More Money Podcast - 037 The Tiny House Movement - Christopher Smith, Filmmaker of Tiny: A Story About Living Small

Episode Date: February 17, 2016

Christopher Smith, documentary filmmaker of Tiny: A Story About Living Small, and I talk about the financial upside to living in a tiny house, and how he managed to build his own tiny house with his own money and no prior building experience. Long episode description: When I watched Christopher Smith and Marete Mueller’s documentary Tiny: A Story About Living Small, it kind of blew my mind. I was always aware of the tiny house movement, even fantasized about building my own one day, but it wasn’t until I watched Christopher and Marete build a tiny house from nothing that I became a bit obsessed. Like started googling plans to build my own tiny house obsessed. Luckily, I didn’t have to just wonder how one would go about building their own tiny house because Christopher was nice enough to chat with me about how he did it himself — with his own money and no prior building experience. If he can do it, anyone can, right? That’s one of the big takeaways from the film actually. Just because you’ve never done something before, there’s still nothing stopping you from accomplishing it. And Christopher not only built his own tiny house, he made a film at the same time. A film that went on to major success by premiering at SXSW and screening at a number of other noteworthy film festivals. Another takeaway from the film is the idea of settling down and making a home for yourself. I must have been thinking about his film when I wrote my blog post about embracing life’s impermanence, because that’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. I grew up believing that at a certain age you needed to settle down and stay in one place to raise a family, but that just doesn’t seem important or rational anymore. You don’t need to have a big house in the suburbs with a 30-year mortgage you can hardly afford to have a home. You can buy a plot of land like Christopher and build a tiny house on wheels for the same price as a downpayment and live an incredibly fulfilling (and debt-free) life. Which brings me to another big takeaway — the financial rewards of living small. One of the women featured in the film was able to pay down her debt and quit her soul-crushing job to pursue her dream of being a writer because she lived in a tiny house. It’s crazy what opportunities pop up when we don’t give material goods and commercialism any power in our lives. When we focus on what’s truly important in life (family, community, mental health), we realize how insignificant stuff is. And if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times — no matter how much stuff you’ve got, you can’t take it with you. Learn More About Christopher Smith’s Tiny House and What He’s Up to Now Where Are We (and our house) Now? A TINY Update Two Years Later A Glimpse Inside “The Boulder” Tiny House Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/37 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, and welcome to episode 37 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morris, of course, and thanks for joining me. I've got a freaking awesome episode for you today. I don't know about you, but I love me some Netflix. I love watching all the documentaries they have on there. And one day not too long ago, I was kind of going through the video library and one movie that kind of caught my eye was called Tiny, a story about living small. And it was all about building tiny houses. I'm like, yep, that sounds like my jam. I'm going to watch that. Watched it, loved it, loved it so much that I'm like, you know what, I'm going to do something crazy and try to contact the filmmaker and see if he'll be on my show so we could talk about tiny houses. And I guess I was just lucky, but he got back to me and he agreed to be on the show. And guess what? He's on the show so we could talk about tiny houses. And I guess I was just lucky, but he got back to

me and he agreed to be on the show. And guess what? He's on the show today. So today I'm interviewing Christopher Smith, the filmmaker of Tiny, a story about small living. And we're going to talk about how he got the idea to build his own tiny house and how he got into this world of filmmaking. He actually wasn't a filmmaker by trade before making the documentary, but it was crazy successful. We're going to talk about all that good stuff right now. Thank you, Christopher, for joining me on my show today. I really, really appreciate it.

Of course. It's great to be here. Awesome. Let's dive in. How did you get involved in the tiny house movement? Well, it actually all started when I bought some land up in the mountains of Colorado and really what I was at this point in my life where I was sort of reevaluating what was important to me and what my dreams were and what I wanted to pursue in life. And it occurred to me that I always had this long term vision of owning my own piece of land in the mountains and building a house with

my own hands on it. And so I thought, why not start working towards that now? Instead of, you know, I think we tend to look at our life goals as a series of steps that are going to get us there. And we work really hard at going to school. We work really hard at going to grad school. Then we work really hard in our career until eventually we're making enough money to make it happen. And I thought, well, what if I just started at the beginning and worked really hard towards that end goal? Exactly. Yeah.

