Profile: Chad and Jillian’s Tiny Home Project [VIDEO]
Editor's Note: I'm happy to introduce to you my friends Jillian and Chad who are currently building a tiny house in Sebastopol, CA. Below you'll find a great video tour and interview with them, a photo gallery of their house in progress, and a bit of their story of going tiny. Please follow them (links below) and support them on their tiny house journey!
We are both “Sebastopolians” out of Sebastopol, CA. We are individuals who both enjoy the outdoors including supporting the environment around us. Over the last couple years we have become more knowledgeable on how to maintain a healthier lifestyle and we’ve been attempting to implement more and more into our lives as time goes by (we have not yet started yoga, but it’s on our priority list!). Chad works for a CPA firm in Santa Rosa and loves fast cars and bicycles. Jillian works for the Boys and Girls Club of Central Sonoma County while working towards a Human Services degree to support children in her future.
We were looking to move out together with my (Jillian’s) cat and we were facing a challenging time finding a place that was out of town, allowed animals, not too far away from Santa Rosa for commuting, and wasn’t ridiculously expensive for rent. Both of us working mainly for non-profit organizations, neither of us have salaries where we could afford a large down payment, high rent, and utilities so we needed to start getting creative.
Video Tour & Interview
I was working at a restaurant where a new tiny home owner, B.A. Norrgard, came in and invited me to her open house. Chad had been interested in tiny homes for a while but I was rather hesitant. Once I saw B.A. and Jay Schaffer’s tiny homes we both fell in love with the idea to build our own tiny home. Seeing how the space can be both sustainable, functional, and personal all at the same time was fascinating. We also had the chance to meet with Alek Lisefski, whos tiny home was our inspiration for the plan’s we ended up creating. Chad and I chose to create our own plans and we spent about a month going through different plans and ideas on how to make a space perfect for our lifestyle.
With some significant help from Wayne Shultz, a friend who is an independent contractor, we got started on the project! Building through the worst rain storm Northern California had faced for years, we are coming out strong and with almost no damage done to the progress.
A couple months later with help from Wayne, John Sullivan (another independent contractor), and Exact Plumbing Inc. we are only a little bit away from having a tiny home created to work with our lives and function around our needs. We’ll be working with the environment with a compostable toilet and grey water to be used for gardening our own fruits and vegetables. We’ll have a gas powered stove, heater, and On-demand water heater to conserve on electricity. Someday, we want to install a water collector and solar panels to create an even more environmentally friendly and sustainable living situation.
We’re hoping our choice to build this tiny home will lead to a positive change in our community and farther. Ideally we’ll be a part of this new movement to support sustainable living while conserving on space and materials for a more powerful life. Feel free to follow our progress on my Facebook, Instagram, and you can follow some great ideas and concepts for tiny living on my Pinterest.
Thank you for your love and support towards this movement!
Photos of Chad and Jillian’s tiny house in progress!
