Tiny House Australia | Building a tiny home on your own
Building a tiny house in Australia is not an easy feat, but it is possible. My name is Benjamin Bailey-Webb, and I’ve built a tiny home. This is my story, and the lessons I learnt along the way.
My partner and I have been “living tiny” for about 4 years now. Our house is known as the Nook. The Nook is situated on a one-hectare block just off the eastern edge of Gariwerd (Grampians National Park) and about 9 km from the tourist town of Halls Gap, Victoria.
Update: The Nook on the Hill is now available to stay at as an Airbnb. Make sure you check it out!
I grew up on a larger property, just over the hill that encompassed the block we are on now. I had a super humble upbringing - Mum was an artist/art teacher and Dad a retired farmer. Mum and Dad built 4 individual cottages made of recycled materials on the property. Each cottage was unique and used just one type of material to create the structure - redgum logs, red bricks, mud, and stone. We used the old dairy shed as our workshop, which I utilised during the construction of the Nook. I was always working in the big shed making things with dad for the cottages, or by myself making whatever I could dream up, or in mum’s studio painting and creating. It was an upbringing that was truly inspirational for my imagination and freedom of creative expression. We didn’t have much financially, but we were so rich in creativity, something for which I have always been so thankful.
Having an open and creative mindset is one of your greatest tools for tiny home design and construction.
When my parents split, they also split the property in two and lived as neighbours, ultimately leaving our little 2 acre block the remaining piece of home. After completing high school I moved to Geelong for university. I tried architecture and arts, but I think somewhat caught up in the wild ride that was Jon Hamm in Mad Men, I had this idea that the advertising industry was for me and so I started a job in an agency in Melbourne.
Within a few years though I had two goals: 1) travel the world and 2) build a house, all before I turned the ripe age of 30. So, I quit my job, and in the space of a week I went from sitting at my desk overlooking South Melbourne, to looking across the sandy red Pilbara landscape, working in electrical construction. This is where everything changed for me, as I began emailing with my dad - a relationship that became key to building our tiny home.
Discovering tiny homes Australia – an opportunity to do things differently
After a few years as a FIFO worker, I spent 19 months travelling Asia, Europe and North America, eventually landing in the UK. With goal two seemingly still out of reach but bursting with tons of architectural inspiration, I began designing a small house structure to sit on the block back home. I’d email dad the latest ideas for his thoughts and then jump into my free version of Sketchup, easing into the design process. It wasn’t until at some point during this repetitive daily ritual, the YouTube algorithm spat a recommendation my way - tiny houses.
Don’t see limits as restraints – see them as opportunities to think differently.
Originally my design concepts had been constrained to small structures due to serious budget limitations, however, after bingeing tiny home videos my perception of small space living had changed, and I was embracing the opportunities that came with that. All I needed now was a way to fund this idea - I knew my $30K in savings was enough to get me through the planning stage and then lay a slab, I just needed more capital and a job that was flexible to some degree to pay for everything that went on top of the concrete.
Getting permits, obtaining approvals, and making plans
Dad emailed me one day with a proposal - he’d lend me a significant portion of his retirement money to buy the block and then a bit more to help fund the initial stages of the house construction. Mum had also been patiently holding on to the block of land specifically for me for a few years now. At the end of 2017, my partner and I moved back to Australia. I spent the next six months working on the permit applications which included the owner builder license submission and sign off, the final site and dwelling drawings, the energy efficiency compliance report, the engineering sign-off reports for the slab and the trusses, the bushfire management statement, multiple soil tests and reports, the waste management design and proposal.
At the beginning of summer 2018, a friend of mine ventured out with me to digitally remap our block in its entirety. During this application phase another friend of mine, Pricey, a draftsman, drew up the final professional drawings to accompany the rest of the printed designs and reports that were now stacking well beyond the capabilities of my everyday office stapler.
The intrinsic knowledge that a draftsperson has of the fundamental building codes and standards is priceless.
Pricey basically helped recode my design so that it would work within the Australian building standards.
I engaged an engineer and got the permit application pushed through council - approved on time and with no adjustments. I had already engaged a builder and a plumber to help with the concrete slab. We swiftly cut the site into the hill and started the work. The building inspector looked at everything, gave the go ahead and we laid the slab.
Next up was the task of laying the bricks. My initial bricklayer fell through only a month before required. As I wallowed on how my first significant setback came at such an early stage in the project, dad called around and found a contact. I apprehensively picked up the phone and called Tim. To my surprise, he was keen, and could start straight away.
Tim came out, assessed the job, looked at the 120-year-old bricks with an air of concern and quoted a fixed rate. For the next month we worked through the unreasonably wet winter weather. At the end of the month, Tim and I had miraculously created three walls, perfectly plumb and entirely unique, from a bunch of handmade bricks, where no brick was ever quite the same as any other. The brick walls were now complete.
Something I realised early in the project was the power of CAD software.
One of the first times it demonstrated this power was when I used it to generate a cutting list of timber based off my 3D plans. Prior to starting construction, I had built the house from scratch six times in Sketchup, each time going deeper and deeper in the level of detail. By the time I was ready to build the timber frame of the upper storey, I had designed the entire frame structure in CAD and so could come up with a reasonably accurate cutting list to order the timber.