So one day, just kind of on a whim, I went and looked for some land in the mountains, and I found some really affordable land. And it turns out I could actually just put a little bit of money down that day and then do an owner carry for a few years, and then I would own it. So I just kind of on a whim did that and put down the money. And so really, the tiny house project came out of, you know, looking at and saying, now I have this land, how do I achieve the next part, which is building the house. And with what I have now and the resources, you know, at my disposal, and since I didn't have a lot of money, or a lot of time or no experience building anything, I thought a small house would be best. But when I actually called the planning department

to kind of suss out what would go into doing that, I learned all about the building codes and all the steps it would have to take and how much money that would be and even a 600 square foot, which was the minimum that you were allowed to build on the, on the land there and pretty much anywhere. And, uh, that alone, you know, required, um, basically, you know, digging at the altitude, I had to dig like really deep footings and, and it basically was

out of reach. And so I remembered reading an article in yes magazine back in 2009 where it featured d williams in her tiny house and it kind of clicked to me right around then that that is why people build tiny houses so small and on wheels is because it kind of it falls under a different set of laws and kind of circumnavigates away those building codes that made the project prohibitive. Okay. So I actually didn't know that there was a minimum square footage that your house had to be. That's interesting.

I thought you could just kind of do what you want if you're building the house. So that's really interesting. Oh, yeah. That's a big component of the story, actually. Yeah. Maybe worth just touching on for people who don't know. But basically, depending on where your land is, it falls under any number of jurisdictions from your city to your county to your HOA to the state. So it varies property to property.

But almost all counties in America have a basic like 600 square foot minimum rule. And most cities, it's bigger. And most HOAs, it's even bigger than that. So in fact, the minimum in a lot of places is more like 1500 or 2000 square feet. Wow, that seems really big. And it could just because I live in a really small apartment. No, it is. And, you know, it's not necessarily wasn't meant to be a bad thing or restrictive. It was it kind of came out of the post-Depression era, 1950s mentality that we're a prospering society and people shouldn't have to live in tiny squalid tenements anymore. And so they passed these laws to kind of protect people from being forced into terrible living conditions. Wow, that's really interesting. And I guess that kind of just,

you know, explains why everyone has this kind of obsession with these McMansions and just these huge houses. Exactly. Wow, that's really interesting. So what I'm interested in, so you kind of decided that, you know, building a tiny house on wheels was kind of the way to go. Why did you decide to build it yourself from scratch? Because I feel like I did a little bit of research of like maybe a few years ago. And I think there are some companies that kind of do some of it for you. Like you don't have to do it all yourself. There's kind of like a kit you can buy, but you did every single thing yourself.

Why did you want to do that? Oh, well, those companies didn't exist back then. Oh, they didn't. Okay. That's why. Yeah. I mean, part of it for me was the process of building the house. That was one of the things on my bucket list, you might say. Yeah. And so, so that was always like number one, even if the, even if they did exist, I wouldn't have used them. And, you know, at the time there were some, some companies, Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, that sold plans. But I wanted to design it and do everything myself. And, you know, it was sort of a, you know, coming of age kind of a process. And the process was the point for me. And, you know, so in the years, so this was in 2011 when I started and, you know, back then

there were people who had built tiny houses, but it wasn't a, as nearly as common. I mean, there were maybe a dozen as opposed to now where there's like thousands of them. And, uh, you know, so also, you know, I think like you see all these really great innovative designs and stuff now that weren't, I didn't, I wasn't able to really borrow ideas from because they didn't exist yet. So that's why mine's a lot simpler. And, you know, plus it was within my, what was within my ability to actually build. How did you come up with a design for your house? Did you just, like, how did, did you copy something that was kind of floating around or? You know, not really. There was, you're kind of constrained by the size of the trailer if you're building a tiny house on wheels and you know, there are, there are certain

dimensions. And so you're in there, it's like basically you start with a rectangle. Yeah. And at the time I was looking at what other people have done and sort of choosing what I like best from each one. And then also was thinking about how I was looking at what other people have done and choosing what I like best from each one. Then also was thinking about how I was going to be using the house and modifying it to suit my use of it. I ended up with what I did because I was building it for a high altitude, cold environment. Also, something that I could do within my limited skill set and, uh, you know, if construction or whatever. And, uh, I was also, um, you know, I also wanted to build it green and I was kind of trying to think about ways in which I can work in reclaimed materials. And therefore, you know, one of those things that

