Tag: #tinyhomes

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Taking a different path to housing that lasts for a lifetime instead of just a few decades. A home that can move with the family someday, not just be left behind.

MARCH 1, 2026 BY TINYTEXASHOUSES

Here is a bathroom window that will be right next to the toilet. Trim added, not fully oiled, nor painted, still in progress.

What does it mean to be screwed? Screwed together, that is, not with nails, but torx head screws to hold the pieces until the nails are added once I am sure all things are where I want them to be.

Every piece you see was salvaged from another home and saved to use to create a home that will last for a century. This is wood from mature, well-aged trees. Walnut trees take decades to begin producing walnuts, let alone usable lumber to build with. Texas was stripped of its best Black Walnut over 100years ago, much like the giant Cypress that were all cut down during the days of the lumber barons who paid with tokens they pressed themselves instead of paying with usable currency, effectively keeping their workers enslaved and only able to spend their earnings at company stores, renting company housing, and doomed to have nothing if they get fired from their job and forced to leave the lumber camps, family and all. Desperation and poor wages forced the children to start working at 12 years old or earlier if able, cleaning the sawmills at night while the work crews slept.

Rather than throw away life energy and man-hours after using the trim and wood for just a single home, why not turn this treasure into new homes for the millions who need them? Why build McMansions built to last perhaps 30 years that few can afford or maintain when you can create homes that last for lifetimes instead?

If variety is the spice of life, then this house holds more life than any other made in a factory. It is full of love, pride in craftsmanship, and the promise to sustain itself as a home with a little care, and to be portable on the day when the land is worth too much to live on due to the taxes. If you want to move, you can take your home with you, though not behind a pickup truck; a big semi can move it to another state or just deeper into the country if the city gets too close.

Why not have stained glass in the bathroom? Why not have fancy trim? It barely costs more than the garbage at the big box store, but most do not even know it can be had, and builders will not add the character and detail because their profit margins are so high.

I only have a few screws holding all the trim on the windows and doors. Once I am happy with how they look and the fit, I will add nails to finish them. Would you believe that some of the windows have only 9 screws holding up all the trim? I love Torx head screws.

I used up the last of a very fine and rare Black Walnut and Butternut trim that has a Black Walnut rope laid into the trim and the borders, which we may repaint white again.

Tiger Oak doors for bathroom walls, parts from at least a dozen houses or more, consolidated and married to other parts and pieces for a lifetime ahead. I wonder how many humans will live here before the house is dead in a hundred years or two, depending on how well the owners take care of it and do not abuse it. How many homes are made this way, without a piece of sheetrock or vinyl in this place, without formaldehyde or chemicals that will leach into the owners’ lungs like the new trailers sold as homes by most these days? Few builders, nearly no one builds without imports, toxic chemicals leaching from the parts, or danger from the quality of air from the very start. Why not have a healthy house to live in that is also art?

The chance to build a tiny home or a bigger one for a family or a community house, this is the chance of a lifetime.

If you are interested in building a home with pure materials, contact us for parts and packages to build homes like no one else can, using parts I have ready and stored in warehouses few can imagine. Please let us know if you need help with the design or just getting the materials; we can help.

Create a home that will outlive you, an heirloom for your favorite person to live in when you leave.

If interested in purchasing the Retreat to move to your land or to live here in Luling, at Salvage, Texas, for a year while getting your land ready, it can happen, perhaps. Give me a call.

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Trimming out the “Retreat” for its sale. Try living in a sustainable toxin-free dream, once it finds its home. For Sale: to the right steward.

Yes, the darker woods, Walnut, Oaks, and Long Leaf Pine dominate the walls, floors, and ceilings, and the Cypress countertop stands out so far, but I may add some milk paints to add light to the kitchen.

Another wood nymph home evolves into its final look, with distinct materials and standout cuts that accentuate the magical grains of trees that were often over 800 years old when cut down. These are the last vestiges of the giant trees that once stood taller than buildings across our nation, felled by saws and tiny men with axes, who destroyed the world’s biggest forests over a couple of centuries. What will humans destroy next? The most remote parts of the world are being harvested for materials to build new structures, while humans waste most of the best resources still in existence from our past, if only we take the time to salvage them.

So much faster to use doors for walls, saving time and labor while getting the benefit of resources no longer available at affordable prices. Tiger Oak is rare enough, but without knots and on such broad spans, I dare say the door was cheaper than the cost of the veneer today. Why not use doors for walls or ceilings instead of Shitrock?

Why not add the beauty of past craftsmanship by men who knew how to create glass and assemble it into windows that would last longer than the creators themselves? Own and preserve a vestige of our past when pride in craftsmanship was greater than the greed that takes the flair out of building now. Using hand-blown glass for the windows enables you to save on the fuel used to melt sand and form it into glass, and on shipping it to you in our modern world. Why not use the beautiful bubbles that were blown and laid flat on a table, once the top and bottom of each bubble were cut off and the sides were split to lay them flat, before they cooled? Most of this work, from digging the coal to stocking the furnaces that melted the sand, was done by kids less than 20 years old, journeymen by 25, dead by 45 from the heat, exposure to gases, and the 364-day-a-year work schedules… virtually slaves at every level it took to create the incredible panes of glass made before 1919.

How much space does one need to find a home for the heart where you can rest, recuperate from the stress of the world, and arise renewed, robust, and ready to make miracles happen? A home of this sort is created from pure cellular tissue from giants, trees that reached hundreds of feet into the sky for centuries longer than the USA has been in existence. Truly, the most ancient trees in America fell victim to industry and saws long before the age of the internet, cars, and big cities were even dreamt about. Now, few learn of what has been lost, or, for that matter, what can still be salvaged, saved, used, and thus preserved instead of letting it go to a landfill to rot.

Over 45% of landfills are for building material waste. Why let this continue when landfills become toxic scars on the planet, ignored for their consequences in the next few decades? Leaching, runoff, outgassing, and other issues can be limited by reducing inputs and salvaging more materials for reuse, recycling, or repurposing. Here is the path to making that happen, demonstrated by Loopholology, a way to save taxes, get longer life benefits, and get more bang for your buck and hours of life lived.

Why not make the most of the world’s great treasures while you can, before they are all gone for lack of understanding their inherent value, both in the form of human energy and productivity? No one can create what I do in the time I do if they create all the trim, doors, and parts I use today. It can not be done as inexpensively or as fast unless you use salvaged material, if you want this sort of quality instead of trash built to fall apart fast, new materials, and house-building methods.

The energy saved by not mining the iron or making the glass, forming the sink, or cutting a single tree to build the entire house, 95% Pure Salvaged Material Building is an ethos proven possible, though few will do it. The point of creating so many examples is to inspire others to carry on and grow the concept of building with the treasures at our fingertips, if we open our eyes to them and incorporate them into our future, rather than discarding the past as worthless.