The Tumbleweed DIY Book of Backyard Sheds & Tiny Houses: Build Your Own Guest Cottage, Writing Studio, Home Offic... (Paperback)

These tiny backyard buildings, no more than 110 square feet, can become guest cottages, art or writing studios, home offices, and craft workshops. For the DIY enthusiast, here are photos, elevation drawings, and door/window schedules for six Tumbleweed box bungalows, plus an extensive how-to set of instructions that can be applied to any backyard building project. What they are not is home-center garden sheds. Though conventionally built, these handsome little buildings have real doors, windows, and skylights with interesting and practical details throughout. Paint them and finish them to suit your tastes and needs.

The term "Box Bungalow" is a trademark of Tumbleweek Tiny House Corp. It refers to their idea of packaging these backyard buildings on a flat skid, for weekend DIY assembly. They'll also sell a prefab building for delivery to your prepared site. They'll also sell complete sets of plans for any of the houses shown in this book.

Jay Shafer is internationally recognized as an expert in small living. He is a designer specializing in sustainable architecure and urban planning. He has lectured extensively on these subjects for such venues as the Eco-Dwelling program at New Collage, the Boston Architectural Center, and the University of Iowa's School of Art and Art History where he served as Adjunct Assistant Professor for more than a decade. Jay's designs and essays have appeared in a number of periodicals, books, and television shows including Fine Homebuilding, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, Oprah, and This Old House. He currently lives in an 89 square-foot home of his own creation in Sebastopol, California.

Shafer's first book, The Small House Book, was self-published in 2000 and revised in 2010, in cooperation with Fox Chapel Publishing. An underground self-publishing success, it has sold many thousands of copies over the past 10 years.