you can get are used windows. There's, um, it's one of the things that are really easy to find and they're really expensive when they're new. So I actually bought the windows first and kind of designed some of the house around the windows that I found. I like that. Very economical and thrifty. I like it. Yeah. Yeah. So how long did it, because I remember you had an idea of how long it would take you, but it actually took you quite a bit longer. And I, I'm assuming a lot of that reason is because while you were building this house, you were actually working full time at the same time, right? Yeah. I, so part of the reason why it took so long is that one, I had no idea what I was doing or how to estimate. And, uh, two, I, I was kind of learning as I was going along. I was working actually part-time

more than full-time. And I was finishing my master's degree at the beginning. Oh, wow. That's a lot. Yeah. I had to do a thesis in the first couple of months. Wow. And then also I kind of ran into some financial trouble along the way because I was self-funding it. So it was a kind of a number of factors that contributed to that. And I was also – well, we were making a film about it at the same time. So for the first few months, I was going out there alone and kind of just setting up a camera and then doing some work.

So when you factor in the time it takes to do that extra step too, it added to it. Yeah, no kidding. So you were finishing off a master's and filming yourself build this house and working part-time at the same time. That's ambitious. But you did it. Yeah, well, you know, even from the beginning, I did have help from a rep. Although in the early days, since the point was to like, you know do it all myself i would i started out by trying to build the house without anybody's help and uh you know and so as the year progressed mirette

came out and to the building site more and more until she was there every day and we ended up finishing it together but in the early days it was it was really just me, some tools, and a camera. Yeah. Yeah. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. So what made you want to make a documentary

about this experience instead of just doing it? I guess you were a filmmaker. Is that what you were studying in school? Actually, no, I was studying public administration. Oh, very different. Yep. So what happened was that I had done filmmaking in the past, though,

and was kind of part of that whole re- reevaluating where I was in my life. And the things I wanted to do was I was kind of gravitating towards. I guess I didn't really intend to get back into filmmaking as a career, but I wanted to experiment more with it as a hobby. And so I bought a DSLR camera to start filming things and I kind of gave myself a project of maybe I'll make a short documentary this is at the same time I don't know what I was thinking um but it you know I couldn't really I was I was trying to figure out what to make a short documentary about and Marette suggested making one about the tiny house project and needless to say I was a little skeptical or hesitant only because,

well, for a couple of reasons. One, I didn't really want to make a film about myself. Two, you know, that means I would actually have to do the tiny house project. Yeah. Follow through, you know? Yeah. And, and three, you know, I was, I wasn't exactly sure how good of a film it would make. Cause you know, it's like really at the end of the day, it's building a house. I thought it was kind of like building a shed, you know, and people think that's interesting. But, you know, I was like, yeah, I'm down to – let's make a film about this. But, you know, you should do it with me. And so we ended up making the film together.

Yeah. And so you initially thought it was going to be a short film but then it ended up being a feature and then kind of it seems like it's kind of taken on like this huge you you know it's way bigger than you expected it to be because it you know opened at south by southwest and it's done really well and it's on netflix now like it's crazy yeah no yeah thanks you said it said it right, because we really – we thought we were going to make a 10-minute film, maybe a 15-minute film at first. And early on when we were making the film, we met with some friends that we knew had been involved in that movie, The Cove. And they suggested that if you want to get inspired, you want to meet the right people, you've got to stop what you're doing and go to mountain film which is a film festival that happened to be uh happening like a you know a few weeks after this conversation so we decided to buy some tickets and we went to mountain film

and uh which is you know found this incredible community of like-minded people and got really inspired and then we came back and we're like okay our one goal is to make a short film that's good enough to be a mountain film. And, uh, you know, mountain films, uh, it's a pretty prestigious festival and not that easy to get into. So we thought it was like a, you know, a manageable goal in terms of a short film. And then also a kind of a stretch goal, which is getting into this, you know, decent festival. And decent festival and uh you know so then that it grew from that into a feature film yeah and then daring to even submit it to bigger festivals like Sundance and South by Southwest which are you know the biggest festivals in the world yeah and um and we didn't know anybody or you know in in those at those festivals or in the industry, and we didn't really know how the game, so to speak, really was played.

