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?
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