5 Tiny Houses Made From Recycled Materials

Blame it on skyrocketing real-estate prices and shrinking city lots, but skinny, mini, and smartly designed have suddenly become serious selling points.
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For Architectural Digest, by Hannah Martin.

It's no secret: The blogosphere has become obsessed with tiny houses. Blame it on skyrocketing real-estate prices and shrinking city lots, but skinny, mini, and smartly designed have suddenly become serious selling points. With eco-friendly building simultaneously on the rise, it's no shocker that Ryan Adams--the Charlotte, North Carolina blogger behind The Tiny Life--has released a new book called Tiny Houses Built with Recycled Materials (Adams Media; $27) that catalogues minuscule homes, from a corrugated metal-clad cabin in the mountains of Colorado to a mud hut in Oregon.

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Photo: Courtesy of The Tiny Life

Architect Aaron Maret used reclaimed barn wood for the façade, a salvaged door from a 1920s farmhouse, and recovered sheathing from an art studio, but he did buy a few new fixtures, such as operable windows, wiring, and plumbing.

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Photo: Courtesy of The Tiny Life

Natalie Pollard's 265-square-foot house in Asheville, North Carolina, was built from locally milled lumber, with accent walls sheathed in reclaimed materials from a Civil War-era cabin and flooring from a local salvage store.

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Photo: Courtesy of The Tiny Life

Inspired by old railway cars and shepherd's wagons, Kate Fox and Andy Gill devised a house on wheels that accommodates their nomadic lifestyle. They used reclaimed Victorian-era wood for the floorboards and salvaged barn wood for the studs in the walls.

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Photo: Courtesy of The Tiny Life

For the DIY caravan James Galletly built in his native Australia, he would post listings of what he needed on social media and regularly found donated supplies--from insulation to flooring samples to the perfect hardware for his French doors--waiting by his job site the next morning.

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Photo: Courtesy of The Tiny Life

Greg Parham fashioned corrugated-metal roofing panels and reclaimed wood into walls for his house on wheels in Durango, Colorado.

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