A closer look at the Sonoma Shanty tiny house plans

The Sonoma Shanty is an affordable tiny house solution that came out of a collaboration between Kent Griswold and Stephen Marshall of Little House on the Trailer. This is actually one of the projects that was born from a meet-up a few of us had last year at Jay Shafer’s place in Sebastopol, California. You can buy a kit or complete tiny house from Stephen or a set of the plans from Kent if you’d like to build it yourself. Here’s a peak at what you’ll see in the plans.

What impresses me most about this tiny house solution is the simplicity and low-cost of the structure. If you look around you’ll notice that some people can build similar structures for just a few thousand dollars by leveraging their scavenging and construction skills. You’ll also notice some very nice and expensive options made from the finest materials. All these homes have their place but it seemed like there was gap between the low-cost owner-built homes and the commercial and custom homes.

Kent and Stephen also noticed this void and found a way to provide a design that’s easy and relatively low-cost to build. I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more Sonoma Shantys popping up as backyard offices, studios, cottages, and full-time homes. Here is a recent testimony by Nick from Indiana who bought the plans:

I have to say I am rather impressed with the plans, the ability to mix ease of construction and functionality in this design is really pretty amazing. Example, using the 12/12 roof, provides simple construction and yields sufficient loft space. You’ve also eliminated the need for a birds mouth. These are all things a person new to construction would likely mess up. For those of us who have previously built such things, the elimination and simplification of these adds significant time savings, less room for error and waste, and ease of assembly. I am very satisfied with the plans.

To get a closer look visit the Sonoma Shanty website.