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    Humble Homes; Tiny House Plans Book by Derek Diedricksen

    by Eric · This post may contain affiliate links, its one way we pay the bills. ·

    Looking for tiny house plans? Here they are. The Tiny House or Small House movement has a number of well known thought leaders, Derek Diedricksen leads by building Tiny Houses. Derek is the author of a new book of tiny house plans and ideas, Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts
    .
    The best way to describe Deek's book is a mash up of Tiny House Architecture meets Comic Zine.

    Reviews of the book describe it in a similar way, Mad Magazine meets This Old House meets Wayne's World.

    And the book is very GardenFork; unpretentious and not afraid to be who he is, Deek fits right in in the GardenFork world. Taking found materials, stuff you find in your neighbor's garbage, and building Tiny Houses with fun names. "TV Viewing Fort Cube" and "The Yeehaw Spa" are just two of the many small house designs in the book.

    Deek's book is an idea starter, not a book of finished tiny house plans, its a book to start you on 100 ideas of how to build a tiny house that fits your world. Each page is jammed with what comes out of his head - which is similar to how my head works, i just can't draw or drink as much caffeine.

    Derek "Deek" Diedricksen in one of his tiny houses

    You will read each page more than once, you will forget what page your were on and it wont matter, because whatever page you land on is filled with more cool ideas. If this book were designed like most how-to books, it would be 400 pages.

    This book will take you on many tangents and you will land somewhere unplanned, but that's a good thing, I think.

    Deek was on GardenFork Radio talking about how to build a tiny house and other fun tangents, you can listen to the show here. Deek's website is RelaxShacks.com

     

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    1. House plans with photos of interior

      Prologue

      Four photos were laid out on the dusty bed. Four people stared up at an old woman looking down upon them, they were smiling and she wasn’t. Her face was crinkled and her lips pursed. It was as if it hurt her to look at these pictures, even though they were of total strangers - strangers that she would soon meet.
      The old woman with the purple and burnt-orange head scarf had been waiting in the small dank room for hours, planning; making sure everything was perfect so nothing could go wrong. The ceremony had to go as planned, like it had done exactly sixty years ago.
      She remembered back to that night, how she had been so beautiful and young; A lively girl in a little black dress who was celebrating her seventeenth birthday with her boyfriend. There had been about to head off to a ball when she changed her mind. She was going to follow her heart, and follow the instructions of the anonymous letter that had arrived earlier that day. She wasn’t sure if her boy had been upset by this turn of events, because she never saw him again.
      She had escaped her friends and caught a train to inner Melbourne where it took almost an hour to find the destination she was looking for... she was a little bit surprised at what she had found but was shocked at what those people had told her...
      A tear fell upon one of the frozen smiling faces. It was a girl with blonde hair and grey eyes, she looked so happy and peaceful, and the old woman preyed that these kids wouldn’t make the same mistakes that she did when she found out her fate, like these youths were going to in a matter of hours...
       
      Chapter one – Bonnie
      Never in a million years would I have imagined my parents forgetting my birthday, but they did. I woke up to a quite house; my bedroom was filling with morning light which shone on my white chest of drawers and four-poster bed. I had been working towards a new look in my room for over a year, saving up my money which I got from working at a fruit shop down the road. It was finally starting to look like me – clean, peaceful with a creative flair. All the furniture was white, and the accessories were mostly greens and yellows.
      I had asked for a new desk, and to be honest, I expected it, but when I entered the kitchen where mum was sitting by herself sipping coffee I knew I didn’t get it – or anything.
      “Morning mum,” I said sitting down at the table too, smiling. And I knew instantly by the look on her face that she was horrified at herself. It took her a moment to actually gather any words together. She straightened out her dressing gown, took another gulp of coffee and then stuttered for a while before saying.
      “Happy seventeenth Bon!”
      I was shocked. But I didn’t have the heart to be angry. I just sat there, looking around our spacious wood-interior kitchen, in silence. She studied me for a moment, her grey eyes which were so much like my own showed guilt, her brow was creased. Then she sighed.
      “You’re a good girl you know, and your father and I thought that because you’re older now, and you deserve a present that you want, you can choose your own. Your dad will give you the money.”
      If I was any normal person who didn’t always feel bad after arguing I would have jumped down my mum’s throat at this point. It was a good excuse, I give her that, but really – I was older, like she had said, I can tell when something has been made up on the spot. I would have also pulled my short and plump dad back into the room where he had appeared whistling tune only moments before.
      “Thanks mum... and I know you and dad have been caught up in the business at the moment, so it’s okay that you forgot my birthday. I’m going to have a shower.”
      I left her with a stunned expression and her coffee, and went back up to my room. It wasn’t exactly the best start to my birthday, my seventeenth birthday which I had been working towards for months. I wanted it to be the best day... I wanted it to be the start of a new me, a more courageous and exciting me. I guess it’s true that a leopard can’t change his spots – for now...
      Our house is modern and spacious. I am an only child so there’s plenty of room and because mum’s a clean freak nothing is ever out of place. It’s not clinical though, it still feels like home in every possible way. The bathroom was tiled and a double shower was set in the corner near the cedar bench. I walked over to the mirror and I was about to examine my face when I got this sudden surge. I needed to be wet, near water. I had to soak my pale skin; I wanted the small water droplets to roll down my stomach and to eventually soak through... I ran a bath as quickly as I could and stripped down to nothing. I tied my wavy blonde hair into a bun before letting it out again – I wanted every part of my body to be soaking in water.

      what do you think?
      thanks :))

    Trackbacks

    1. [...] Podcast: Play in new window | Download Tiny House Designer Deek Diedricksen joins Sarah and Eric to talk about how to build a tiny house of your own, how to use recycled materials in your tiny house, and how he published his book of Tiny House Designs,Humble Homes, Simple Shacks, Cozy Cottages, Ramshackle Retreats, Funky Forts Deek and Eric talk about green building techniques, aka ‘Curbside Culling’ and how you can build a house with stuff your neighbors throw out. Eric’s Plywood Boat video is based on Deek’s design for a plywood boat he did for Make Magazine and on today’s show a discussion of how to build a boat from one sheet of plywood with zero skills, and how one can modify the plywood boat that we built on GardenFork. Deek will be teaching at several Tumbleweed Tiny House Workshops in Miami and perhaps Boston. Treehouse plans and how to attach a treehouse to a tree comes up next, Deek tells us a few different ways to secure a treehouse up in a tree, using recycled materials, of course. Plans for a tree house workshop are in a the works, and a tiny house houseboat is in the nascent stages. Deek’s advice for how high to build a treehouse is not build it too high in the tree, and hardwood trees are better to secure tree houses to. Overbuild your tree house while keeping the weigh to a minimum is the mantra. We name drop with Deek, talking about Andrew Odom, tiny house building and blogger, who was on this GF Radio episode, you can check out Andrew’s site here, and Eric talked about Gennaro Brooks-Church, green building contractor who talked about green building techniques in this episode of GardenFork.TV The dilemma of curbside culling is next, what to do with all the recycled materials one picks up? Deek says to go ahead and build stuff with them. We do a book review of Deek’s book here, take a look at some of the drawings inside Deek’s Tiny House book. [...]