How I went tiny – don’t make my mistakes!

I am often asked to share my tiny house planning process and what steps I took to downsize. Who built it? What was the cost? Where did I start? Why did I go tiny in the first place? This is my story. Don’t make my mistakes!

This post is all about my tiny house planning process. I hope my story inspires you on your journey to tiny or alternative living and prevents you from making my costly mistakes.

It All Started with Life Change

When my marriage of 18 years ended in 2018 the biggest obstacle I faced was finding affordable housing on a single mom income in my affluent community near Boulder, Colorado. A higher paying job would help, but even that wasn’t going to qualify me for the average $600k homes in my area. As I write this in May of 2022, some of those homes are now selling for over a million cash. Not an option!

That’s when I specifically remember seeing a tiny house on social media that was bigger and nicer than any I had seen before. It was like a modern farmhouse! It had shiplap, a soaker tub, a gourmet kitchen, tons of storage and natural light! I forwarded the post to my neighbor and said ‘I’ll just build a tiny house!’ I expected a laughing emoji but her response was, “Genius!” From that moment she went right down the tiny house rabbit hole with me, googling everything on how and where I could get one of my own.

Don’t Make My Mistake: Avoid Craigslist

With some research we found several craigslist posts in the area offering tiny houses for sale, tiny house parking spaces, as well as local builders. One guy offered to not only build the home, but also pair me with a tiny house land host. How to build and where to park were my 2 biggest obstacles and he solved them! Plus… he lived just a few miles away! I took two neighbors with me to meet the man and all three of us accessed that he was nice and safe and seemed like a good fit for what I needed. He showed us this 10′ wide shell of a home he was already building for another client and said it could all be done for less than $100k, which fit my budget. I kept in touch and when my house sold he said he had great news – the shell he had been working on was for sale. His previous client had a life change and could no longer finish the build. He wondered if I might want to buy that shell from his client and finish it out for myself. I was thrilled. I bought the shell for $45k and was excited that my build would now be done much faster than I had expected!

Then I Waited… for 8 Months

I bought the shell September 12, 2019. By this time I had done loads of research and knew exactly what I wanted. The Craigslist builder gave me the name of a great local architect and we rushed to get final plans drawn up by January 2020 so that the Craigslist builder could complete it by June of 2020. But he kept stalling on me. He needed to finish a kitchen remodel and then he would start my house. He needed to let some winter weather pass and then he would start my house. The list went on of excuses of why the timing was bad. What’s more, he had also started asking if I had found a place to park the house yet!!! This was a huge red flag because that was his whole Craigslist schtick! His post offered to build my house AND find a land host for me!

By March 2020 the pandemic had hit and I had no progress, timelines or estimates on my home after several months of waiting and wondering what was up with this guy. I had been very specific in that I wanted the home finished by summer of 2020. That clearly wasn’t going to happen. So I moved on to plan B…

Don’t Make My Mistakes: Start with A Certified Builder

In May 2020 I contacted two well known tiny house builders (actual NOAH certified companies) in my area asking for estimates to finish the build. The first builder actually just said NO (wait, what?!) solely based on the fact that it was steel frame instead of wood! While it’s lighter and stronger than wood, it’s apparently tricky to add the wood interior onto the steel beams and the steel structure also makes electrical and plumbing work more difficult and expensive. I HAD NO IDEA THIS WOULD BE AN ISSUE.

Thankfully the second builder – Mitch from MitchCraft Tiny Homes – said he could help! I asked about the steel frame issue. He said it wasn’t ideal but they knew how to work with it. Whew! In an hour phone call I got more questions answered about tiny house building, parking and living than I had in the last year with the Craigslist builder. MitchCraft also had a solid gallery of homes to view on their website, plus 4 in progress at their facility that I was able to tour in-person. The ONLY drawback to hiring MitchCraft was that my final all-in price would jump from an estimated $100k to $150k. It was more than I had anticipated spending, but I knew this was the only route to getting it done right. By June I secured a place to park the house and got a signed lease (a requirement to prequalify with MitchCraft’s lender) and a few days later my financing was pre-approved and I had a signed contract for MitchCraft Tiny Homes to finish the build.

