joshua tree workshop 2018

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Another recycled materials small cabin (one of two at our tiny house building workshop)....

So, NEXT WEEKEND (and I'm very excited!) we're holding our 5th Relaxshacks.com Tiny House/Cabin Building Workshop (hands-on!) in Canton, MA, and we're building TWO little cabins this time. THE WORKSHOP IS COMPLETELY SOLD OUT, and has been for awhile, so if you wanted in, in late April, we're most likely going to be hosting a North Carolina full-out building workshop again (our last one down there sold out too). This one will have much more of an off-grid feel and focus, and will stand as "Tiny House Summer Camp- Season 2". Season One was the summer of 2012 in Vermont. Below is a video from Make Magazine on that camp weekend....

As for this coming weekend, as a group, we're tackling TWO cabin designs....

-One will be a new design of mine called "The Relax Shack"- which I'll eventually have VERY affordable plan sets for, and the other....

-"The Bread Bin"- a half-rounded top cabin that resembles the bread bins of old....but with a very modern take/look to it. We'll have a plan set for that one down the road too, perhaps with some bad-arse artwork from Kevin Fitzpatrick of KLM Illustration as well.


Both of these cabins will incorporate an enormous amount of free and salvaged materials. In fact, this  pre-built base of one of them (which has removable planks for now, so as to be able to show students how it was framed) was built with free and salvaged wood- all of it, except for three pressure treated 2by4's- which I could have probably swapped out with freebie wood anyway.

SO, here's a look at the mere base, and in a week or so, I hope to be able to show you a MUCH DIFFERENT photo of this fun little backyard office/retreat/guest sleeper. Yes, the framing is unconventional, but it works- well, and we're still not fully done. Also, the second base will be built by the group.

Oh yeah, EVEN THE INCH-THICK PLANKS WERE FREE (I got SO many of them from a guy getting rid of them that I really need to stop by his place and give him a really good bottle of wine or something!).



Our workshops have been going so well that I've now added in a third host/presenter to help all our attendees along as well, and to make sure that everybody gets a very good deal of individual help and attention. Can't wait!

-DEREK "DEEK" DIEDRICKSEN