Home Sweet Tiny Home

In Boone, N.C., a college instructor believes she has found the small solution to a big dream.

“I’ve always wanted to have my own little home on a piece of land to homestead and live as self-sufficiently as possible,” says Tracy Myhalyk, 45, a longtime leaser of her living quarters. “To grow as much of my own food as possible, keep bees for honey, chickens for eggs, and purchase solar and wind energy sources to get off the grid,” she explains.

In 2011, the concept of tiny homes came knocking, introduced by a video of Jay Shafer, the entrepreneur widely credited with popularizing the miniature housing movement. Tiny houses—in case you haven’t heard, or read about them, or watched a reality TV show about them—average about 400 square feet, are sometimes built on wheels, and are viewed by many as a vehicle for reducing housing costs, debt, and environmental impacts. An Asheville workshop the next year further fueled Myhalyk’s interest, and this fall, she announced her plans to build her very own tiny home, with hopes of beginning construction in spring 2016.

“I’m realizing there are alternatives to being chained to a 30-year mortgage for a house that is also very expensive and costly to maintain, heat and cool, insure, et cetera,” Myhalyk says. “Once my home is built, I will be rent and mortgage free.”

“Chained,” “slavery,” and “freedom” are metaphors oft employed by disciples of the tiny home doctrine. Among those spreading the good word are several in Western North Carolina who have gone into business designing, building, and selling turnkey tiny houses.

“It’s the dream of living debt-free and increasing your life experience—[putting a premium on] experience over possessions,” says Teal Brown, who founded Asheville’s Wishbone Tiny Homes with his father two years ago. “People are really attracted by that idea of debt-free and not slaving to a job just to pay the mortgage.”

Over the past four decades in America, new homes have grown increasingly larger: from an average size of 1,660 square feet in 1973 to 2,690 square feet in 2014, according to the U.S. Census. As many in the region can attest, land and homes in the mountains are expensive, with median home values in cities such as Asheville and Boone around $216,000, according to the real estate listing site Zillow. Many long to buck this trend. Millennials—the generation currently between 18 and 33 years old—are thinking small to make ends meet, says real estate agent Scott Turner of Austin, Texas, in a June 2015 article by the National Association of Realtors. “They’re happy with less space and less stuff,” he claims.

That rings true for Annelise Hagedorn of Brevard Tiny House Company, who lived abroad with her husband, Jake, and few belongings, before grad school at Pennsylvania State University. Jake stumbled across the tiny home concept while researching a project in college, and the two decided to build their own and park it outside of State College, Pennsylvania, while they pursued their degrees. The Hagedorns have resided in their pale yellow tiny vessel, which they christened “Keep on the Sunny Side,” for more than two years now. And the project served as a springboard for a new family company, with five more tiny houses built to date. 

“We work with the customer so that the house fits exactly what their lifestyle is like,” says Annelise, whether it’s kitchen counter space for those who love to cook, an extra bed or additional storage, and any number of features and amenities suited for the primary residence, retirement home, vacation cottage, guesthouse, or hunting cabin.

Smaller square footage means fewer materials and less time to build, and it also means lower utility and energy costs. Picture the “Sunny Side” home under a blanket of Pennsylvania snow. “We keep the whole thing warm with one little space heater,” she says. “It feels as warm and comfortable as a regular house.” The houses can also be fitted with small wood stoves, solar panels and water heaters, portable air conditioners, combination washer-dryers, and other appliances.

Park it here

Demand for houses on wheels is high, with mobility a key attraction for tiny home seekers. Among them is Asheville business owner Natalie Pollard, who has lived in a Nanostead home parked on her friends’ property for nearly a year and a half.

“That was part of the motivation of having it on wheels. I like that flexibility,” she explains. “It is nice to have the security of a home without feeling trapped by it—financially, its location. It takes a lot of weight off of owning a home.” 

Pollard’s transition to her tiny haven was borne out of dissatisfaction with the Asheville housing market. “I was unhappy with my current living situation [a two-bedroom house in West Asheville]. I found the rental market in Asheville quite challenging,” she says. “I wasn’t finding anything that felt like home, and I didn’t have the capital to buy a traditional home.” 

She relayed her frustrations to a friend, who asked which types of spaces made Pollard the happiest. “I reflected on that, and all of the places I was happiest were incredibly small—a tiny studio apartment in San Francisco, a vintage trailer in New Zealand, a tent cabin in Yosemite. I owned very little, had less responsibility, and that sense of freedom always made me happy.” She considered a yurt, but there were concerns about durability and comfort in the winter. She ultimately found her answer by casting a ball into ten pins.

Yes, bowling—that’s where she ran into friends seeking the first client for their new company, Nanostead. “We made the decision that night,” she recalls. Pollard agreed to buy Nanostead’s prototype home, and friends in Candler offered parking on their land, about 20 minutes away from Pollard’s urban homestead supply shop, Villagers, in West Asheville. She started a blog, Hello Tiny Home, to chronicle the process of designing, building, and living in her new home on wheels. Since she had never accumulated too many belongings, downsizing wasn’t a colossal undertaking. “Most of the time, my house felt really empty; it didn’t feel comfortable or cozy,“ she says. “For the first time in my life, my house was full of the things I own. It felt really good.”

