A man built a tiny home for his mom and then set up a company to help others build one too

• Dan Louche set up Tiny Home Builders in 2009 after he built a tiny house for his mom.

• It offers a range of plans, with prices starting at about $200 for a 20-foot “Simple Living” plan.

• Customers can build their own tiny homes for as little as $10,000 in materials.

In 2009, Dan Louche’s mom told him her health was deteriorating due to mold growing in her home following damage caused by a storm.

He knew something had to be done, but couldn’t afford to buy her a new home in Florida. While searching for an answer, the 47-year-old saw a PBS show about a woman who had built her own tiny home.

“I saw that and thought it would be an awesome solution,” Louche told Insider. His mom wrote a blog about the construction and fit-out of her home.

He said that despite growing up in a family of contractors and having a background in engineering, he didn’t have the expertise to build one himself.

“So I started researching and just really diving into it,” Louche said. “Then I went out, bought a trailer and I started building that first house. It was never intended to be a business – it was really just trying to solve my mom’s problem.”

Through his experience he started to pick up skills, and he eventually decided he wanted to help others build their own tiny houses, so in 2010 he founded Tiny Home Builders.

“I thought maybe there’s someone else who might have the same experience or a need to build their own,” Dan Louche said.

When Louche and his wife went to visit his mom at her tiny home, she was surprised by how livable it was and how it met all her needs.

That was when he knew he could help others build their own, he said.

He has a blog where he documented his mistakes and tips for people who also didn’t have much construction experience.

“We started to provide resources for people to help them build their own house,” he said.

“Initially we started selling some of those to try and make up some of the money we spent on my mom’s house, but it ended up growing bigger and now it’s a company.”

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Tiny Home Builders offers a range of plans in different sizes.

There are five plans on offer: Tiny Living, The Element, Tiny Studio, Tiny Retirement, and Simple Living. Each comes in a range of sizes.

For people just starting out, the company also offers a design and construction guide that summarizes the process of building a tiny house.

“That gives you an introduction to the process,” Louche said. “It doesn’t give you the floor plan of a house, but it gives you some of the knowledge that you would need to go off and do it.”

The plans offer instructions on how to build the homes and a cost estimate.

There’s also a comprehensive material list with approximate prices for materials. They can range from $10,000 to $25,000, according to the company’s website.

Tiny Home Builders also offers two-day intensive workshop sessions to show people how to build the homes if they are ready to build their own house but don’t have the knowledge.

One of the most popular plans is for the “Tiny Living” design.

One of the most popular designs is the “Tiny Living” plan that costs $347. It has a big family living area, bathroom, kitchen, and a sleeping area and is offered in six sizes from 12 feet to 32 feet.

“I recommend the smallest house be 16 feet long because it can have a full bathroom, a full bedroom, kitchen, and couch. That’s all a single person really needs,” Louche said. “The smaller the house, the cheaper it’s going to be to build.”

Customers can email the company for support during the construction process.

The company says it gets about 60 emails a day from people asking questions about the construction process.

“If we get a question two or three times we’re putting together resources to help everybody else,” Louche said. “We try to help everybody that we can because we want everybody to be successful and have a good experience.”

If two people are building a tiny home full-time, it can take as little as two months to finish.

The longest it’s ever taken Louche to build a tiny home is a year, which was when he first started and while he was also juggling full-time job, he said.

It’s mostly young people who buy the plans, Louche said.

The main customer base is people who don’t have kids, or people just starting a family, Louche said. There aren’t many families living in tiny houses due their size, he added.

With a tiny house, you can have a home for the price of a car.

The cost is a big plus, but the challenge for people building tiny homes has been finding places to park them.

Louche said some places such as California are passing laws to encourage ADUs, or Accessory Dwelling Units.

“It means they can be parked in anybody’s backyard. When we first started there was a lot of resistance to adoption, but we’re seeing that as time goes on, that resistance is dying down,” he said.

Tiny Home Builders also has an online marketplace to buy and sell tiny houses.

People can sell their used tiny homes or ones they have built using the plans on their site via the marketplace.

“It’s an extremely rewarding experience to help people build their own house. We want to make sure that we help people go through that process,” Louche said.

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