Andrew and Gabriella have been living minimally for over seven years and in that time have discovered that in living with the least, they’ve experienced the most. Escaping the rat-race and forging a new path for themselves has been one of the best decisions they’ve ever made.
Andrew has been teaching people how to build their own dream homes since 2004 and before that time was a contractor/developer. He and Gabriella designed and built the “hOMe” tiny house after being inspired by their time living off-grid on the beaches of Baja, Mexico in their tiny pop-up tent trailer. They launched TinyHousePlans.com after seeing a need for a fun, comprehensive, and central place for tiny house dreamers to fall in love with architectural plans. They’re thrilled you’ve come to visit!!
Our Goal & Mission
Andrew and I came about the tiny house movement in 2009, right around the time when it was really starting to boom on the media scene. The more we read, the hungrier we got for more ideas, content, and images. All of a sudden we had a context and understanding for the struggles we were experiencing in having just moved into our ‘dream’ house; a large house in an exclusive neighborhood which by all means, should have brought us immense joy and contentment.
But why was our family dynamic falling apart? At the time our kids were 9 and 12 and whereas we had lived in smaller and more modest homes before (which virtually demanded contact), now that we were in this much larger and fancier home, we all found ourselves scattered to each corner of the house.
Spare time was spent working harder to make more money to pay for the higher living costs. Weekends were spent cleaning. Where we used to say ‘yes’ to kids, we found ourselves saying, ‘Sorry, we’re too busy’.
Our downsizing process and was intense and dramatic but after all these years, there’s still NOTHING that we miss!
We knew something had to change…our family dynamic was at risk and being that we had moved into our ‘dream’ house to create a ‘happier’ life for ourselves, we knew something was amiss.
Discovering the tiny house movement opened our eyes and pulled back the veils of illusion. Suddenly we saw that we had fallen into the trap of propaganda…bigger was NOT better.
We got rid of the house, 90% of our belongings, and began our process of designing our own tiny house, the 28′ hOMe. We’ve been in our tiny house since 2013 and couldn’t be happier. Each of the kids has their own sleeping cabins but hOMe is the central gathering place; the bathroom, kitchen, and TV lounge area are all in our tiny house.
Our 28′ hOMe tiny house which we designed still meets all our needs
Our kids absolutely love their connection to our tiny house compound. Though they are now both attending university (one is an Environmental Studies and the other an Environmental Science major at UO…yay!), our times all back together in our tiny house compound are our favorites.
Living tiny has brought us closer to our goals (being close to our family, saving money, surrounding ourselves with what we love most). It has taught our kids a new way of living in this world. It has saved a ton of environmental resources (we are 100% off the grid at our compound).
One of our 20 or so in person tiny house workshops…so fun!!
We are very passionate about tiny house living. We started a website called TinyHouseBuild.com in 2013 and created several step-by-step how to build resources (Andrew was a builder and developer for about 20 years before stepping into the tiny house movement). We co-authored the national tiny house building code; Appendix Q, which was adopted after a long and intense voting/adoption process within the International Residential Code (IRC). We have taught dozens of in-person tiny house workshops all around the country and even internationally.
We have presented on dozens of stages and tiny house festivals, always advocating for the benefits of living tiny. We’ve been tickled pink to be on major media sites including the Diane Sawyer World News Show, the Today Show, Huff Post, the Daily Mail, three documentaries, dozens of print magazine/newspaper publications, been featured in three issues of Fine Homebuilding (Andrew’s bible) including their special Small Houses yearly edition, dozens of radio/podcast interviews, and more.
Being asked to write the Idiot’s Guide to Tiny Houses as a substantial but fun challenge
We were commissioned to write the Idiot’s Guide to Tiny Houses, were flown to Jamaica to meet the Prime Minister about tiny houses, flown to Sao Paulo Brazil to present before the country’s Director of Finance. Andrew gave an absolute kick ass TEDx presentation on the real costs of housing and why tiny house living makes so much sense. We were also the very first tiny house video to reach over 10M views on YouTube.
Andrew while giving a presentation to hundreds of grumpy code officials at the IRC code hearings in Kansas City…his efforts created a national building code for tiny houses!
It’s been a wild ride but we have loved virtually every single moment of it (except when Andrew and his assembled team had to present in front of hundreds of grumpy building code officials at the IRC hearings in Kansas City to try to persuade them that the code he was proposing was safe, viable and necessary…I didn’t breathe I don’t think through their whole hearing but in the end we won!!).
Our mission is to empower others…YOU, to step into your best version of your life. Our purpose is to provide people with the resources they’ll need to build their own tiny house.
Andrew hanging out while building hOMe
We are committed to TinyHousePlans.com and to creating a one-stop shopping location where you can browse through a large selection of beautiful and complete architectural plans. We bring over 20 years of construction, design, code creation, and plans reading experience into every potential set of plans presented to us.
Andrew and myself are always available to answer any questions you may have. We hope you’ll take the plunge and step into your dream tiny house life. We can’t recommend it more highly and as of yet, we haven’t met anyone who has regretted their decision to make the move to tiny.
What about you? What brings you to tiny? Send me an email to my personal address: [email protected] We would love to hear your story! <3
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Andrew and Gabriella have been living minimally for over seven years and in that time have discovered that in living with the least, they’ve experienced the most. Escaping the rat-race and forging a new path for themselves has been one of the best decisions they’ve ever made.