Electricity is available at the Candler site, and although Pollard’s nano-home is fully plumbed, there are no water hookups in the field. Once or twice a week, she visits her friends’ house to fill her water containers for cooking, drinking, and basic hygiene, and she showers at the gym and yoga studio. “Because I don’t have water, I’m much more conservative about grabbing another dish, and a lot more thoughtful about water consumption,” she notes. “I feel as if I’ve really become more in tune with the resource.”

Pollard’s home has garnered quite a bit of attention and has been featured on CNN, HGTV, Apartment Therapy, and many other outlets.

A Movement Constrained

Of course, tiny home life isn’t all tiny roses. Pollard had Asheville friends willing to let her park the house in their yards or driveways, but stories of people being asked to move steered her westward on Interstate 40. “I prefer living in town,” she says. “As beautiful as it is in Candler, I don’t like driving, so for me that’s been the biggest downside.” Tiny homeowners across the country have run afoul of zoning regulations in cities and counties, which don’t yet know how to classify the structures. Many don’t meet minimum square footage requirements for new homes, and others are barred by restrictions on camping. 

“One of the biggest challenges for living in a tiny house is not a personal challenge, but kind of a political or institutional challenge,” says Annelise Hagedorn. “Finding parking is really hard.” Some homeowners have had success finding space in “eco communities,” she adds, and Brevard Tiny House Company’s first client—an environmental inspector for oil companies—traveled across the Northwest and parked in RV parks. “There are a lot of options,” she says, “but you have to be flexible.” 

Related to parking is another speed bump: finding access to utilities such as electricity, water, and septic. 

“People think off-grid living is really simple. They don’t think much about utilities,” says Wishbone’s Brown. “That’s where it gets really messy and less romantic. We all take such things for granted.” 

Then there’s the downsizing process, which can be daunting. “People have this idea that they can do more in the space,” Brown says. “It’s pretty amazing what they want to fit in. We have to have a difficult conversation: This sectional is not going to work in here.” And while many set eyes on a tiny house to save money, there’s no such thing as a free lunch—and no free homes, either. From the WNC builders, turnkey models range from $30,000 to $75,000. Not all lenders will provide financing for tiny houses, but options are available. 

In Boone, Myhalyk plans to build her own house with new and salvaged materials, using tools and skills loaned from friends in the community. “I feel I will learn and grow throughout the process, as well as feel a sense of pride once complete. I'm sure there will be plenty of frustration and tears along the way, too,” she says. “This is the beginning of a big step in choosing to be responsible for my own footprint and working towards self-sufficiency.” For Myhalyk, making decisions is the most monumental task ahead: “There is an immense amount of information out there compared to just a few years ago—both helpful and overwhelming!”

Skeptics, like Florida State researcher Matt Kelly, view tiny houses as a temporary fad: “They’re not common, and I doubt they’ll ever be a substantial part of the housing market,” he told the National Association of Realtors. But don’t tell that to the town of Spur, Texas, which in 2014 went all in on the movement by removing its square-footage regulations and proclaiming itself the “nation’s first tiny house–friendly town,” with lots available from $500 to $1,800.

And don’t say it to Teal Brown, who in two years has watched interest in Wishbone grow exponentially, especially in terms of website traffic. “It’ll go up from here,” he says. “People are looking from all over the world.”

Reduce, Reuse, Reside

“The stories these walls could tell” takes on new meaning when your home has traveled across the Pacific Ocean. Constructed from steel and built to withstand hurricane-force winds and crashing waves, shipping containers are sturdy structures being converted into a growing number of homes and other buildings.

Founded in 2008, Boone-based DwellBox was the first company in North Carolina to utilize the containers to construct homes. Structural engineer Patrick Beville reviewed the company’s first project, a two-story unit near Appalachian State University with an apartment on top and storage on bottom. Since then, Beville and his firm IONCON Engineering have been involved in about a dozen container home projects, with about half of them followed through to completion.

Several features of containers make them attractive home options, including their strength and durability, uniqueness, and sustainability appeal. “It provides an opportunity to reuse these old shipping containers that otherwise have no other purpose; they would just be scrapped,” says Beville. “It’s a creative approach to providing housing.” 

Cost depends on the situation. More design work is necessary due to structural implications and the fixed dimensions of the containers, he explains. “There’s this idea that people are saving a lot of money, but at the end of the day, that’s not reality,” he says. “It costs just about as much as a stick-built home.”

But with thoughtful design, the 8-by-40-foot containers can be stacked and arranged to create homes ranging from one-bedroom apartments to multi-story metal mansions. Speaking in October, Beville said one of his current clients was proposing a 17-container home. A survivalist commissioned another design, for an underground shelter. And one of the firm’s most recent projects is the Naylor residence—the first shipping container home in Asheville, completed in 2014. Dubbed the “40x28 Home,” the 1,140-square-foot residence cost approximately $110,000, including land, and was built on a standard foundation with two shipping containers and a shed roof.

Commercial uses of container buildings are also on the rise, including the newly opened Smoky Park Supper Club on the French Broad River in Asheville—a 2,400-square-foot restaurant built from 19 shipping containers. “Interest has definitely been picking up,” Beville says.