So we just kind of got lucky in a lot of ways, and we just submitted it through the slush pile, and it got in. And so it really has been a series of fortunate events. Absolutely. uh fortunate events and absolutely and you know besides the film now you and marit also go and speak about your film and the tiny house movement so you're also you know educating people about this lifestyle which i think is awesome yeah that was sort of an accidental byproduct you know i mean as a a documentary filmmaker, you oftentimes end up doing that kind of a thing. But, you know, in some respects, you know, we became kind of more for maybe for a while or maybe still, I don't know. But we were kind of figureheads, I guess, in the tiny house movement.

And it was sort of by accident rather than by design because we started a blog um primarily to draw attention about our the film we were working on and also because we wanted to do a kickstarter and we wanted to kind of build that audience in advance of the kickstarter but because we did that we kind of put ourselves out there um and then you know because we were in the movie and then the movie ended up as you said getting on netflix and know, it's been seen millions of times. But it's just like all of a sudden, you know, we became the thing that we were interested in, if that makes sense. Like we didn't set out to be like experts on tiny houses. Exactly. Yeah. We just thought the experts were cool and we wanted to make a movie about them. And, uh, then it kind of, you know, did a weird flip on us. And then

all of a sudden, uh, we're being asked to speak at places and, you know, and, and I have to say that, you know, when you, when you do a documentary film, you do kind of become an expert on the topic because out of necessity, you kind of have to. Absolutely. And you built a house from scratch, like you've got, you're an expert. Thanks. But we do try to recommend the people who are the tiny house experts when it makes sense. If somebody wants us to talk about from a perspective of somebody who's been living hardcore in a tiny house for years and is dedicated their life to minimalismism stuff we oftentimes will refer to them to some of the people who are in our film or whatever just because you know we're filmmakers first and foremost and tiny houses

kind of second and uh and so we like to provide more of the 30 000 foot view rather than um claim to be the like the go-to it comes to tiny houses, you know? You mentioned something interesting just about how some of these tiny houses, you know, they live permanently in their tiny houses. But I'm assuming since the film, you know, got released, and it's been a few years, where is your tiny house and uh you know is it still in colorado do you live there full time what's are you a permanent tiny houser well uh you know when we were building it for the movie and when you hear me in all the interviews in the film i basically was building it because i had this land up in the mountains but it was really remote

and so it was really meant as this kind of mountain getaway that I would kind of have long term that I could go back to. And it would kind of be that even if I moved in my normal life places, it would be this place I could return to. Totally. But it ended up on the land and we kept it up there for about a year. But then we went to New York to do post-production. Yeah. But then, you know, I, I never really wanted to live in New York and, uh, you know,

and I realized that it really wasn't for me. And, uh, we were traveling around and doing the film festival circuit. And so I, I didn't really want to pay rent anywhere anyway. So we ended up moving it back to Boulder where I then would go stay in between festivals. And then I ended up just living in it for basically about a year as I worked

on this film that actually will be on the Discovery Channel in a couple weeks called Racing Extinction and while I was working on that as an assistant editor I was living in the tiny house so I did live in it for about a year and it's still,

it's still there outside of Boulder and I go back and I stay in it as much as possible. You know, I'm probably in it a month or two out of the year. And but, but currently my home base is Los Angeles where I'm working on my next film. And Marat is living in New York where she works on her film projects and she also directs stuff for other people. That's awesome. I, well, I think that's actually really cool. And that's probably why I'm so drawn to the tiny house movement. And I talked to my husband about this all the time. Like we just need to buy some land and we can figure out how to buy it or build it or something

like that. But I would love the idea of, I mean, we're probably always going to be city dwellers just because of our jobs, but I love the idea of having a space of our own that we own and it's ours, but it doesn't have to be big. And so I like the flexibility that these tiny houses, you know, you don't have to live in it permanently. Where if you buy a regular house on land, you're kind of stuck there. And that's kind of the thing that always kind of freaks me out. But with a tiny house, you've got the flexibility. It's actually on wheels. You can actually move it somewhere else if you want to. That's true. So it's pretty cool.

