Our Tiny House Journey [part one]

Our Tiny House

Starting the Process

We had been traveling for just over three years with Bryan's job when we started looking into tiny homes and if going tiny might be an option for us.  

We were tired of looking for rentals with short term leases, tired of paying deposits and being worried that Bryan wouldn't be able to extend his contract (therefore having to cancel a rental agreement), tired of dealing with crappy management and tired of the two animal only (which we always broke) policies. We wanted something of our own! 

We were living in the Salt Lake City area at the time; I can remember riding in the car with Bryan and the kids - we were fussing and complaining about our current rental woes (we had renewed for another assignment and the monthly rent had gone up $300 a month!!) and tiny house living seemed like a great option!  

Of course, Bryan had mentioned RV living years ago when we started traveling and I shut that down hardcore.  How on earth could we all live in an RV? Five people and multiple animals? Insane! 

Somehow, 3 years later and 4 rentals later - the idea seemed less crazy. Sorry, Bryan! 

When we got home we started looking up tiny homes on yahoo, instagram, facebook, pinterest, everywhere; gathering all the info that we could.  We started taking screenshots and pinning houses, styles, and ideas that we liked. We binged every show on tiny houses we could find (Tiny House Nation, Tiny Luxury, Tiny House Finders). 

Together, we came up with a rough draft of what we thought we would need/want in a tiny home (thank you graph paper!!) and then the search for a builder began. 

We located a builder 30mins from where we were living at the time and set up an appointment to go tour their current builds.  

It was Halloween day 2017 - we were able to stand in a tiny that just had the rough walls up and envision what it would be like to live in a tiny house.  We had decided this is what we wanted to do!  We were so excited to start this journey and to get the process moving! 

Unfortunately, this particular tiny house company was not as excited to work with us as we were to work with them.  We spent the next 5 weeks trying to get them to communicate with us and get the process started.  With failed promise after failed promise and many emails and phone calls, we decided this was not what we wanted out of a builder.  Someone who had no communication skills and didn't seem like they wanted to work with us. Adios! 

Even though we were discouraged by this and really angry - we can look back and say that this was such a blessing! God had better plans and a better builder in store for us! 

We found our builders on facebook, through one of the many tiny house groups we had joined. I can't remember the exact question/post I was commenting on, but this very informative lady, Tina, responded and gave me a lot of information and even offered to email me more info.  She mentioned that she owned a Tiny House building company and would be happy to answer any questions we might have.  

A couple days later we were on a conference call with Tina discussing our build and deciding that she and her husband's (Luke) company would be the ones to build our home! 

Backcountry Tiny Homes in Vancouver, WA would be building our 30ft long, 8.5ft wide, 13.5ft high home! 

Within the first 3 weeks of talking with Tina we had our whole home spec'd out! (a million times better than the local builder!) BTH (backcountry tiny homes) was amazing at communication and extremely professional! We couldn't be happier! 

Once we had the plans all worked out (photos above), we got in line to get our home built!  We were able to plan it so that we could pick up the home between assignments in August of 2018! 

From our first conversation with Tina to picking up our fully built and road ready tiny was 8 months!  

It was a long process, but so well worth it!  And we were able to make some life long friends with our builders along the way. Priceless.

Being able to design our home (with the help of BTH) and then watch the process of it being built (even though we were nearly 1000 miles away) was amazing and so much fun! In big part thanks to Tina and Luke at Backcountry Tiny Homes! 

Our biggest advice for anyone thinking of going tiny or in the early process of finding someone to build them a tiny is to select your builders with the upmost care!

Your builders can make or break your build!  We were so blessed and lucky to be steered away from a company that had little to no communication skills (and later found out that their builds were not top notch either)!  If you are going to be living far away from your build then communication is going to be a TOP priority!  

Other than communication, things to consider when choosing a builder:

1. Ask for references.  Builders who are proud of their work will be happy to give you contact info from previous clients.  If they aren't willing to do this, then you may want to consider a different builder. 

Yelp and facebook reviews are also very helpful - people are far more likely to write bad reviews than good ones, so you may find some helpful info there as well. 

2. Location - before we started our process, I would have said that location was a big deal and would want to pick someone close to where we physically lived.  But after our experience with BTH, I would say picking the right builder (with all the skills, communication and experience that you want) is far more important than their location.  Many tiny home builders deliver their builds (for an extra price) all over the country and some to Canada as well (including BTH).  So location would not be one of my top concerns (as long as they have good communication). 

3. Pricing - are they in your budget, are they charging a good/solid amount and not inflating the price?  You also may want to see if they offer financing (if needed), as many do not. 

4. Before you contact a builder, do your research.  Search the internet, watch the tiny house shows, join tiny house groups on facebook (and ask tons of questions!).  Find out what you like and don't like, make lists of things you want and don't want in your home.  This will make your search for a builder easier and also help the design process move quicker. 

Next up!  

We'll talk about the build process and brag on our builders a bit more :) 

-Bethany