In 2016, we embarked on an incredible journey together of building a tiny house. We had nearly no experience with any of the techniques involved in building a house, but with so many resources out there, we were sure we could pull it off. While we tapped into many different resources, from books to YouTube, we found that our community connections had the largest impact overall. Carl’s Building Supply offered not only a substantial discount on materials (as builders of our own home) and many, many, home deliveries, but they supplied an enormous wealth of advice and building knowledge with enthusiasm throughout the process and even a bouquet of flowers at our housewarming party. As part of their outstanding customer service, they have expert builders on staff that assured us that answering our super-basic building questions was part of their jobs! Neighbors and friends gave us free materials, tools, shop space, and help building. We made an effort to reuse/recycle many materials including our door, most windows, all of the tropical hardwoods, and all manner of smaller bits. As if this wasn’t a big enough project, in the midst of building, we got married! After eight months of intense non-stop long days of planning and building, we’ve now been living in The Otter Nest for a year and a half and are about to expand it to make room for a baby! We couldn’t have done it without our community.

–Laura Luttrell and Logan Sander