I know... it’s been a good while since my last blog update. But I’m excited to be back at the QWERTY, sharing the next chapter in our ongoing adventure of constructing a smallish dwelling with you – just in time for (all going to plan) our first Tiny House Christmas. Exciting developments are afoot: the builder's deposit has been paid, the trailer construction is progressing, and the windows and doors are currently in production. Even a shipping crate awaits the completion of our window order in China, ready for its journey across the high seas to reach us Down Under in late September.

Yes, friends, the tiny house-build wheels are finally in motion!

This time last year, we had the keenest of intentions to be parked and living in our tiny by now, but then came along a client who wanted every building detail to be mulled relentlessly over to ensure a bruise-free living space, architect-wannabe specification of materials and most importantly, optimal positioning of the (my) outdoor shower. The delay feels more than worth the investment. This little luxe shed will be providing us with many unforgettable life experiences – so that couch/day/night bed needs to be 6-star comfy, those stairs spaced just enough to avoid the midnight bathroom run tumble, and the shower under the stars be every bit as wonderful as it’s planned to be (Can you tell it’s an important inclusion?).

We’ve been working with talented building designer Sam Bell from Bellhaus this year. He has transformed our 2D conceptual drawings into professional builder’s plans with pinpoint accuracy, bringing much-needed expertise to the design process. I thought our builders would be slightly thrown with all the detail, but it has been warmly welcomed. We’ve minimised any construction guesswork by providing a millimetre-accurate roadmap.

As some of you would have experienced, countless hours of conversations, research and rethinking go into creating a new living space—more than you could ever imagine. I’m unsure if planning tiny builds requires the same time and energy as needed for a larger dwelling. Still, I’m sure the work we’ve done to date is a decent slice of a more traditional house design… just squashed into a little box on wheels with no formal building code to stick to!

I spoke to our builder last night. He’s committed to having us parked this November, just in time to celebrate that first off-grid, composting toilet-loving Christmas (Loving, as long as that ventilation fan keeps humming). To say that’s slightly exciting is an understatement. Adriano and I are like little kids in a lolly shop.

There’s a load to do in the next few months, including procurement of all house fittings and, importantly, finding our dream north-facing parking spot with endless vistas around 60mins from Melbourne. We’re actively circulating our website and flyer on community noticeboards, Facebook Groups and amongst friends. If you have or know someone with space, please drop me a line! We’ll also annoy our builder with regular Gippsland drop-ins to see how the construction is progressing.

Thanks for sticking with me, and I’ll be back in the next few weeks with a progress update as the months are going to fly. In the meantime, here are a few learned tips.

A few tips for budding Tiny House builders

• Be clear on your living space requirements from the word go. All design decisions will stem from this all-important starting line.

• Write a ‘day in your tiny life’ plan, from sitting up in bed in the morning to gaze out the window, without banging your head for a cuppa, to having somewhere to put your reading a book, to where you put the rubbish when cooking, or store your winter jacket and boots when coming in from the rain. Try not to miss a second!

• Ask experts and ‘people who’ve been there before’ lots of questions about building materials, space flow, storage and room positioning to ensure they are fit for purpose. Facebook Groups are excellent for this kind of support as the tiny house community is loyal, supportive and not short of opinion!

• You have virtual earthquakes and tornadoes to deal with when transporting your home from builder to final destination, plus it will be exposed to the full force of Mother Nature when parked. Be open to less traditional material specifications to meet weight requirements and durability to ensure the longevity of your home.

• Love your design but be open to change. The first idea is rarely ever the best one.

• Be patient… there will be plenty of lesson-learning bumps in the road.

There seems to be an endless lineup of starting blocks for our tiny house build, small hurdle after small trippable hurdle. But finally, after so many meetings, Sketchup models and 3004 iterations of our floorplan I feel like we’re nearing race-ready. The green light for our build is just around the corner.

I met with our builder Ryan from Base Cabin earlier last week to discuss the finer details – things like wall cladding materials, floors, rooflines, powerpoints and everything else that’s stretching us to meet the 4.5-tonne, 4.3m high road-worthy requirements. We’ve been through it all before I’m sure, but fortunately, he’s not only patient, but he seems quietly confident that our design can in fact be built.

