Month: September 2026

Posted on

Changing the paradigm to succeed! Why not create your path in life? At 71, I hand off the baton to younger generations.


If a homestead space in the coming decades shrinks to reasonable sizes, built of quality materials, all American, cared for, can subdivision sheep leave the flock?

Tiny Texas Houses Newsletter's avatar

TINY TEXAS HOUSES NEWSLETTER

This series of pictures for how to use the materials I am selling in the coming October sale will make it possible to build ten of these houses for under $100,000 in materials. Few choose to do such wonderous things, but I wanted to remind others, it is possible for I did it. the mission was to show others many ways, nearly eighty designs, and variations created out of 95% Pure Salvage. Hope you, those who see these Proof-of-Concept constructs I created under the moniker of Tiny Texas Houses. Please pick up the baton and carry on kids.

As I enter the 71st year here on Earth, I look back and offer some sales to inspire and enable others to carry on the stewardship of these treasures that will build houses for hundreds if they choose. What will the public do instead after they lose the best materials our country ever produced?

Here are some of the houses and chapels I create after starting in 2007 on a dream that 2008 was a transformative time for me… the creation of Tiny Texas Houses and the beginning of a path that would eventually end when my dear son Adam Brad Kittel passed away in Paris France. The thrill was gone.

That lead to creating Salvage, Texas, my ashram to remediate the industrial landfill I had accidentally bought to build Tiny Texas Houses. It was from my ethos based on the best of our past resources being saved, used once more to create the best housing in America. That applied to the land . If you watch the videos you will see that changed for a while too.

Times change…

Tiny was my best way to show in the smallest package, the value of the Jewelry Box Home that could be portable and habitable, taxable in an advantageous way that would allow you to hand it off like an heirloom to your children or grandchildren, much as many of the houses had gone through before we finally salvaged them after 150 years of life.

Homestead can become homesteads again for the masses who do not want a trailer to live in made of materials that doghouse should not be made out of, let alone human housing for sake of all the toxins in the materials used as well as the fact that they are new, adding to the trash, transport, and forced to use due to code written by the manufacturers and required by law.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-189280678

The process has made the builders and buyers of homes victims of a system that is intended to keep you buying materials for maintenance, replacement every 7-10 years, and other traps that modern housing has built into it. While the houses are going up in cost, the value is not as they are limited life disposable homes for the most part.

Sad to see the masses fall for trailers on Wheels (RVs) passed off as houses at high costs for trailers with tires that will rot with the houses sitting on them, but faster than the time it takes to pay off the loans. I wonder at the success of the marketing by big media controlled by advertisers, and others that convince so many that they can live in toxic boxes without enough clean air being exchanged to stay healthy, yet no mention of that anywhere in the industry.

Still, the intention was to show that tiny organic toxin / import-free housing is possible with salvage, American labor, very little environmental damage, and energy cost to build. Paramount was to demonstrate that you can do it locally if you all get together and support Pure Salvage Outposts to teach, build, gather the materials donated by locals, and the wisdom of the craftsman retiring who could teach the few kids who do want to know how to build. Please help where it is needed, locally.

More could be building these houses all over the USA, and trust me, now, many want them. I never understood when I started and thought that many would copy, why no one really took the effort to do it right… Copy my research and methods, please… they were meant to show everyone how to do it, not to do one for everyone who wanted one cheaper than anyone who did not love doing it could build them for.

The profit-driven alternatives, faster, cheaper, toxins-be-damned attitude that took over the industry of tiny housing is disgusting for its lack of attention to the financial and human health of buyers over the decade after purchase.

Can you see the changes in the look from one owner to another? It was in Bastrop on the Colorado River and then moved to West Point, Texas, on a 23-acre setting. That is the beauty of a portable house, not the ugly trailer and narrow size that is not good for decorating or feeling like this makes you feel.

Some things are very hard to duplicate today… especially great stained glass.

So many traps and so few speaking out as the fan club for Tiny Houses on Wheels was touted by all the major networks and pushed into the realm of a monstrous following. Next in this cycle of sale to grave come the consequences, and they have been many but as yet, not getting a lot of attention: health, transport, parking, maintaining tires, etc., will all need to be factored into the big picture before this story can be fully told. Will anyone want to tell it? Not if they were part of making it all happen. They will be gone.