So I actually wanted to, since you are, you know, very well versed in the tiny house movement, I wanted to kind of get more into some of the benefits of, you know, incorporating this into your lifestyle. Like obviously there's financial benefits, there's some mobility. And also, I know on your website, you mentioned a couple of times a lot of it is based on living a more deliberate life, which I think is a really cool way to describe it. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I mean, choosing to live in a tiny house is definitely a choice. And I'm careful to tell people that it's a great lifestyle or a great living situation for some people at some times in their life. I think that there's this idea that if you move into a tiny house that you're this hardcore minimalist and that you're like deciding on that lifestyle for life. And then when people move out of tiny houses later on, they kind of people view

them as hypocrites or something. And, and I don't think that that's necessarily the best way to look at it. Because, you know, our lives change, we our families grow, we, we lose money, we gain money. We, uh, our ability status changes. Like maybe we aren't able to climb the ladders to the loft anymore or something like that. So I think tiny houses really are well suited to some people and, uh, and, uh, or, and, you know, different times in their lives. And, um, but I think that there is a, a certain deliberateness that, that you need to take in order to make that decision, because it's not entirely easy. There are things that you have to manage, you know, like the amount of stuff you have and what your lifestyle is like will look,

you know, differently than it does if you have a large house. Um, and so that's, that's a choice that you have to intentionally make. And I think what's great about it is when you focus your attention on your lifestyle like that, it is a sort of meditative practice. You know, it's a lot like Buddhists who live in monasteries, although not quite that extreme. But, you know, you're working through your daily routine and actively choosing those simple things in life like how you're going to cook dinner or how you're going to clean. And I should mention that in a tiny house, it doesn't necessarily have to be that different than a large house. But there are certain considerations that you have to be deliberate about. And anyways, I think that draws attention to the process of living, which is often lost with all of our technology and convenience and grocery stores that I think is actually really healthy and a lot of people are drawn to that. Absolutely.

I absolutely agree with being drawn to – and that's kind of my frame of mind it's like i would love to just you know really enjoy the moments the little micro moments in our life because i find the day-to-day especially living in a big city you just get you know weeks pass by and you're like i don't remember what happened last week so i think that a lot of people especially in our generation are definitely drawn to kind of a simpler, uh, way of living. That's not just, you know, full of stuff, but more meaningful moments really. Yeah. That's, that's very true. Yeah. Um, one, um, more question before I let you go. I'm just curious, uh, if someone,

you know, maybe me, maybe someone listening is thinking about, you know, kind of doing what you did and building, uh, or, you know, kind of doing what you did and building or, you know, getting a kid or whatever to build their tiny house. What kind of pieces of advice would you give them that you wish you knew before you started? That's a great question. And well, you know, it's funny that you say that we actually have a, an ebook on our website, which is basically, it's called a tiny bit of advice. And it's, Oh, awesome. Definitely. I'll send you a copy. But basically, there's a lot of things that I could give advice

about. But I think the thing that jumps out the most is really kind of being sure about your decision and maybe trying to minimize your life in other ways first to see what it's going to be like. And then it's about if you're building your own house and designing it yourself to really think about what is necessary to you, like what's what's what are needs and what are wants and what are the ones that you kind of need and really designing your house around that. And and then also maybe just going and spending some time in a house or two if you can and and seeing what you like or what you don't like yeah i think that's a very important thing go in a tiny house first if you like it then maybe build it i should probably do that totally and you know i i think there are all sorts of great solutions out there now that

i didn't know about or didn't exist back in the day so living in a tiny house you don't necessarily have to do without a lot of the conveniences in a tiny house, you don't necessarily have to do without a lot of the conveniences in a larger house. Like there are people who have, you know, laundry facilities, you know, large fridges, running water and toilets. So there, you know, it can be basically a normal house. Yeah, that's awesome. Great. Well, thank you so much, Christopher. I really enjoyed chatting with you. Yeah much christopher i really enjoyed chatting with you yeah thank you i enjoyed chatting with you as well and thank you so much for listening to episode 37 of the mo money podcast uh my guest my awesome guest christopher smith make sure to

check out his uh the website for the movie tiny dash the movie.com you can find out more information about the documentary there, even purchase it. And yeah, check out the show notes for this episode at jessicamorales.com slash 37 to find out a little bit more about Christopher, about this episode, about his movie, and a bunch of awesome, awesome stuff. Thank you again for listening.

And guess what? I'll see you here next Wednesday. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.