The biggest challenge with designing a tiny house when you’re a ‘designer’ by trade, but not the one trained to ‘make buildings’, is that you have a clear vision for the outer aesthetic and inner workings, but when it comes to putting a structural spine to the build we’re running naked. So today I’m meeting Sam Bell from Bellhaus, an incredibly experienced and knowledgeable building designer. He’s been our mentor, ensuring we won’t flood the bathroom or fall down the stairs on 1am no.1 run, cramp when reaching for the dunny roll or zap ourselves boiling the kettle. I think you get the picture… he’s ensuring all the puzzle pieces fit.

Get the details right

Whether you’re working with a builder or a designer (draftsperson, building designer or architect) for your tiny house, getting the detailing as right as possible is a critical planning step. Skip this and you’ll have a few features of your home that don’t work, or look quite as you expected. Here’s a list of a few worth adding to your list (Thanks Sam):

• Floors – how do they finish and connect to doorways and walls?

• Windows and doors – how do they connect to the floors and walls?

• Kitchen – door design, handle positions, kickboards and bench thickness.

• Stairs – aim for more traditional stair proportions, you’ll thank me for this tip!

• Bathroom – how are you keeping the water in the shower and out of the wall cavities (water loves to travel)?

• External – ensure your smartest-looking cladding is on the visual side of your home, and your deck roof isn’t too high.

• Loft (if it’s on your list) – make sure you have sufficient head height to sit up in bed for a morning cuppa (The one brought to you of course).

In the next few years, I’m confident we’ll see more architects and building designers taking on the tiny house build as a serious client commission. This support will mean improvements in approach and design, hopefully without a significant increase in price tag.

Worklife/tiny balance and our build persona

Working full time whilst trying to keep our tiny project humming along certainly has its challenges. In an ideal world, We’d have taken 6 months off to focus on the design and build management. Our timeline would have been significantly shorter, but the cogs of self-employment have only one driver (Quick self-promo plug… check out joshmurray.com.au).

Adriano and I make for a niche tiny house persona profile in that we’re not planning to live in our home full-time. We’re not building it as an Airbnb income stream either. It’s going to be our smaller-footprint country shack.

For many years we’ve dreamed of a block of land in the country to call our own. Not so we can build a McMansion with an Olympic-sized pool, helipad and tennis court. Rather, a minimal footprint dwelling to retreat from the city beat. Somewhere to pause, read and reconnect. Breathe in the fresh air. Grow an heirloom tomato or three and perhaps an olive tree. Dig a few holes. Taking the time to light a fire, gaze at the stars and share stories with close ones.

I know some in the tiny house community may look down on our vision, but we feel very comfortable with our not-excessive dream. Call it our permanently parked campervan. Our city pad is a modest apartment that celebrates Enoughism – a conscious living decision that allows us to close the door and head to our tiny escape without worrying about lawn mowing and gutters.

Right… enough ‘us’ rant! Back to finalising our floorplans.

As always I love hearing from you so please share any questions or feedback below. Thanks for reading!

After receiving such positive feedback on my last article (Thank you btw!) I thought I’d continue the inspiration with a step-by-step guide to planning and designing your tiny house as a non-architect. This guide talks to everything we’ve learned so far on our journey. I’ll be breaking this down into a few newsletters to avoid an all-at-once overload in your inbox.

This article should fill your brain abrim with possibilities. Enjoy exploring the architectural globe, and don’t restrict yourself – now’s the time to let your imagination run wild before putting more practical pens to paper (We’ll cover that step later in the series). So here are 5 ways to help create a visual foundation that will shape the direction of your future tiny house… from floor to stargazing ceiling.

1. Create a Mood Board

Let the pinning begin! A mood board tells the story of what you love when it comes to the look of your home – it helps lay the foundations that will shape your build aesthetic and floorplan… be it a two-bedroom off-grid nordic cabin or an Airbnb-friendly pod in your backyard. Park the technical brain for now and let your taste do the talking.

I’d recommend building your mood board in the digital sphere by utilising one of the platforms below. Corkboards are cute, but nothing beats the convenience of digital that allows you to easily add, edit and evolve your thinking over time.

