“Most people could build a tiny house, they’re just too scared to start,” said 21-year-old Emily Lohm.
Lohm and her Swedish husband Elias were fed up with renting a converted, leaky bach in Whangaparoa. “It cost us $440 per week, and we weren’t even getting the city lifestyle,” she said.
“We wanted to do something other than sit around, paying rent for the next five years.”
That something came in the form of a $55,000 personal bank loan, with a whopping 13.5 per cent interest rate.
Emily was working full-time as a healthcare assistant, and Elias was working for a boat building company when the project began.
“We believed if we didn’t want to live in it afterwards, we’d still be making money,” said Emily.
The novice builders drew up a plan to put a steel frame up on a standard trailer, “like a jigsaw puzzle”. Three months later, they moved in.
“There wasn’t a kitchen to start with, and we used ladders to get up to the lofts,” Emily said. The full build took a further five months of weekend work to complete.
“It’s exhausting living in a building site. You want to try to have a life, or to have one sleep-in, but also to just get it done,” she said.
Emily left an architecture diploma after six months, but had a clear vision for the 27.5sqm tiny house.
“We lived in a 30sqm studio in Sweden and had often talked about how we’d enjoy the space if it were designed better,” she said. Continue reading