This is an excellent book that will take you step-by-step through every bit of building your own tiny house. Photographs and material lists document literally every step. It almost feels like if you could put together an IKEA table, you can make this house. The plans are for a very specific shell of a tiny house that is build on a trailer with a wood floor (ta-da, your floor is done!). You can personalize it from there, but the plans are for that specific tiny house. It goes over your options for a shower, toilet, wiring, etc. and I felt that it was incredibly thorough. If you want to build that specific tiny house, this is perfect. If you want to build another one, this will still be helpful but not nearly as much. All in all, it's a great book. I'm not planning on building a tiny house (though it would be cool to do as an RV) but I found it really interesting. I was highly impressed with how detailed it was, and definitely recommend it.

I read a digital ARC of this book for the purpose of review.

This book makes a great introduction to the tiny house culture, and it's also a recipe for making a simple, but practical house. As this build is based on one specific type of trailer, it's a little limited, but this is definitely the easiest way to get started.
The book has an excellent layout, and the illustrations are fantastic.

The first few times you see a tiny house you can't help but be curious. That easily turns to fascination. Tiny houses come in various sizes and so many styles. They can be constructed of a variety of materials. If you want to explore your options I suggest you find documentaries and television series on the subject and binge watch. Grab this author's other books and drown yourself in the pages. When you are ready to live the dream and create your own, this is the book you need to buy.
From the very basic, materials and sizes and tools, to design and finishing, including electrical and plumbing, this book walks you through from idea to living the life. This book covers what I would call the basics-Plus, things to consider and give real life thought to concerning toilets and water options for sinks, showers, etc. As previously mentioned, your options are limitless. You can build to stay in one place or build to travel. Build to live in, build as a spare room, build to make space for family or visitors, even to rent out! This book covers it all.

I find the concept of tiny houses fascinating. I love the idea of being to manage with less, and I really love the idea of being decisive enough to choose a minimal list of earthly possessions. When I visit my parents in Sarasota, FL, I frequently walk by a strip of rental tiny homes, and then I daydream about living in one of my own.

But I basically need a clothes and shoe closet the size of most tiny houses, so a tiny house lifestyle really just isn't for me.

I could probably make a tiny house vacation work. I'm getting really excited about the idea of seeing some national parks, and I follow some people on social media who convert vans to houses on wheels for their travels. (Check out this video! So cool.) So the idea of converting a van and taking that to see the national parks? Let's just call that an awesome daydream while we're all grounded during this pandemic.

With that daydream in mind, I requested a copy of Building Your Tiny House Dream by Chris Schapdick from Net Galley. I was given a free advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my review. (Here's a link to a review of his first book The Joy of Tiny House Living.) Chris is the owner of a tiny home manufacturing company. And the pictures of his builds look so cool.

Chris's first book focuses on how to decide if a tiny house is for you. As the title suggests, this second book is about how to build one. Overall, I found the book to be very thorough. Possibly even too thorough for me as it contains basic information on nominal sizes of lumber and safety tips that I'm already familiar with.

The book has step-by-step instructions with clear pictures included, but I did think that that occasional illustration or an annotated picture would have served the author's purpose better. The book is meant to be accompanied by a code that will give the reader access to video tutorials, and I think those are going to be amazingly helpful.

(I assume. I haven't seen them.)

(Also worth noting--advance reader copies frequently have formatting errors that get corrected before the books go to press, and many, many of the pictures in the book loaded upside-down in the copy I downloaded which was super frustrating. I assume that will be corrected when the book goes to print.)

For me, because I'm so interested in camper van builds, the sections on electrical and plumbing were the most helpful. The author has great descriptions of sink and toilet options. (Who knew I'd every type that sentence?). I also liked the finishes (walls and floors) that the author chose, and I appreciated the information about how to choose good, lightweight options.

Overall, if you're fascinated with tiny houses and consider yourself a bit of a DIY-er, I think you'd enjoy this book.

Like many people, I'm really fascinated by tiny homes so I was interested to see what this book had in store. I've never read a book of this kind before, so I have nothing to compare it to, to say whether it has been done well compared to others, but I think it provides what it promises.

It has easy to follow, step by step instructions with tonnes of visual aids which is great. It has information about the types of tools you'll need, including how to get by with the bare minimum. I liked the checklist, to make sure a tiny home is right for you. I also loved the section about doing your own thing with the interior space and the examples provided.

I will admit, the design of this particular tiny house is not my favourite, but I think it fits well for a beginners first. If you already have a working knowledge of how to use your tools and a bit of grunt, I imagine this book would be for you.