Living large in a tiny home

Shaye and Tom Boddington are hardly alternative types – he trained as an engineer, while she’s worked as a web designer – yet together they’ve done something completely against the mainstream.

These days house prices in some areas have risen to seven times what the average couple earns, leaving many young families struggling to buy a basic first home and staring down a lifetime of debt and job stress. Yet Shaye and Tom have done it differently; they taught themselves basic building skills from You Tube, spent around $800 on tools, and have just completed a beautiful first home for only $24,000.

And let’s be clear here: this is no slapped-together affair. It’s strictly to building code; weather-tight, stylish and snug (it’s insulated to R2 standard) with on-demand hot water, a shower, gas, and mains electricity.

It’s just that at less than 15m², it’s absolutely tiny.

Why so small?

“We’ve lived quite normal lives in the past with conventional jobs and chasing the money,” says Shaye. “But we’ve found that simplicity brings so much more happiness into our lives and we’re looking to do that now as much as possible.”

For Shaye and Tom – both 27, and expecting their first child in September – simplicity is about getting what you want, by getting rid of what you don’t need, plus applying a little resourcefulness and hard work. And what they want in life is to put family ahead of debt and work, and embrace sustainable living through good design.

Those basic ideas have seen a life plan fall into place for the pair. These days Shaye runs a bulimia recovery programme, with Tom providing the tech support – which leaves them with lots of spare time, but a modest income.

So instead of buying a badly built house in the suburbs, they decided to buy the most beautiful piece of undeveloped land they could afford – a sunny 4.8 hectares of native bush pocked with grassy clearings and fruit trees in Oratia, at the base of the Waitakere Ranges in West Auckland.

It’s land they can see themselves growing old on – and watching the kereru and rosellas chase each other around the stands of kahikatea trees, it’s easy to see why.

Here, they plan to build a high-spec, architecturally-designed straw-bale family home, again using skills they’ve learned themselves, but this time helped by overseas and local workers sourced on the Internet. Several intrepid travellers have already booked in to camp on site next summer and help with construction in return for the natural building knowledge they’ll pick up.

It’s an elegant plan, but of course it left them needing a place to live while they build their home, which is where the tiny cottage known as ‘Lucy’ comes into the story.

Built on a sturdy steel wheeled base to just under the maximum size, Lucy is legally considered a covered trailer – meaning no expensive and time-consuming consent process was needed. Shaye and Tom worked out that building her would cost about the same as renting off-site, yet leave them with an asset at the end of it. And because she’s mobile they reckon on renting her to other people once they move out.

Small is green

Reducing their impact on the planet was another reason Shaye and Tom chose to live in such a tiny home.

“Environmentally, it makes sense,” says Shaye. “The less material you use the less pressure you put on resources, and the less it costs. You need less heating and cooling and spend less money on upkeep – it just makes sense in every sense.”

The pair also chose to use recycled, rescued or eco-friendly materials for much of the build – which proved cheap and easy. With such a small construction area they were able get quality end-of-line flooring material for a bargain, and their beautiful wooden window frames were all free, rescued from villas that were having aluminium ones installed.

Then for framing they chose timber treated with a mild borax salt rather than the standard arsenic and chromium treatment, and lined the inside with ecoply, which doesn’t use formaldehyde-based glue. For insulation they chose GreenStuf, which is made partly out of old plastic bottles.

“We’re definitely not hippies,” Shaye insists. “We’re just normal people who are very conscious of how lucky we are to live in a country like New Zealand and want to keep it the way it is – and keep improving.”

What about the bathroom?

In fact, the only “hippie” thing about the house is the toilet. Rather than flushing with water it opens into a chamber of resinous wood shavings, with an extra handful dropped in after every visit. The chamber gets emptied regularly into a composting area.

It sounds disgusting, but is completely innocuous – even pleasant, with the fresh smell of the wood shavings.

“I was a bit sceptical, and I thought I’d just leave it until we got something better, but it’s worked so well and it’s really cheap,” laughs Shaye. “So we’ve just hung on to it. With a pregnant nose I really would be able to tell if there was any smell!”

Good design

Despite having a floor size smaller than some walk-in wardrobes, the first thing that strikes you about Shaye and Tom’s place is the feeling of spaciousness. It’s a bit like Dr Who’s Tardis – it feels much bigger on the inside than it looks from outside.

Partly that’s to do with the ceiling height, which is effectively two stories, but it also comes from clever, uncluttered design. Storage for the couple’s clothing doubles as the staircase; there’s an ottoman in the living area that’s also a chest, and when it’s finished their dining room table will fold into a flat artwork to hang on the main room’s feature wall.

Shaye believes you can do a lot with clever design and by doing away with wasted areas like corridors: “By the time you take away all that space you could halve the size of your house and still have something that feels as big.” Amazingly, they can happily host eight in their living area – though perhaps a bigger challenge to their living small ethic will be the arrival of baby.

The straw bale house

Shay and Tom got interested in building with natural materials a few years ago and started researching and attending courses. It appealed to them that you could build something that would last, yet when demolished would melt back into the land without a trace. They built a small cob studio dubbed Henry, plus a clay pizza oven for a friend, and were hooked.

They decided on straw bale construction for their future dream home and started sketching ideas and reading. Again, good design made a happy marriage with sustainability and the pair were able to pare the house’s footprint down to 120m²; much large than Lucy, but still small for a four bedroom home.

Shaye in particular was struck by something she read about kids’ bedrooms – that children find it disturbing to be in a big room alone – so they designed three children’s sleeping nooks just large enough for a bed and desk that opened on to a larger communal play area.

Waiting for the weather

Come summer the volunteers they’ve recruited to help with the build will start arriving. Shaye and Tom are ready to start building now, but decided to delay so the warm weather would make it more of a holiday for their international guests. The straw will be sourced from somewhere in the lower North Island, then baled and stacked around a sturdy timber frame. Then a mixture of mud and sand will be plastered on the outside and allowed to cure, before being finished with a layer of lime.

Tom says the half metre-thick walls will have an “absolutely massive” R-value of at least six, and that combined with good eaves the vapour-permeable walls will function like a Gore-Tex jacket, drawing moisture out of the house and keeping it snug. New Zealand is ahead of the curve with natural building standards, Tom reckons, and they’ll be constructing to an official building code based on guidelines for rammed earth houses. They estimate the cost will be less than $100,000.

Looking forward

For now then, Tom and Shaye are getting comfortable in their tiny home, looking forward to the arrival of baby, and making plans in the way that only those with youth, energy, and optimism can.

For instance, the entrance to their main house will pass through a grove of tall trees, and an arborist friend has suggested building a breakfast platform suspended by wires high among them. Meanwhile, they plan to build a natural swimming pool in the meadow below the straw bale home – and they both think a flying fox from the house into the water sounds fun. ‘Simple’ obviously doesn’t have to mean ‘boring’ – and of course the pair will tackle building the pool and flying fox together.

“You can save so much by doing it yourself,” enthuses Shaye. “Just do it – don’t complain about the cost of houses these days – do it yourself. Get creative!”

Want to learn more about tiny houses and natural building? Visit www.diyhousebuilding.com.