Please note: Our workshop is sold out!

Mark your Calendar and join us for a one-day construction workshop on June 11, 2011 in Olympia, Washington. We’ll focus on basic tiny house construction with an emphasis on:

• House-to-Trailer Connection
• Stick-Framing and Construction Techniques
• Tool Use, Safety and Good Clean Fun

This is a hands-on workshop. You can learn more (see more) about the workshops through a PBS show, Need to Know, as they participated in last year’s workshop.

Portland Alternative Dwellings likes to set the bar small. That’s why we’re happy to announce our new, tiny how-to manual: Go House Go.

This mini-booklet focuses on how to connect a tiny house to a trailer, and how to keep the walls and roof from twisting, leaning or buckling. We’ve also included information about moisture control and a common list of building materials.

It’s short and sweet, but loaded with enough technical information and resources to get you started.

The tiny price: $19.99.

If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate, please click here for more information.

We have exciting news to share with you! Dee, Katy, and our most recent workshop was featured on PBS last night! Check out the segment.

“Given the state of the current economy, a growing number of Americans with ordinary lives are choosing to scale down — way down. They call themselves the “tiny house” movement. Need to Know visited one of the movement’s proponents, Dee Williams, at her small home in Olympia, Wash.

Her home measures 84 square feet, has a small sleeping loft, a compost toilet and enough closet space for a few shirts and pairs of pants. Williams says the downsizing has brought her a sense of contentment, and many others are beginning to follow her lead.”

Watch the full episode. See more Need To Know.

Portland Alternative Dwellings (PAD) is finally posting plans for the Don Vardo. We’re excited to offer this package, and hope it inspires folks to reconsider what’s possible inside a 7×8-foot space.

The plans include 22-pages of information, illustrations and drawings.  They discuss building basics, general engineering, the house-to-trailer connection and framing for the Vardo.  Our plans also include a good description of the lamination process required for making the hand-set rafters in the Vardo.  Hopefully, folks will find the plan package helpful and informative, and it will encourage them (more than anything else) to simply get out there and build!

It has always been our desire to encourage a leaner picture of what is possible in green building, and the Don Vardo says it all: simple doesn’t mean crude, small doesn’t mean claustrophobic, and fine craftsmanship is always — always! — worth the effort.

We’re excited, relieved, hopeful and fired-up!  And wanted to let you know what’s up with PAD.  Take a peek and let us know what you think; we’d love to hear from you.

AND while we’re at it, we need to thank Tammy at www.rowdykittens.com for creating our website, blogging about PAD and informing us about what the buttons on a computer do; thank you to Karen at Wolf Creative for the logo and photos of the Don Vardo, and thank you to everyone else for putting up with our frenetic behavior in launching Portland Alternative Dwellings and the plans.

Blessings and woooooweeeeee!

Katy and Dee at PAD

On April 17 & 18th, Dee will be participating in a home tour in Olympia Washington.  She’ll have her little house open to the public, so this is a great opportunity to see a Tumbleweed-inspired little house.  It’s also just the sort of house that Portland Alternative Dwellings could build for you.

The tour is being sponsored by the South Puget Sound Chapter of the Northwest EcoBuilding Guild.  This is a community event focused on solar or other renewable energies, new and reclaimed materials, low energy consumption and water conservation technologies, and sustainable design techniques.

Educational sessions will be held at various locations and will feature real life topics on how to think and live greener. Check it out at: southsoundgreentour.org

Portland Alternative Dwellings is being featured in Portland Monthly Magazine this month. Check it out!

Dee Williams and Katy Anderson are banking that the next big thing to hit Portland’s housing market won’t be much larger than a walk-in closet. In January, the business partners launched Portland Alternative Dwellings, a grassroots tiny-home construction company. And they mean teeny-tiny. ~Via Portland Monthly Magazine

Below are a number of articles we’ve been featured in this month. Check them out!

Excellent dimension, functional layout with the ability to individualize, wonderful use of light placement and reasonable platform for a balanced structure…The look of the PAD units is warm and inviting, something our clients will appreciate as well. Looking forward to seeing more of your products. ~A comment on Coming Unmoored

Last year, we attended the Little House Construction Workshop in Portland, Oregon…I loved the structure of the class; it was all about active learning and contained an incredible amount of valuable information. We learned about general construction techniques, how to stay safe with power tools, discussed building codes and built the foundation of a tiny mobile office. ~Tammy from RowdyKittens

I am excited to announce the Grand Opening of Katy and Dee’s Portland Alternative Dwellings website and business. I introduced you to Katy and Dee’s Don Vardo construction in a couple previous posts. One showing some of the workshop and one of the construction of the Don Vardo and one offering the Vardo for sale. ~Kent from The Tiny House Blog