Pinterest
This app is for both Desktop and Phone and has a gargantuan library of home inspiration. Once you sign up for your free account you can search and browse Pins (Pinterest’s word for images), saving the ones you like to your own boards. Name your board’s things like Rooflines, Deck, Kitchen, Bathroom, or even just Tiny Houses to start with. You can easily update them later. For ideas take a peek at my Tiny house interiors board.

iPhoto (Apple) / Google Photos (Apple/PC)
If you’re browsing the web, flicking through a magazine or out exploring and spot a house you like, then your phone’s photo storage is a great option. Create folders to organise your images for easy access, avoiding the doom scroll to find the picture of that showerhead you loved last year on vacation.

Corkboard – go oldskool
Ok, I had to include it to save the comments coming flying in! Head to your local stationers and grab a corkboard, pins, scissors and post-it notes.

2. Seek out inspiring photography

There are 1,000s of tiny architectural images to be found online. Look through Google Image Search as well as the more visual social media channels like Pinterest and Instagram.

Head to your local bookshop or library to discover an abundance of beautiful and inspiring books devoted to cabins and tiny living spaces. If you’re like me and you can’t stop talking to colleagues, friends and family about your tiny adventures, the book gifts will start to roll in thick and fast. :)

3. YouTube

I’m far from being the first person to share a tiny house journey with the world. There are 100s, ok possibly 1,000s who’ve taken the time to document their experience through video on their own YouTube channels. There are also dedicated YouTubers travelling about and profiling different tiny builds across the globe.

Here are a few channels worth a look:

Living Big In A Tiny House
With over 4.4 million subscribers and hosted by New Zealander Bryce Langston, this would have to be far and away the most-watched tiny house channel. Enjoy story after story of people living and loving the tiny house dream.

Exploring Alternatives
A slightly broader channel that features 100s of videos about alternative homes – from living off-grid to micro-apartments in the city, from homesteading to self-built tiny houses, sustainable living, and everything in between.

Never Too Small
This channel is dedicated to small-footprint design and living – it features award-winning designers and their micro apartments, studios and self-contained projects. It will give you a wonderful window into the world of sustainable, small-footprint living.

Beau Miles – Secretly building my wife a $60 cabin
This isn’t a tiny house channel as such, but Beau is a great storyteller and makes for great watching. I particularly enjoyed this episode where he decided during COVID times to build his wife a ‘Junk Cabin’ in the paddock without her knowing for just $60!… with his 6-month-old daughter as an accomplice.

4. Listen to Podcasts

There’s a lot to be learned from conversations. Step outside for a park walk and immerse yourself in a few of these faves.

Tiny House Conversations
Australian tiny houser and yoga teacher Lucy Lichtenstein interviews tiny house dwellers, builders and adventurers on her Podcast. She does a good job of making those who may not be so comfortable in front of the microphone relaxed and chatty.

Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast
Quite the industry veteran, Ethan Waldman’s podcast features interviews with tiny house experts, pro and self-builders, and more.

Candid Tiny House
Shannon Schultz’s Australian podcast hasn’t been updated in a while, but there’s some sound nuts n’ bolts advice to be found in her interviews with people who have built tiny houses on trailers made by her partner Fred – who also loves a good chat!

5 . Book yourself a tiny house escape

OK, that’s enough searching, reading, watching and listening – nothing beats the experience of actually staying in a tiny house to know if it works for you. Treat yourself to a weekend escape in a tiny house. Here are a few favourite providers I’ve experienced that may just be your local…

Unyoked (Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom)
This was my partner and my first tiny house experience when we stayed in beautiful Oberon NSW last year – just one of the many locations Unyoked now has tiny accommodations available to book. It was magic. A 15 minute walk down a trail filled with butterflies brought us to our very own valley for 2 nights. Their style is more ‘glamping’ and showcases good coffee, bed linen and most importantly, an amazing copper rainshower.

Rare Stays (Global)
Some truly drool-worthy abodes to explore here from Iceland to Indonesia. Among the mega-mansions, you’ll find some tiny design excellence, like The Bide ultra contemporary stay pod in Dorset, United Kingdom.

Airbnb (Global)
Yes, they are a multi-national mega organisation these days with a load of commodity-style stays, but Airbnb does have a sizeable range of welcoming tiny accommodations on offer – they even have a treehouse category. Try this hot tub hottie in Tasmania.

A sneaky final tip – Connect with the community and seek out in-person exhibitions showcasing the latest tiny house innovations and building designs. There’ll be talks by industry experts too – on everything from the latest legalities around permanent tiny house living, solar systems, toilet systems and loads more.

