Michael Janzen

Katie and I did a quick pallet run this morning before work and picked up a good load of pallets for the tiny free house. Here’s Katie patiently waiting for her crazy daddy.

I made some good progress on the tiny free house this weekend (actually Friday and Saturday). It’s been a real struggle making time to go up to the farm to work on it. Here are some photos of Katie helping out her dad

More more about this project see the Tiny Free House Blog.

I also post updates on Tiny House Forum.

This is a pretty cool day for me; I’ve never been in the New York Times before. A few months ago I started a little project, actually a tiny free house project, in an attempt to better understand my own values. I had also been admiring the people behind the tiny house movement for the freedom they have achieved. I wanted to built a tiny house too but do it with a different spin. My first tiny house would be free and made from reclaimed and recycled stuff. In fact I’m building it from mostly trashed wood pallets. You can follow my progress on my Tiny Free House blog.

If you’re interested in tiny house design I’ve got a blog on that too, tinyhousedesign.com. But by all means read the article in the New York Times. Photo credit, New York Times.

Right after I started my tiny house project, The Tiny Free House, a reporter named Steven Kurutz contacted me curious about the project. In the following weeks the Times sent out a couple photographers and Steven interviewed me by phone a couple of times.

Steven just called me to check some facts about the story and told me it’s scheduled to run tomorrow as the lead story in the Home & Garden section (I think that’s the right section). I have to say… I’m very excited.

Since last summer, as the value in my house evaporated, I’ve been spending a lot of time noodling over issues like the real value of our homes. I’ve come to a simple conclusion, which should be fairly obvious and should go without saying, the value of our house is completely market driven. In other words the price of a house is completely dependent on what someone else is willing to pay for it. Normally I would choose to avoid a word like completely but in this case I think it’s 100% accurate.

According to Zillow.com my house is worth 35% less than about a year ago. Yeah YIKES! The house didn’t change. The number of rooms and square feet have stayed the same. Mortgage rates are about the same. The only thing that changed was the demand for homes in my area. Anyway as you can imagine this little fact got me thinking about the true value of a home.

At this point I’m certain that the true value of a home should be measured in security and usefulness, not square feet, number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Yeah sure a home has to be big enough to meet the needs of the people living there but avoiding a big mortgage (or any mortgage) seems like it should higher on our list of priorities. But I digress…

Recently two movements came into my awareness, mostly thanks to my wife Julia and Oprah. Julia doesn’t watch Oprah very much anymore with Katie’s nap time often overlapping with Oprah but on two occasions she called me into the living room, (I work from home 100% of the time for a giant bank), to show me a story on tiny houses and a separate story on freegans.

More recently, after much baking in my brain, I become a bit obsessed with building two tiny houses, NINE TINY FEET and TINY FREE HOUSE. I’ve started blogs on both to capture the progress and help drive me along. Both house projects are inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond, freegans, the tiny house movement, and the evaporation of my home’s equity.

NINE TINY FEET is all about building the smallest house possible while still being useful and meeting the requirements of one person. I’ll keep the budget low on this one but I expect to spend a little money.

TINY FREE HOUSE is about building a free house with reclaimed building materials and wood from old discarded pallets. For the few items I’ll need to buy (screws, nails, hinges, etc), I’ll make the money to buy them by selling free stuff I find on craigslist.

The other day a reporter, (Steven Kurtz), from the New York Times contacted me interested in doing a story on the TINY FREE HOUSE. I’m guessing I’m not alone in my ponderings and maybe not as crazy as I might appear. OR… I am as crazy as I appear and the New York Times thinks people will enjoy reading about a crazy guy. In any event I’m crazy enough not to really care [LOL]. I’m happy to share my story, point of view, and projects with them.Maybe someone will get something valuable out the story.

I’ll post updates here about my continuing conversations with the Times and if anything comes from them. I’d also love to hear any feedback, stories, or ideas you might have about my tiny house projects, the economy, home values, etc. Comments?