For Chloe Barcelou and Brandon Batchelder, building a small house was not just about having a nice and compact place to live, it was a way to get out of a routine. As production designers who work in films and photos sets in 2010, it seemed that they were continually struggling to scrape enough money for basic needs.
“We were sharing the same vehicle to go to multiple jobs, juggling with this really crazy schedule and feeling that we work all the time, but we never had enough money to get to the end of the month or even spend quality time together,” said Mrs. Barcelou, now 35 years old, describing the life of the couple in Nashua, NH “was only this frustrating situation of”, how do we leave this? “
When they were used to design the sets and costumes for the 2015 independent film “Aimy in a Jage”, it was both a dream job and a lifeguard. Between the money they obtained and the materials they could claim from the set after the filming ended, they thought, they could build, well, something.
Wishing their own house that allows them to stop sinking money for rent, but lacking resources to buy a conventional house, Mrs. Barcelou saw a small and towable house online, which seemed like a possible solution.
As soon as she mentioned the idea of ​​Mr. Batchelder, she hugged her. “Not not to be too dramatic about our situation, but it seemed that we could never be homeless if we built a house on wheels,” said Mr. Batchelder, 44. “I could always go with us, no matter what was happening in our lives.”
Mr. Batchelder, an expert carpenter, spent the following months designing the home. But with a style for the fantastic, no simple shed would. Inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s film “Howl’s Moving Castle”, Oceanic ships and steam trunks, designed a structure that could collapse to travel, but then expanded with an emerging roof and emerging walls to become a home of approximately 280 square feet with a 10 -feet roof of 10 -feet leaf of 10 feet inside.
Looking for Craigslist, the couple found a car carrier for $ 1,000 to use as a rolling base of their home. After making their own publication in Craigslist in search of a place to build their small house, they received a response from the home owners in Hampton, NH, who were willing to let them use part of their patio and electricity, for free.
The project attracted the interest of HGTV, which filmed the construction of the house shell, including a manual hoist polipastum that Mr. Batchelder devised with the wheel, pulleys and rope of an old ship, for the show “Tiny House, Big Living”.
The basic structure was completed in just a few months. “We call it a wooden tent,” Barcelou said. “But there was no plumbing, neither electricity, nor shelves, nor anything.”
During the following years, the couple continued to add a comfort of one creature after another while they were also learning from their mistakes, such as having to replace the outer coating and isolation when they did not control the interior humidity. Even once the house was largely complete, they began again, renewing and reorganizing the space inside.
In its last iteration, captured in the book “Tales of a Not So Tiny House”, which will be published by Rizzoli this month, the kitchen is designed as a highly efficient space in the round. A device that Mr. Batchelder calls “a not so lazy Susan” provides storage and sliding steps under the refrigerator, to access the previous shelves. Around the sink, they built storage shelves that double as drying racks with drains.
To go with their composting toilet and a folding metal sink in the bathroom, they built a scrap shower, which they bought for $ 20 and adorned with rivets to remember a submarine. The shower door has an ox -shaped window made of an old Crockpot lid, bought for $ 1.
When most scrap materials, second -hand stores, commercial stalls and the side of the road, also built elaborate storage walls with reused pipes and trunks, which open to reveal shelf and storage compartments with scores.
The construction of the original structure costs approximately $ 10,000, and since then they have spent around another $ 10,000 in renovations, they estimated.
Currently, the house is parked in the patio of the house of parents of Mrs. Barcelou in New Hampshire, where it is connected to water supplies by heated hoses and electricity with a high -resistance extension cable. The couple lives in the house full -time and contributes to the family complex by paying a monthly rental of $ 500. But when and where they want to go next, they can simply collapse their small house and take it with them.
Even after living in such a small space for a decade, they rarely feel they need more. “Every time we make an improvement, the space feels a bit larger,” Batchelder said. After all the improvements and changes, he said: “It is surprising how much bigger it is here now.”