Some know, have paid the price of health, wealth, and the frustration of not being able to find a place to put the giant expensive homes. Time will tell the story, but I always like to put the house on piers and use the trailers that cost megabucks to do other things until needed to move again. Oh well… one can show the path, offer it to all the sheep that pass as they are led to the cliffs by the shepherds who claim to be leading them, but in fact only to their death.

Sheep do not ask where they are being led to, shearing or slaughter. They simply follow the tail in front of them, never questioning and savoring being part of the crowd that shares all their ailments and pains in common. None will know there was a better path unless they get near the fringe of the flock and see the trees, forests, and waters beyond. Instead, they are too busy looking at the ground for the grass or the butt of another sheep to know where to go next. Pity.

Darby Lettick

Posted on

October offers everything you need to build a tiny home… at a price you can afford to make your dreams come true.

Siding, flooring, trim, windows, doors, walls, roofing, and plans to put it together if you like. What are you dreaming of for the end of 2026? Are you getting ready for a spell of homesteading, gardening, or getting away from the city to a weekend retreat that you have yet to build? I have a plan for you. What do you need? If you have the materials, can you make the rest happen locally, with people to help build it out?

Beginning in October we will be selling off massive amounts of materials to build with at a 75% discount off from what it would have cost normally. This includes all things from the lumber to the siding, windows, and doors, as well as roofing metal or other items in stock. The weekends will be open for people to come in and load up trucks, trailers, and likely not spend more than a grand or two to do it. Yes, all the parts it would take to build a tiny house like the Kidd or Gingered Swan for a couple grand.

What sort of Christmas present are you looking for? There are many ways to make this possible for you or those you love. Please get in touch if you want to put a package of materials together that will make it possible for you to assemble such a treasure.

For those who are not aware, we quite building houses a few years ago and virtually shut down operations for the last 10 years. After my son, Adam, passed away at 24 years old I have no heirs left and chose not to continue working my 80 hour weeks and being and employer.

Pure Salvage Living llc was sold off to a younger man and Trinity to care for as I was no longer inspired to run a business or have workers to manage. During the last decade I have focused on self improvement, Youthing, and trying to resolve the Bank going predator on me in 2016 when they decided to take the land rather than let me pay it off as it was worth two million on the tax rolls and I only owed $320,000. I also had learned that the land had been used as an industrial waste site for a decade before I bought it and it was contaminated, flowing into the San Marcos River. I wanted to remediate it and make the land productive again, which I set out to do with the creation of the water network required to keep the contamination from running into the San Marcos River, a thousand feet away.

The bank eventually won their battle to take all the land but they refused to deal with the fact that it was contaminated and thus they would have to clean it up once they learned of the problem, or so I thought. They instead chose to hide the known facts and try to get others to buy the judgment they took out on me so as to get around the CERCLA laws that would have required they clean up the property before reselling it if they took it in foreclosure. Instead they set up a proxy to buy it and financed it to him, along with taking all my other property too. Their goal appeared to be get rid of me an no one would know that the land is seriously damaged and must be addressed rather than just go back to letting it drain into the San Marcos River.

So, after decades of battling, selling off most all I had to survive, including the business known as Pure Salvage Living. Luckily, I still work as a salesman and have a chance to offer up some great opportunities to start up Pure Salvage Outposts so as to build more tiny houses locally instead of paying tens of thousands of dollars to move them.

The big Estate Sale for October includes table after table of small things that came out of the many houses torn down over the years that Tiny Texas Houses and Pure Salvage Living llc were operating. The tables are full of things ranging from lamps, appliances, tools, and all the things that people save in houses for decades.

There will be bundles of wood, from flooring to siding to pick from and create your dream doghouses, She Shacks, Man Caves, and Greenhouses. I have thousands of windows to pick from, over a thousand doors, and much trim, siding, beaded wood, and other parts to use to create your dream houses.

From $10-$25 for cheap doors to a few hundred for giant pocket doors or fancy doors in Walnut or Cypress, Long Leaf Pine, and other woods from the north. We once brought in doors from Buffalo, NY, St. Louis, Lincoln, Nebraska, Quincy, Ill., and other places far from Texas for some great variety.

Contact us at Brad@PureSalvageliving.com for an appointment to come and visit before the sales begin in October to clear out as much as possible from the warehouses before the end of 2026.