The MitchCraft Takeover

But first… you should know that the Craigslist builder threw a hissy fit when he found out I hired MitchCraft to finish the build. The day I told him, he insisted that he had estimates ready to send to me. He demanded I back pay him rent for storing the home on his property for 9 months and I reminded him that I hadn’t agreed to have him store the house but rather to build it. He called over and over but I did not respond to his threats and reminders that we had a ‘verbal agreement’. If you wanna get paid you gotta do the work, buddy!

In July 2020 Mitch picked up the house from the craigslist builder’s property and took it to his Fort Collins, Colorado, facility about an hour north of where I was living. And here is where I learned that hiring a legit certified builder truly saved me… When Mitch’s team went to remove and replace the external wrap on the house, one of the windows fell out. It wasn’t even screwed in!! Upon further inspection he realized the roofing materials weren’t right and all of the windows had to be removed and reset. With this information I knew I paid way more than I should have for the shell, but I had to let that go. At this point, I was just happy that I course-corrected before any more damage was done and any more money was lost. I mean… thank the lord the Craiglist builder never actually got started on the inside and furthermore thank you sweet baby jesus he never got around to writing up a contract or collecting any more money from me!

The rest of my MitchCraft experience was nothing short of amazing! As soon as I told Mitch I was going for a modern farmhouse aesthetic he immediately said ‘No shutters?’ and I knew I had the right guy for the job. We quickly narrowed down the exterior to white board and batten, no shutters, with a cedar chevron accent I had fallen in love with on another MitchCraft build. I also gave him approval to make any changes to the interior details – specifically where storage was concerned – to make the best use of the space. My home was the 70th tiny home his team had built and I trusted that he knew how to make the best use of my space.

The Not So Great News

Everything went pretty smooth until it was time to finalize the loan paperwork. I had expected to be move-in ready by November, but some covid delays pushed that to January 2021. I was ok with that. The biggest shocker was that the final invoice came in at $24k over Mitch’s estimate because of the skyrocketing prices of lumber, metal roofing, appliances and everything in between, so my expected $150k all-in price went up to $174k. This was a difficult pill to swallow. But I just kept telling myself that it would have been so much worse if the Craigslist builder had ever gotten started on the build.

Once the build was complete we then waited weeks for the final mortgage paperwork from the bank. To our absolute shock, they completely backed out just ONE WEEK before my home was set to be delivered. I was outraged, as was the MitchCraft team. I’m still not sure it was even legal for them to pre-approve me and then back out. The primary issue they noted (but already knew when they pre-approved me) was that the trailer itself was built in 2018. Remember I bought it before MitchCraft took over. And even though I had a new 2020 MitchCraft Tiny Home to show them, the bank goes by the paperwork for the trailer. So suddenly they claimed that because it was from 2018 it wasn’t a new build and they dropped me. This is just another reason to START your build with a NOAH certified builder. (National Organization of Alternative Housing)

Very fortunately for me, I had a good friend who had been advising me financially and had already offered to lend me the money if I couldn’t get funding through the proper channels. Were it not for him and his extraordinary generosity, I would have been completely screwed and probably still trying to figure out my delicate housing situation.

Everyone has a different reason and method for going tiny. For everyone who likes to point out that this isn’t a true tiny house…you’re right! But it isn’t a ‘regular house’ either. My goal wasn’t necessarily to go super tiny or reduce my carbon footprint or even to minimalize. (Those were great side effects though!) My goal was to find affordable housing. When I stepped inside this 10′ framed shell, I instantly fell in love with the space, the light and the storage opportunities. Leave me a comment if you have questions that weren’t answered here. I would love to know where you are on your journey!