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Going small in a big way Andrew Duncan, co-owner of Southern Oregon Tiny Homes, puts the finishing touches on a house that will be delivered to a buyer in Eugene. Mail Tribune / Jamie Lusch Sunday Jan 8, 2017 at 10:36 AM Jan 8, 2017 at 10:36 AM Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune MEDFORD — The three founders of Southern Oregon Tiny Homes marked their one-year anniversary this winter by reaching out to help a would-be homeowner with the same life goal that prompted them to start their business of offering small-scale, affordable housing. With combined backgrounds in construction and project management, Sean Moroni, Andrew Duncan and Cole Smith say they launched the business from their shop along Crater Lake Highway last year in hopes of helping customers, and their own families, realize the dream of home ownership. "Housing, easily, is two-thirds of most people's income nowadays, then the rest goes to bills and everything else. People are locked into 30 — or even 15 — year mortgages, which make it difficult to maintain when they get older and want to retire," Duncan said. "After the housing market crash, we saw this as a response to things we saw in the world." Despite being a few hours away in Eugene, 28-year-old Michelle Nelson said she gained an immediate appreciation for Duncan and his partners' vision just as she was ready to throw in the towel on her own attempt at affordable living. With rental costs for her Eugene apartment increasing three times in less than two years, Nelson recruited her father, a retired general contractor, to help her build a tiny house. While basic tiny house construction was not unlike building a regular home, there were ins and outs that required more of a skill set than she'd planned for. "Dad and I started in the beginning of the summer, working as much as we could until we got really, really stuck. In a moment of desperation, I put it up for sale on a tiny house listings," Nelson said. "I was going to sell it as a shell. We only had really gotten the structure done so there was no electrical or plumbing yet." Within 12 hours, Moroni e-mailed Nelson; initially to inquire about purchase but later to offer help with completion. "He told me, 'If you haven't pulled the plug yet, let us help you finish it!'" recalled Nelson. "I was excited when I heard from him because of course I wanted to finish it. He drove from Medford to Eugene and looked at it and took it down with him the next day." While Nelson had made a valiant attempt at constructing her new space, Duncan said, custom design and careful space planning provided by his firm took the project to another level, staying within Nelson's budget. Tiny homes range in size from 200 to as much as 700 square feet and cost $30,000 to $85,000 for custom versions like those produced by Southern Oregon Tiny Homes. The company's standard model is 26 feet long and 224 square feet inside, not counting loft space. It comes with cabinets and floor coverings, costs $65,000 and "can be customized in hundreds of ways," according to the firm's website, sotinyhomes.com. Far from sacrificing quality, Duncan said, careful design leaves most tiny homes more comfortable and livable than bigger homes. Emphasis is placed on doing away with little-used space such as oversized bedrooms and excess storage and carefully planning more popular areas. "A lot of builders out there have plans x, y and z. We can build the budget model if that's what someone wants, but our philosophy from the beginning has been, 'If you're going to live in 400 square feet of space, then that space should really fit you like a glove," Duncan said. "With Michelle's house, she wanted a giant bathroom. A 4-foot-by-3-foot shower is awfully big in the tiny house world, but she got an amazing bathroom and amazing kitchen and we just scaled down other areas of the house." He added, "If we were designing a home for a bachelor who orders pizza five nights a week, he would be OK with a little two-burner stove, which would open up a larger space for an enormous TV and all the electronic and sound system stuff. Where Michelle wanted more counter space, he'd only need maybe a small area to put his pizza box." Nelson, whose tiny home will be delivered this week complete with a gourmet kitchen and a "catwalk" between sleeping lofts for her pet cat, is excited to move into her new digs. Moroni and Duncan say Nelson's project is a good reminder of why they became part of the tiny house movement. "When Sean asked if I wanted to come build tiny houses with him, I looked for every reason I could to say no," Duncan said. "But I couldn't come up with a reason because this fits with our lifestyle. Building 5, 6 and 7,000-square-foot homes for families of two and three people didn't fit with how I feel we should be living — environmentally and financially — in this day and age." Moroni said he's happy to provide Nelson and others with the opportunity of home ownership, minus three decades of mortgage. "Since the beginning, I figured this was the only way I would be able to help a lot of people, including myself, to own their own home. I think a lot of people have been priced out of the market," he said. "And, even if you're not priced out of the market, what if you could have affordable housing and your housing cost could be cut into a half or a third and you could leave a smaller carbon footprint? You either don't have to work as hard to keep your same lifestyle ... or you can do what you're doing, but do a lot more living." — Reach freelance writer Buffy Pollock at [email protected].