News
Jan
03
2011
Living Small
Artist designs and sells tiny dwellings
by Mike Kravinsky
I'm always amazed at how the RV industry builds so much space into their products. Where in a traditional home there would be air, an RV will have a closet, a pull down desk, or a cabinet. It's really quite ingenious. In the last decade, a small (Get it? A pun!) company that builds actual tiny homes has appeared. It's called Tumbleweed Tiny Homes, owned by Jay Shafer.
Shafer grew up in a traditional suburban home. He lived with his mother, father, and sister in a four thousand square foot house in Iowa. He and his sister took care of the house while his parents worked to pay the mortgage. That's the reason, Shafer admits, he now lives in a home that measures eight feet by twelve feet. It is a tiny home that he designed and built himself.
Shafer majored in drawing at the University of Iowa and went on to get a master's degree in painting from the City College of New York. He tried to get a professor level position in a university in the early 1990's; but it was difficult. He ended up working in a grocery store for ten years. During that time, he was still involved in art, honing his skills in 3D and architectural design.
Tumbleweed had its genesis when Shafer decided to build a small home for himself using the design skills he had learned. "A lot of the inspiration for it had to do with ecological, the environment: waste less, consume less," he says. He admits he really didn't know the construction process. He just learned along the way. "I wasn't interested in working in a food store for the rest of my life, and I've really always loved architecture," he notes, "I had a dream that maybe I would do this for other people; but originally, it was all for designing my own house."
Tumbleweed homes are small, but they are made of the highest quality material. When Shafer's home was completed and people saw what he had built, requests to create more soon came along. Although Tumbleweed Tiny Houses opened for business in 1999, Shafer continued to work at the grocery store until 2004 when sales were good enough for him to quit his full time job. "I didn't want to make the leap too quickly; and it's a good thing I didn't, because it wasn't like I was raking in money hand over fist in the beginning," he reasons.
Tumbleweed sells fully assembled tiny homes; but it primarily sells plans to the homes. The company then tries to hook buyers up with builders and building suppliers. Shafer has been happy with the growth of Tumbleweed during the last five years. In 2000, he was only selling four sets of plans a year; today that number is forty. Shafer now has four employees and a partner.
The sizes of the Tumbleweed homes range from 65 to 874 square feet. Believe it or not, there are laws saying that to be classified as a home, a dwelling has to be larger than Tumbleweed's smaller models. "There are laws that require Americans to build houses of a certain size, and I didn't want to have to meet those," Shafer explains. The solution was to put wheels on his smallest homes, making them seem more like mobile homes. You wouldn't want to constantly drive down a highway with one of these, although you could. The idea is to be able to move the home around a piece of property.
Shafer grew up in a traditional suburban home. He lived with his mother, father, and sister in a four thousand square foot house in Iowa. He and his sister took care of the house while his parents worked to pay the mortgage. That's the reason, Shafer admits, he now lives in a home that measures eight feet by twelve feet. It is a tiny home that he designed and built himself.
Shafer majored in drawing at the University of Iowa and went on to get a master's degree in painting from the City College of New York. He tried to get a professor level position in a university in the early 1990's; but it was difficult. He ended up working in a grocery store for ten years. During that time, he was still involved in art, honing his skills in 3D and architectural design.
Tumbleweed had its genesis when Shafer decided to build a small home for himself using the design skills he had learned. "A lot of the inspiration for it had to do with ecological, the environment: waste less, consume less," he says. He admits he really didn't know the construction process. He just learned along the way. "I wasn't interested in working in a food store for the rest of my life, and I've really always loved architecture," he notes, "I had a dream that maybe I would do this for other people; but originally, it was all for designing my own house."
Tumbleweed homes are small, but they are made of the highest quality material. When Shafer's home was completed and people saw what he had built, requests to create more soon came along. Although Tumbleweed Tiny Houses opened for business in 1999, Shafer continued to work at the grocery store until 2004 when sales were good enough for him to quit his full time job. "I didn't want to make the leap too quickly; and it's a good thing I didn't, because it wasn't like I was raking in money hand over fist in the beginning," he reasons.
Tumbleweed sells fully assembled tiny homes; but it primarily sells plans to the homes. The company then tries to hook buyers up with builders and building suppliers. Shafer has been happy with the growth of Tumbleweed during the last five years. In 2000, he was only selling four sets of plans a year; today that number is forty. Shafer now has four employees and a partner.
The sizes of the Tumbleweed homes range from 65 to 874 square feet. Believe it or not, there are laws saying that to be classified as a home, a dwelling has to be larger than Tumbleweed's smaller models. "There are laws that require Americans to build houses of a certain size, and I didn't want to have to meet those," Shafer explains. The solution was to put wheels on his smallest homes, making them seem more like mobile homes. You wouldn't want to constantly drive down a highway with one of these, although you could. The idea is to be able to move the home around a piece of property.
Shafer finds that his customers range from people who want to put an extension to an existing home to those who want vacation homes on remote property. Then there are people who, like himself, live in them full time. It's an inexpensive way to get a little extra living space. Besides the fact that Shafer has no mortgage payment, the utilities for his home cost him only one hundred dollars a year. "I wanted to focus more on the things I wanted to do and not on working for cash so much. It's been very liberating," he says.
Here's a video about Tumbleweed:
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