If I’ve managed to hold your attention to this point then wonderful! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you’re feeling appropriately ‘tiny inspired’. Please share any useful sources of inspiration or stories of your own journey in the comments below.

Having a north-star vision will minimise mistakes and ensure your home gives you many years of brief-meeting pleasure. Here are five must-dos before putting nail to wood.

1. Work out how you live

Are you building your home for full-time living, as a regular escape pod from the urban beat, or perhaps it’s a side hustle to create a rental income stream? Knowing this baseline before you start will define the function and foundations of your design. For example, living full-time with a low-ceiling loft bedroom that you can’t stand up in vs. a single-floor dwelling with a separate, full-height bedroom space makes for a very different experience.

Write a ‘day in the life’ timeline of how you live now… sunrise to lights out. From there assign functional home needs for each task. Having this ‘bible’ to refer back to will ensure all elements of your design make sense. Here are a few examples:

Wake up | Sit up in bed
Task: I need enough ceiling height to sit up comfortably in bed and read

Wake up | Reach for my phone
Task: I need a power point next to my bed

Day to day | I hate washing up
Task: I need a dishwasher (Speaking of my own laziness here)

Coming home | I need storage for my boots
Task: I need a shoe shelf or drawer next to the front door 

2. Choose your climate and utilities status

Living in the tropics means your build will focus on staying cool and being able to escape the midday sun. In colder climates, you’ll want to be snug as a bug with adequate insulation, heating and possibly some kind of air exchange system.

Living off-grid in a tiny house can mean a composting toilet, water tanks, propane, a wastewater management system and solar power. A markedly different experience to suburban life where you’re connected to sewerage and on-grid power. More decisions need to be made for off-grid living, but both scenarios require solid planning.

It’s ok not knowing where you’re going to park your tiny home 6-12 months out from completing your build, but having a sense of environment and access to on-grid conveniences is essential.

3. Find a tiny mentor

Sure this is your ship, but having a ‘been there done that’ expert on your team will elevate your build well beyond your expectations. It could be an architect or a draftsperson, or even a colleague who had completed a self-build tiny. How thick are the walls? Do I need double glazing on my windows? How many windows do I need? What’s the difference between LPG and Induction? Do I go with an incinerating or composting toilet? You get the picture! Bother the pants off them and lean in… I promise it will be a game-changing plugin for your tiny house build journey. You might even forge a good friendship out of it.

If you don’t have a mentor then connect with the online tiny community. A few helpful links are below. They love diving into the trenches for all things composting!

4. Set a realistic timeline

If you’re planning a self-build tiny then it’s going to require a solid slab of time, so say goodbye to socialising and normality for a good while. Throw in the reality of working full-time then it will take even longer. If you’re planning to work with a full-service provider, then the timing logistics will be determined by how busy they are and materials availability. Paying your deposit will secure your place in the build queue.

Tip: If going with a tiny house builder then ask lots of questions and make sure you have a contract in place before commencing your build… expect timelines to blow out a little.

5. Define a budget

Yes, the money part. Create a spreadsheet and break it down into individual spaces in your tiny home. List out the finishes you like, the things you need for each space and where you can source them. The amount of detail required here will depend on how involved you are with your tiny house build. If you’re opting for a turn-key home then this specification will be simpler, focusing on decisions like which tiles you want in the bathroom, and what colour your will walls be. At the other end of the spectrum is the self-build where detail will be your friend. Drop me a message below if you’d like me to share a template spreadsheet to work with.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Planning is your friend. Do the groundwork now and I promise you the road ahead will be exciting for all the right reasons.

Final thought… don’t start to sweat the uncertainty of finding a parking spot too far out from being ready to park your tiny home. Like finding a rental property, there’s little point in starting the search more than a few months out. Most likely the landlord won’t be prepared to wait, or even if they are, should another offer come along they will most likely take it.

Got any more helpful tips for budding tiny homers? Please share in the comments below.

