This book began as a pattern book illustrating several tiny houses that could be built affordably as vacation homes. Lester Walker, the book’s author, is an architect who wanted to help people with a variety of carpentry skills build a little dream home in less than a month. But, just as Walker began to lay out a book that included 20 houses and their floor plans, the idea began to change.
As he began to tell people about his book idea, they began to give him suggestions on great tiny houses that he should take a look at. And, he did. From Henry Thoreau’s cabin (150 sq. feet) on Walden Pond in Concord, MA to George Bernard Shaw’s writing hut (64 sq. feet) at the bottom of his English garden to a fisherman’s shack (192 sq. feet) downeast in Maine, he visited them all. More importantly, Walker took photos and captured the stories of the people living in these little houses.
While there are no plans available for the houses in the book, there are drawings that were reduced in size on the same scale. If you are interested in one in particular, you can compare them to others in the book and get a plan of your own together. If tiny houses are your thing, then you will find inspiration in this book.
“The Tiny Book of Tiny Houses” was originally published in 1993 and a new version of this book is coming out on January 7, 2010. You can buy the original 96-page book through Overlook Press or pre-order the new edition on Amazon. Which ever you chose to do, you won’t be disappointed.
