When we started designing our tiny house I had to answer a number of questions. One of them was how we want to heat and insulate our home. I honestly had no idea about those things and started to read a lot. When Jane of Senator Windows approached me with an infographic about that very […]
Sustainable living in a tiny house
I get this question a lot lately: why do you think living in a tiny house is a sustainable way of living? I want to take a few moments to consider this question and try to answer it from my very own perspective. 1. Tiny house living means living in a smaller space The […]
Choosing building materials
Although we didn’t build our tiny house with our own hands, we decided on a lot of the details of the build. I loved dwelling on little details which would make the house even better. One such little detail was the covering of floors and walls. We had interesting conversations with our builder about it […]
Guest post – Passive housing: A Smarter Way of Living
I’m happy to share this post with you by Helen O’Keeffe of EZ Living Interiors. She has developed a handy infographic for passive houses. In our tiny house design, we used some of the ideas of a passive house (as much as you can on a trailer). Helen explains in more detail how passive houses look […]
Natural wall paint
Building our tiny house gave me (among many) one freedom I really enjoyed: deciding on wall paint. We have wooden walls in the whole house and I spent some time researching the different options I had for natural wall paint. In the end I tried a clay paint in white. I’m not entirely happy with […]
Flooring options for a (tiny) house
Although we didn’t build our tiny house with our own hands, we decided many details. Today I want to talk about one aspect of that: flooring. From the beginning, we omited the heaviest and bulkiest options: ceramic tiles, concrete and stone, and even hardwood floor. We also didn’t consider carpet because of allergies in our […]
An Earthship – what it is and is not
Last week my husband and I went on a very special trip. We helped a friend build his Earthship. Okay, we didn’t get anywhere near to an end of the build but it was a great learning experience for us to see first hand what an Earthship is and what it is not. Let me […]
Designing a sustainable house
I want to dive a bit deeper into what makes a sustainable house and explore in particular issues of design and construction. In that research one simple equation stood out for me: the bigger the house the less sustainable it will be. Although size matters, it is not the only factor in determining whether a […]
Thinking about the energy efficiency of a house
Whenever I think of an energy efficient house, I tend to think of the amount of power it needs to be heated or cooled. However, energy efficiency starts a long way before the actual occupation of a house. It starts with studying the location, the orientation of the house, thinking about windows and construction materials, and […]
What is a sustainable house?
One important part of this blog, and in my life, is the question of housing. To me, it doesn’t make much sense to talk about the everyday shopping and cooking experiences if we neglect the big impact of housing on our lives and our planet. Building a new house, for example, can produce up to […]