Resources

Australian Tiny Houses – Facebook Group
Tiny House Spaces Australia – Facebook Group
Tiny House Conversations – Great podcast by Tiny Houser Lucy Lich
Australian Tiny House Association – Latest advice around tiny house living/legal

So Glomad? Is it a name, a noun, a doing word? A state of enlightenment? An Aesop-loving globe hopper? … well, after forty or so drafts of an elevator pitch, my ground floor exit landed on the following four brand aspirations:

Enoughism:
Content with having just enough ‘stuff’

Tiny Living:
Smaller, less concrete-swallowing abodes

Mindfulness:
Self-awareness in amongst ‘the busy’

Meaningful experiences:
Seeking like-minded connections and wonderful adventures

A little too unachievable and happy gas’d? Perhaps. But I’m loving the challenge of bringing a cohesive, real-life and attainable story together from all this idealism. And perhaps there’s something there that connecting the dots for you right now.

An additional content plug-in will be sharing the journey of our tiny house build over the next 6-12 months. My partner Adriano and I are getting close to finally putting the build in motion, as covered in Issue 1 last week.

As an Art Director/Designer type, starting from square one with a new brand is always such an exciting challenge, particularly when it happens to be your own. With this new baby, I have the opportunity to explore and share with you a world of thinking that has been mattering to me more and more over the past decade. It’s going be a discovery mission, publishing a few sparks and seeds of inspiration every week to perhaps make your life just that little bit more fulfilled.

Right. Let’s get this engine started. Thanks for reading, and lookout for Glomad Issue 3 coming to your inbox next week.

P.S. Your comments and feedback are always most welcome.

I’ve coerced Adriano into countless weekend escapes exploring valleys, forests and rugged coastlines, but we’re yet to have taken the financial (and emotional) leap to make our dreams come true.

Well, that’s all about to change… we’re close to green-lighting our first tiny house build.

This project will embody ‘enoughism’ living. I'll deep dive into this concept in future articles, but for now, I’ll share with you the essence of this philosophy – having just enough of the essential ‘stuff’ in our lives allows for a far more comfortable and rewarding life experience.

The question people often ask after hearing my news is “Where’s it going to be built?” “Absolutely no idea,” is my response. This may sound somewhat concerning, but that’s the joy of building a tiny abode on wheels. Just tow and park it at your idyllic destination and be sure not to live in it for more than 60 consecutive days. On Day 59 you’ll probably spot us scenic driving around the block for 24hrs.

For trailer builds, there’s no need to buy land and go through the challenges and delays of council approvals, connecting to power and sewerage. A tiny house is classed as a caravan by law, and ours will be completely off-the-grid. Say hello to fingers-crossed self-sufficiency – pending there be enough sunshine for power and rain for the shower.

Of course, we have a wish list of ideal parking locations within a 90mins drive of central Melbourne. As soon as we dive into the build, hopefully in early 2023, we’ll have around 11 weeks to madly letterbox drop and community notice board pin ourselves stupid to secure our first perfect rural rental space.

Given we’ll be seeing a lot of our newfound landlords, they should understand fully what’s involved in our rental agreement. It’s important to ensure the landowner that parking our little pod on their land is going to cause them little if any disturbance, plus it will provide them with a passive income stream. Surely it’s a no-brainer? I’ll be keeping you in the loop of just how smoothly this process pans out.

Finding a builder has been a patience game. If you follow any kind of tiny house YouTube channel or social account, you’ll know that there are a lot of mock-suburban-home tiny builds going on. White plastered walls, big screen TVs, lots of cubby-house storage units, MDF joinery and super glossy finishes. There’s nothing wrong with this building approach, it’s just not us. We’re lovers of considered architectural design and are on a quest to live a more sustainable life. Design can respond to an environment and building materials don’t have to destroy our planet. Not knowing exactly where we’ll be parked can make design planning a challenge, but a sense of connection to the Australian landscape, more naturally occurring materials and comfort are front and centre in the brief.

When dealing with a floorplan of 8m x 2.5m, every centimetre counts, and efficient use of space is paramount. The challenge when designing tiny is to think outside the boundaries of traditional home planning and finishes. When you’re heading to the country for a week off the grid, there’s one word that comes to mind above all else… comfort. That means the world’s comfiest couch and bed. Start from there and you’re winning.

Holy moly. Writing and publishing this first post for the Glomad journey has been a few solid weeks in the procrasto-making. What’s Glomad? That’s coming in post number 2 next week (just made myself publically accountable for delivery), so please sign-up below and join us on our tiny-build journey over the next 6 to 12 months. Many mistakes will be made… many lessons will be learned!