Originally posted Sunday, September 30, 2012
We had a great turnout at our open house. Met a lot of great new friends and saw a ton of old friends. The weather was amazing and everyone’s smiles made it that much brighter. This was our second open house this year, and there will be more! Feel free to contact me if you ever want to stop by and chat Tiny House... I’m all for it!
See you all at the next Open House!
Originally posted Tuesday, September 11, 2012
That’s right, it’s the end of summer and to welcome in the fall, we are hosting an End Of Summer Open House at the Tiny Tack House. For those of you that had trouble coming to the Open House in June, now is the time to stop by and say hi!!
Chris and I will be available to answer questions and give tours of the house to all that are interested!
Open House at the Tiny Tack House.
Date: Saturday Sept. 22nd
Time: Noon-5pm
Location: Snohomish WA, email me for addy! malissa_tack@me.com
Food: Feel free to bring something to share... just snacks will be enough, nothing fancy!
Side note: Chris and myself are not wine or beer drinkers, so don’t worry about bringing anything for us : )
Originally posted Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Forgive me, but I’m a little excited about this. My husband has just updated his website with all new work!! I’m excited to see the joy that his work brings to his face... and I’m excited to share it with everyone. I hope you enjoy the work, the life, and the love of his passion!
http://tackphoto.com
Originally posted Sunday, August 26, 2012
Chris and I are really considering having another open house. We had such an awesome turn out with the summer open house, that we would like to open our home up again this fall. There isn’t an official date just yet, but we are looking at possibly mid to late September. We will be sure to keep you updated on the final date!
In the meantime, be sure to hit up a few of my favorite online resources for Tiny House Builders!
If you haven’t stopped by Tiny r(E)volution yet, be sure to hit up their endless supply of resources. The How To Videos are a must see... and don’t forget to tune in every week for the Tiny r(E)volution Podcast.
If you need a little inspiration for some new designs, then head over to Relaxshasks. Derek “Deek” Diedricksen has so many ideas, he’s created a book for them all, a must have! Check out Relaxshacks youtube page for some pretty awesome videos... everyone loves to see Tiny Houses, and Derek does an awesome job of highlighting the tiny.
Tiny House Design is a great blog and resource page for those looking to make the jump into their own tiny house. Lots of different house plans to check out.
“The true value of a home should be measured by the happiness and security it brings rather than by its size and cost.”
- Michael Janzen
Originally posted Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Some new ideas to shoot your way!
This design comes with two sleeping lofts, 3 Skylights for plenty of extra light, built in fresh water tank, closet space,
bench space for storage and a computer/dinner area.
Originally posted Thursday, August 16, 2012
Lately I have been playing around with a few new designs. This one is my tropical Tiny House. I feel in love with the tropical feel and wanted to try and bring some of that feeling into a tiny house.
This design comes equipped with two computer workstations (both on either side of the see through divided wall), stairs up to the sleeping loft (also doubles as storage space), shower/tub in the bathroom, exposed beams on the ceiling, and storage bench. I hope you enjoy, and get inspired!
Malissa Tack
Originally posted Tuesday, July 24, 2012
If it feels like it’s been forever since my last blog... that’s because it has. Chris and I have been so busy running around Washington, Oregon and Cali, visiting friends and doing some traveling. The end of June was spent traveling down to Cali for a friend’s wedding that Christopher was shooting. We decided to make a road trip out of it, since I have never been to the San Francisco area before. Here are some great photos from the trip!
We travel to some amazing places, but it’s nice to be back home in our tiny house.
I think the children were happy to see us too!
Yaquina Head Lighthouse
Point Reyes National Seashore
Big Sur
Whiskeytown Lake, Redding CA
Lassen Volcanic National Park
Mt. Shasta
Crater Lake
Mt. St. Helens
Originally posted Saturday, June 2, 2012
We are finally ready to share out little adventure to the world! Get ready for The Tiny Tack House (Open House)
Christopher and myself are hosting an Open House for all who want to see what it's like to live in an actual Tiny House. There will be refreshments provided, but feel free to bring something to share!
*Friday June 15th: Will be a calm and relaxing showing of the house. Snacks, tea and juice will be provided.
(Friday-Hours are: 3 pm - 7 pm)
*Saturday June 16th: There will be a BBQ and a D.J. will be spinning some tunes... so bring your dancing shoes. Bring a tent if you like, others will be camping out on the 5 acres of land where the house is parked. The property has some neat trails, so bring your mountain bike, dirty bike, or even your mom's hog!
(Saturday-Hours are: 2 pm - 8 pm) if you are camping out... you will need to be out in the morning... sorry, or else we might put you to work.
Please email me for address. See you all there!!
