Successful Tiny House Stories in Australia
Tiny houses are all the rage – all over the world. In Australia, tiny houses are growing at a tremendous rate. Australian Tiny House Association reports about 200 tiny houses in the country with many in progress. Read about some great success stories in this blog post.
However, this figure is just for permanent structures. Many tiny houses are on trailers and are licensed as a trailer or mobile unit. That makes it harder to count them.
In Australia, the tiny house is just 90 square meters. Quite different from today’s modern house. The average size of a new home in 2016 was 231 square meters. However, several generations ago this was the norm on the continent.
Multi-functional Rooms
Catherine Foster studies small spaces in Australia and New Zealand. Foster says the keyword is multi-functional. A tiny house does not have individual rooms for every function – dining room, living room or study. Foster says the success of a tiny house is based on simultaneously shared spaces.
Multi-functional rooms bring people together. Instead of being scattered and off by themselves, your family is together.
Foster has studied architecture designs and brings her ideas to tiny house conferences around Australia. Her book Small House Living Australia, features an inspiring collection of designs.
Some tips that Foster suggests to utilize multi-functional space:
- Use your walls. Hang things from the walls and build shelving units using the entire vertical space.
- Lots of windows to make the home feel spacious and open.
- Don’t forget outside space. Make room for a hammock and a barbie area.
- Creative storage can be found under the bed and stairs.
Build Your Dream
Lily and Felix built a tiny house in the bush in Gloucester. Traveling quite a bit between their home countries, Australia and Sweden, and often staying with family. The couple began to feel like they did not have a place of their own.
They were frustrated because they did not qualify for a traditional mortgage. Lily and Felix discovered tiny houses when seeking options on the internet and became self-confessed junkies wanting to learn all they could about the tiny house movement.
They decided to build their own tiny house and began the process by buying up used building materials. Lily and Felix picked out a location on family property in the Barrington Range. With no real building experience, they began building their home in 2016. Eight months later they were done.
The build itself was a mix of satisfaction and frustration. The young couple felt they learned much about the building process and gained great life skills. However, there was also a lot of frustration with things not lining up properly and errors in layout.
Lisa and Felix’s dream home was built for $20,000 and no mortgage. This low cost, minimal lifestyle is just one benefit to living tiny. Lisa and Felix also feel that the community is very important. So they started a Facebook group for Australian Tiny House enthusiasts.
Social Impacts
Many people who enter the tiny house movement do so because they want to have a positive impact on the world around them. They care about the environment and the people of their community. Enter Jan Stewart.
Jan Stewart is the co-founder of the non-profit Tiny Non-Profit, which makes tiny houses. They view their mission as “an alternative model of sustainable, affordable and self-sufficient housing that could offer solutions across a broad range of social issues”.
Tiny Non Profit seeks to empower people who want to build or buy a tiny home. They discuss all the reasons tiny houses are making such a tremendous impact in Australia.
In addition, Stewart feels that the tiny home connects people with the natural world. She is inspired by gardens and likes to explore wild spaces to get revitalized. Look for Stewart at tiny house conventions where she often speaks.
Ultra-Modern Tiny House
Located in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Lisa and Matt have built a very contemporary tiny home. Matt and Lisa were able to secure their property inexpensively due to an earlier brush fire that decimated the area.
While the forest regenerated itself, they got to build a very unique structure. Their home is 9 meters long and 2.5 meters wide with two floors to give a very spacious feel.
The young couple met online. Lisa immediately began telling Matt who was in home design about her love for tiny houses. This love brought them together and led to their creation of a tiny mobile home.
Lisa and Matt are great examples of the compromises needed to build a tiny house. In the video, they talk about some of those compromises, especially where the bathroom was concerned.
Do you want to learn more about Tiny House Living? You can read about the advantages of tiny houses and check out some of our great designs to get your creative juices flowing. Read more of our blog posts and dream big!