder what type of vehicle can pull this, and if one were to add another 2′, would be towable by a similar vehicle? In other words, how much mobility does this have, and would 2′ more in length affect that.
Are there any solar panels? Wondering about power and water for this. Looks like it’s meant for the usual hook ups for water and power.
Well done! Beautiful little space! Thank you for sharing.
You’d have to contact the builder for details but single axle puts it well under 7000 lbs, it may even be well under 5000 lbs with how minimally it’s designed. So easily tow-able with your basic 1/2 ton truck or, with anything under 10,000 lbs, you can just rent a U-Haul truck to tow it with and have some extra storage in the truck for the move. Some SUV’s can also have enough tow capacity to handle this as well…
Natalie (and everyone),
I tried to submit this with the form, but I don’t have pictures as it’s not specifically “my” tiny, just a company I thought might interest you & my fellow readers.
While researching building methods/supplies for my own tiny (planning stages) this morning, I stumbled on this company: https://hyggesupply.com/
They’re a “kit home” company that uses pre-made panels with cold-steel framing, based on the whole “hygge” concept. You buy your kit, they deliver it as a series of pre-made panels with insulation and exterior/interior finished, and you have a local contractor who just puts it together. Their basic “small cottage” is about 12 x 15 and includes an optional Murphy bed, and starts at about $30k. It seems a little pricey until you consider that everything is included–not just the structure itself (with architect and engineer-stamped plans, which can themselves be several thousand even for a tiny), but all the finishing, plumbing fixtures, electrical fixtures & lighting, tankless water heater, radiant floor heating (mini-split AC is an upgrade with additional cost), cabinetry, flooring, etc. So that’s basically a turn-key cost (aside from needing a local contractor to oversee the build), which makes it actually a decent value.
There’s not a ton of customizability in the structures–it’s basically a “pod” or series of pods you put together to create the building you want, with each pod having its own cost–but for those looking less for a THOW and more for an ADU or home office-type backyard tiny, I think it’s definitely something to consider–if I had the budget, I certainly would be! It’s certainly a cool concept, IMO.
Anyway. I hope it’s okay to post it here in the comments; I just thought you and others might be interested in having a look!
Oh thank you so much! I will do a post about it soon. Super great resource.
I do find this little house very appealing, even it it does have a loft. The loft does look good size with respectable head room and nice stairs! So even 6 ft 3 in me can navigate up or down the stairs , even for those midnight runs :). As for price, I think you can get a cheaply built RV for about the same of more money and this little house looks a lot more appealing . Imagine pulling into a campground with this little beauty behind your truck!!
Is it legal to drive something like this down the road? Looks like one gust of wind would tip it over. Even if I had it parked on land, I would tie it down. Great little trailer anyway. I’d prefer a second axle.
Legal, yes, it’s pretty standard for commercially built THOWs to meet all the road and fire safety standards required to be legal to be towed anywhere in the country. Some even get 3rd party certification for helping to prove they are built to meet all requirements. Like this builder offers NOAH certification…
to me looks like all the heavy stuff , appliances and such are down low so should tow nicely, as long as there is respectable tongue weight.
I like this. For myself, I’d have to find space to hang a few clothes and somewhere for socks, underwear, shoes, etc., along with my books.
I will say that the tiny house movement has become just another niche for the elite that can afford it. Capitalism, which originally it was supposed to be a counter to.