The Tiny Tack House
Snohomish, WA
Originally posted Monday, May 28, 2012
Christopher and myself are very excited to see the much anticipated launch of our plans. We have been working very hard on them for the past few months. We believe there is a better way of life, and a much simpler way to live it. By making our plan available, you are able to step into that life and take a journey... a journey of exploration, life discovery or simply a new experience. We now have The Tack House Plan for sale, so start building your dream today!
Originally posted Friday, May 25, 2012
We both have put a lot of hard work and many hours into creating the house plan, so I hope you all are as excited as we are!!
Chris and I are just finalizing the plans, and are planning to make them available this weekend! If you have any questions for us, please don’t hesitate to ask. Malissa @ malissa_tack@me.com or Chris @ chris_tack@mac.com
Below are just a few pages from The Tack House Plans.
Originally posted Thursday, May 17, 2012
It was a bright and sunny day out. Christopher had the day off... his lovely wife asks him, “Since you aren’t busy, would you mind taking some updated photos of the house?” As you can see, the answer was yes.
Originally posted Monday, May 14, 2012
Need to give a big shout out to my good friend Candice, she was the one who inspired me to start this journey, and she did such an amazing job designing her Tiny House that I wanted to take a moment and highlight her home. Enjoy!
Check out her blog at: http://www.tinyhousemeetup.com
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
© 2013 Christopher Tack
Originally posted Monday, May 7, 2012
Lately Christopher and myself have been getting a lot of interest in the plans for our Tiny Tack House. Christopher and I talked it over, and have decided to make them available for purchase. I’m currently working on them as we speak, and should be completed very soon. If you are at all interested in purchasing the plans, please feel free to email me at malissa_tack@me.com More information will be available very soon.
Originally posted Friday, April 13, 2012
Christopher and I recently got accepted in the Small Cool Contest from Apartment Therapy. We are extremely excited, but we need your help! We are calling to all friends and family to help make the Tiny Tack House the Small Cool of 2012! Lets get a Tiny House on top!!
Please help Chris and I out with this amazing opportunity!! Please tell everyone you know to help us out!!!! We would greatly appreciate it!!
Simply click on the red & white "Favorite" button.
You can vote here!
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/malissas-perfect-retreat-small-cool-contest--169144
Originally posted Monday, March 26, 2012
I’ve had a couple people ask me how I feel about the size of my house and living with two cats. Everyone seems to be very interested with day to day life in the Tiny Tack House, so I thought I would share some of my day to day adventures.
Welcome to my morning and my bed, glamourous I know. Every morning my bed looks like this, but then again so do many others. I’d like to think that my house looks perfect at all times, but it doesn’t... It takes effort to keep the space clear of papers and shoes, small things that find their way to places they shouldn’t be. But because it’s such a smaller space, it really only takes about 15-20 minutes to fully clean my house, not just put stuff away clean, I mean scrub the floors clean. Now, back to my bed. Sometimes I make my bed, sometimes I don’t... the nice thing about my bed being up in the loft is, I don’t have to see it all day. The messy covers can be messy and I never have to know about it. And by the time I’m ready for bed, it’s already made for me to sleep in, just need to pull the covers over top of me.
I am then greeted with the loving cries of our children aka.. Sethcat and Calypso. And by loving cries, I mean screeching howls from the underworld. But we love them none the less. They love the food that they are about to receive that has somehow been hiding from them all night long. They are very eager to show me where they have found it.
Next stop... the shower. As you all know, Christopher and I are using a half cut wine barrel to serve the function of our shower/tub. I did some research about wine barrels, and a few people told me to look into a winery to find one. I did find a couple wineries in the area that did sell used wine barrels, the problem was the price. It was looking like we would be spending about $200-$300 for a barrel, which was totally out of our budget range. I had remembered a few months before, this little wood shop down the road, I had seen a half cut barrel sitting out in the yard... it was a long shot, but maybe they would still have some available. It was just before close as we pulled up to the shop. A gentleman approached us asking if there was anything he could help us with. We told him of the wine barrel that we had seen a few months back and were curious if you have any others. We were shocked to hear him say that not only did they just get one in that day, but they had also cut in in half!!! Yay! We might have just found our barrel. He asked us which half we were interested in, we asked, how much... I was worried he was going to say $200 or more.... and the verdict was... I’ll give it to you for $70. Sold! We thanked the man and took our barrel home. The reason we were so anxious to get the barrel home was, we needed to get our plumbing done as soon as possible. See, it was end of nov. and we were moving into the house in dec. My advise to anyone doing a wine barrel shower, look local!
