From the Charleston City Paper. Story by Paul Bowers, photo by Jonathan Boncek
"…A tiny house, they reasoned, takes less building material than a standard-size house and costs very little to heat and cool. And of course, if they bought or salvaged all the materials up front and built it themselves, there would be no rent or mortgage to pay.
What's more, with a tiny house built on a standard 16-foot trailer bed, they can rent a truck, pick up their home, and move to the mountains for the summer, escaping hurricane season and seeking out less sweltering climes where they can live without air conditioning. In the long run, they can also figure out a work schedule that allows them to summer with friends who own farmland in North Carolina, Tennesssee, Georgia, or the South Carolina Upstate and help tend to their farms. For Tremols and Baele, migrant labor is the dream.…"
http://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/charleston/for-one-charleston-couple-the-american-dream-fits-into-96-square-feet/Content?oid=3585856
1 comment:
Very beautiful adventure. ''Never buy more house than you can afford'' : isn'it good sense ?
My parents have been keeping for 50 years a tiny notebook. There are nothing else in it but lists of materials and expenses : how many cement bags, how many nails... Each week they saved a little money from my father's wages (he was a metal worker) and bought some materials : 10 screws, or 50 kilograms of sand, because they could not afford to buy more at that moment. And in this way, stone after stone, room after room, they have been building themselves their tiny house.
In these post-war years, many worker's families did the same and helped each other to build their homes (many cities were destroyed by bombing. People got organized into Cooperatives for pooled purchases and transportation. They shared tools, equipment and trucks, at least the few they could find. 1945-1975 are called the Glorious Thirty but today many of our parents and grandparents still retain the memory of hard days. Doing everything all by one self, with very few money, helping each other and salvaging. Going cycling to work. No car, no bathroom, no washing machine, no fridge, no television for a very long time... They didn't aim to buy a 50 000 euros - 6 beds - TV room - camper for their retirement, neither to add a third alarm-equipped garage to accomodate it. They only wanted a solid roof under their heads. Their bank was a dented candies can and they knew exactly how many savings were available for each month. It seems so far away and it's 1960's.
When time came for workers to be paid monthly, under obligation to give the check to a bank, my father said : ''la cabane est tombée sur le chien !'' (the cabin is going to collapse on the dog). He was afraid that humble people got trapped into delusions of consumer credit and excessive debt, and he was unfortunately right. But the cycle is wheeling round and younger generations are coming again to good sense. It seems perhaps like veteran's preaching speech but they do show the way and I'm happy to read about such beautiful adventure of tiny nomadic houses' young builders !
Thanks for this post !
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