From the home front: Pallet building tips; Pallet House; tiny house ...

Frank Vincentz, Wikimedia CommonsUsed wood pallets stack up, ready for creative repurposing.

Building with pallets: Doug Calderone contributes a post on Tiny House Blog about his project of building a tiny house out of salvaged wood shipping pallets. He started by looking into the various kinds and sources of pallets he could find. Then, after collecting a dozen truckloads of pallets, he experimented with building with them. First came Adirondack chairs, then a chicken coop. He says:

"Pallets need to be looked at as building blocks, like Legos for example. Drawing up plans is still a good idea, but the dimensions and structural integrity of pallets needs to be the main factor in design."

Calderone's tiny house is still to come, but there's a bunch of information here for anyone interested in using pallets for construction.
 
Pallet House: Jetson Green discusses a 250-square-foot prototype home made out of salvaged wood pallets and designed by I-Beam Design:

"The project was built using 100 recycled pallets placed by 4-5 workers with hand tools. The 250-square foot prototype home takes no more than a week to raise and can be used as a transitional shelter or as an alternative to something like a tent."
 

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The Oregonian’s continuing coverage of tiny houses.

Swoon-worthy: This new site is downright dangerous, enticing visitors to linger on with photos of gorgeous tiny and small homes, page after page of them, all demanding to be seen and appreciated. Got some great photos of your own? You can submit them there to share with others. The site, Tiny House Swoon, was launched by Steven Harrell of Tiny House Listings, who introduces the site in a post here. Happy browsing!

Tiny house for family of four: A recent episode of "Anderson" featured a couple who chose to downsize radically when they encountered financial adversity, with a plan to rebuild their lives. Mother Nature Network says:

"After losing their business, a restaurant, during the recession, Carl and Hari sold their comfortable three-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot home and began living in an 168-square-foot shed built primarily from Craigstlist-sourced reclaimed materials for $12,000. While the 8-by-12-foot tiny home is mighty cute, let's not forget that the Carl and Hari aren't its only inhabitants: their two elementary school-aged children live there as well, sharing a sleeping loft above the bathroom."

Hari explains in the video that they're now able to bank her whole salary. "The tiny house is part of a long-term plan to build a mortgage-free, larger house -- but the house will still be small," she says. They want each person to have some private space; plus they yearn for a bathtub.

 About the tiny house, she says: "We just have exactly what we need, and not a lot more."
 
-- Pat Jeffries