Maintenance of your wine barrel. One thing when it comes to having a wine barrel shower is... you have to maintain it. Chris and I did not put any liners or any sealant on or in the barrel, the barrel is as it was the day we brought it home. The water used from the shower every day keeps the wood expanded, and thus keeps the barrel from leaking. If we put down a liner or sealant it up the wood might have dried up and caused some cracking issues. One other thing to consider when using a wine barrel as a shower is how to clean it. All barrels have this lowered groove on the inside of the barrel, this means that like in a normal shower, the water drains to the actual drain, the water in my barrel drains to the sides. This means after every shower I use a sponge (like in the photo) to soak up the remaining water along the sides. I do this so that no bacteria will grow. Think of a typical shower and how you go months without really cleaning it, and you get that dark soapy film along the base... that would happen if I didn’t clean the shower each day. I’m not spending any more effort to clean my barrel everyday than I had to clean my shower every month. I love my barrel, especially because of it’s natural materials, and it just makes me feel warm inside, haha.
As for our water heater, since you are going to want hot water for your shower. We have an Ariston 4 Gallon Electric Water Heater. Chris decided to put the water heater on a switch, this gives us control of when it needs to be heating the water. We don’t use a lot of hot water throughout the day, so we turn it on when we need it...saves a ton of electricity. We flip the switch in the morning, usually only takes about 10-15 minutes to fully heat up. That 4 gallons of water will serve the shower in the morning and all the hot water I need throughout the day for dishes, without having to turn the heater back on. Our shower head has a very low water flow, and that saves us a ton of water, only about 1.5 gallons per minute.
One thing Chris and I were thinking of adding to this system is a timer for the water heater, that way when we wake up in the morning, there will already be some hot water ready for the morning shower. I would highly recommend using a switch or timer for your heater, you don’t want to keep warming water throughout the day for no reason, it will eat up your electricity bill.
Breakfast is served! We love our fruit and veggies in this house, can’t seem to get enough of them! Nothing better than starting the day out right with some delicious organic food.
After our tummies are full, Christopher takes off to work and I get ready to work on the computer at home. I’m a 3D artist and between that and updating the website, I keep myself busy. There are still little things around the house that I take care of here and there, nothing extremely important, more visual little things. After a full days worth of work, I get ready to make some grub for Christopher when he gets home from work. We have a two burner Princess Stove that runs on gas. We picked up a 20 gallon propane tank back in mid Dec. and the tank is just know starting to feel light (and that’s with frequent use everyday, breakfast, lunch and dinner).
We designed our work space to serve a few functions. During the daytime hours it serves the function of Malissa’s desk. Once Christopher comes home it serves the function of dinner table, and when we are relaxing at night, it serves us as an entertainment center.
Time to do the dishes!
In our old apartment, Christopher and I had a two compartment sink... which when you really think about it, served the purpose of...more space to put dishes...right? When we had the larger sink, it just seemed to fill up with dishes and they wouldn’t ever get clean. Now that we only have the one sink, we are forced to take care of our dirty dishes! This is good when you already have limited space for things. We have made a rule that all dishes get done at night, this leaves for a less stressful morning and a much happier day to follow.
Once the dishes are done, every other day, Christopher and I fill up the water tank that we have underneath the kitchen counter. We had a custom built 40 gallon clean water tank made for the space underneath the counter. We also have the ability to hook up to city water, depending on where we end up parking the house. During the winter, we opted out of having the water hose hooked up, due to the low temps at night and the possibility of it freezing. So, every other day we fill the tank to the rim, we do this to keep the water temp in the tank as close to room temp as possible, since the water outside is so much colder. We are trying to keep the condensation on the tank to a minimum. If we wait till the tank is empty to fill it, the condensation builds up on the outside of the tank and drips down to the floor. That would be one thing I would change about the tank, and that is to prop it up off of the floor, that way if it is leaking or dripping, you can clearly see it on the floor. One other thing to do is to seal up the floor underneath, so no water leaks through to the subfloor.
We picked up a filter and water hose (real water hose... don’t use a garden hose, they are not meant for drinking water) over at a local RV Store. The RV Store is a great place to find little things like this that are helpful.
This is what the water inlet looks like from the inside of the house. The open spout is what’s connected to the water tank for the fill. The connection with the water line connected is the city water in line.
We wanted a system that would work both on and off grid.
Well, time for bed!
I hope that me sharing a day in the life of a Tiny House Owner has been both informative as well as entertaining. Time to turn the lights out and enter sleepy land.
Feel free to ask for any advise/help... I’m around all day, and would love to help out with anything that I can!!
Happy Tiny House Building! If you have a blog yourself, please feel free to post a link to it... I would love to check out what others are up to!!
What I think my bed looks like.
What my bed really looks like.
Originally posted Tuesday, February 14, 2012
I’ll be heading down to Olympia WA this coming Saturday the 18th to visit with my friend Dee as she hosts an Open House for all that want to see the inside of a Tiny House.
"Seven years ago my answer was to build a little house. I got rid of my mortgage; I got rid of most of my personal possessions and downsized myself into a little tiny house. One bedroom, four wheels, seven windows, 84 square feet of living space. It’s got everything I need. A place to cook, a place to pee, a place to hang out, a place to be Dee Williams."
Please feel free to check out the link below for more info and inspiration.
Here's the info:
When: Saturday February 18th from 12:00 - 4:00 pm
Where: 1617 Conger Ave. NW, Olympia WA 98502
I’ll be driving down in my car, and I still have one seat open, so if you would like to join, please feel free to email me at: malissa_tack@me.com
I’m planning on leaving my house around 10:30 am. So, if you would like to come, please email me and I’ll give you my address.
Hope to see you all there!!!
The sun was out and I was feeling adventurous, so I took a little trip up to Anacortes, WA for the day. The drive up to Anacortes was an easy/relaxed ride. I haven’t gotten out of the house since Chris left for Cali 3 weeks ago, so I needed an adventure. Chris and I usually would go on a hike or bike ride... really anything outdoorsy at least once a week, but since he’s been gone, I’ve been hanging around the house a lot.
First stop on my list was at Pelican Bay Used Books.
I love spending time in bookstores and filling my mind with endless possibilities. Knowledge is power, and it feels good to exercise the brain.
Pelican Bay Used Books
410 Commercial Ave
Anacortes, WA 98221
From the bookstore I walked over to Cap Sante Boat Haven and watched the boats coming in and taking off. It was an absolutely beautiful day. As I walked around the boat marina I notices that there was a walking trail that headed up to a hill top. I’ve been wanting to go for a walk/hike, so I was eager to see what was at the end of the trail. Once at the end of the walking trail, I noticed some hiking paths that went north of the hill... I was on my way!
Headed over to Calico Cupboard Old Town Cafe for some lunch.
The best part of smiling is, it’s contagious...And there’s nothing better than walking into a cafe full of smiles! The food was amazing and I will definitely need to take Christopher there when he gets back for Cali.
I enjoyed:
PORTABELLA MUSHROOM ON GRILLED FOCACCIA
Once I was finished with my amazing lunch, I headed over to Washington Park to read my new book and enjoy a sunset over the mountains. I found a great lookout point that I ended up hanging our at. I found a little trail that lead down to the waters edge where I watched the birds diving for food. I’m guessing there was lots to be had, since I also very lucky to have spotted 3 whales taking part in the feast as well. Many people had come and gone from where I was watching, but not one of them took the time to stop and listen, and unfortunately they did not notice their presence. Sometimes you need to stop and take part in the world around you... or else you’ll miss it.
A wonderful ending to a great day! If only Chris could had been there with me, but he was in spirit!
Remember, the day is yours, excite yourself!
A giant portabella mushroom marinated and grilled. Topped with melted provolone cheese, grilled red pepper, lettuce, tomato, red onion and a spicy chipotle mayo.
Originally posted Saturday, January 28, 2012
The snow came on Sunday the 15th and within two weeks... it was gone. I was snowed in for a week, since Seattle doesn’t really know how to handle the amount of snow that had fallen. We don’t usually get this much snow, so it caught everyone by surprise.
Tiny Tack House
Winter 2011-12
Chris’s Solar Panels are getting put to good use! Well, not really...
One day my house even had bangs! I almost walked right into it as I opened my door up in the morning. I was very surprised, but excited to take the picture to share with others.
Did some more work on the inside of the house. Made some additions in the kitchen and living room.
Used some simple fabric for the bathroom divider, and string to hold it all together, simple but complete!
Put in a simple shelf above the computer. A place to hold the computer speakers, box for cables and hooks for keys.
Originally posted Friday, January 13, 2012
I put my loving husband/photographer to work yesterday... The sun was out and I did a quick clean up and Chris got his camera out to document it all.
We were taking photos all day... such a calm and relaxing day with my love!
Enjoy!
Took a hike up to Heather Lake in Granite Falls, WA on Jan.11th. With all the work that we have been putting into the house, Chris and I decided to take a day off and go for an adventure. We decided to hike up to Heather Lake on Wednesday. The weather was amazing, a little cloudy in the morning, but come late afternoon, the sun had popped out.
The lake was iced over, but not completely.... So we kept our feet on the ground. It was bitter cold by the time we got up to the lake, but the view made up for that.
Came to an interesting boardwalk, the boards were really jagged and fun to walk over.
Finally we got high enough on the Mt. to see some snow... first snow of the season!
Found some interesting ice formation on the bare wood in the forest. It honestly looked like hair.. crazy!
Beautiful view of the mountain through the forest.
My husband for life, and photographer for the day, was happy to get out for a hike. He originally wanted to go snowshoeing... but this is pretty close, right? We had a blast and that’s what’s important!
Some layered snow on the boardwalk, made for a fun hike!
Was a fun hike, and I’m excited to see it in the summer time.
Beautiful buds are popping, even with as cold as it has been... there is life all around us! It’s amazing, and I wish more people could open up and experience the world more.