It's who you know
While the timber request was being processed, I received a call from one of my dad’s best friends, Burkey. He was a retired carpenter, very old-school, with a set of enviable skills. He had called to offer me his old builder’s trailer very generously, still in perfect working order, full of useful tools, a compressor, and a nail gun. I graciously accepted his offer and the trailer and Nook sat together side-by-side as best pals, inseparable for the rest of the project. The timber arrived and with Burkey’s 25-year-old nail gun, I set to work on constructing the frame, trusses, and front façade.
After getting news of a new job and start date, in October, I had a deadline. I had lined up a good friend, Newta, a qualified plumber, almost a year prior to help clad the walls and the roof in Australia’s COLORBOND of choice, Monument. A few days of hard work, an AFL grand final and a hangover later… we had a roof and three walls completed. Newta was gone as quickly as he arrived, generously donating his time to the project purely for the love of being involved and the opportunity to drop down and see his family in Halls Gap.
Creating some cashflow, and getting the house to lock up
Three and a half months of straight work later and we had a shell of a house, almost at lock up, apart from the huge gaping gaps where the windows were supposed to be. Time for a break and start earning some moolah to cashflow this thing. My partner and I were both very interested in working in the national park and the only way to really achieve that was to work for the Halls Gap Parks Victoria team. Coincidently, a job application popped up to work on the Halls Gap Forest Fire Management team - we both applied. Two months later, we waltzed into the Halls Gap Parks Victoria depot reporting for training and ready to start our six-month seasonal roles. And just like that, my job anxiety and funding for the next stage of the project was seemingly extinguished…. (Dad joke quota exhausted).
During the 2018/19 Victorian bushfire season, I was able to coordinate the installation of the glazing. I took a day off and with the team from Thermosmart astonishingly completed all the glazing in a day! Just like that, I had the house at lock up.
Using recycled materials
Once that bushfire season ended, I hit the ground running. Now it was time to focus on the work inside the house, the space where I felt my skill set was most suited - that of finer woodwork. During the fire season I had spotted a deal on Facebook Marketplace for a pile of recycled floorboards that were out of an old basketball court that had been ripped up, so I picked up the lot. Another chance marketplace purchase later and I had a second hand thicknesser setup too. After de-nailing thousands of nails by hand from over 600 lineal metres of boards, I started to painstakingly push them through the thicknesser. Those boards now make up the kitchen drawer fronts, the kitchen ceiling and walls, the mezzanine flooring and the bedroom drawer fronts. It’s funny how far 600 lineal metres of floorboards will take you…from insanity to vanity.
The 2019/20 fire season was rolling around fast! Knowing this time around that I wouldn’t have much time to get any work done on the house during the season I continued working furiously day in, day out. Working 6–7-day weeks for most of the off-season I managed to get the:
electrical roughed-in
AC split system air conditioner unit rough in
walls and ceiling insulated. The ceiling used batts that were made from scrap wool that was a by-product in a carpet factory in Melbourne. The second storey walls were insulated with a new technology to Australia called Isocell, which is a cellulose material made from shredded newspapers and mineral salts and is then blown into the wrap sealed frame of the house. This was the first domestic installation of this product in Australia ever!
slab diamond cut and polished by legendary Serbian concrete magician Jovan Jovanov!
internal wall and floor frames installed
kitchen wall, ceiling and mezzanine floor cladded in floorboards
spiral staircase king post welded and bolted to the floor and ceiling
septic system installed
first half of the garden planted out.
Being project manager, designer and builder simultaneously
Even after achieving so much in such a short period of time, I remember being somewhat disappointed with where the project was at and how I was progressing. I had established this incredibly high standard and quality of finish from the very beginning of the project, and by doing so, I had handicapped the timeline of the project. I was also building the house in a very fluid and organic way. Being the designer and the builder, I was working on the fly a lot of the time, I had never completely designed out the inside of the house and I was working with the space, responding to it as it changed with each new sub-project. This allowed me to adjust designs along the way and think up new ideas as I saw the space change. This sounds like a project manager’s nightmare, and to be honest, being the project manager myself, it was - but being the designer and the builder at the same time, any negative feelings associated with lost time were heavily outweighed by the satisfaction from complete freedom of creative expression.
Receiving some sad news
Stay focused on the things within your control.
One evening during the 2019/20 fire season, I received a call from my dad. He reluctantly told me that he had been diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer - treatable - but incurable. For the rest of the season, we were driving out to see him. It took about four hours to drive from home to care for dad and help accompany him to his treatments and appointments. There are so many lessons to learn from this moment in time, but the most important was and is: some things are just completely out of your control. It’s worth more to you to focus on things that are good than it is stressing about those that are bad.
Sadly, at the time it was incredibly hard for me to understand this concept; thankfully my psychologist was gradually guiding me through it. Unfortunately, navigating the world of terminal cancer is hard at the best of times and navigating it during the COVID-19 pandemic certainly added a few more complexities. As we went in and out of lockdowns it was getting harder and harder to make the trip over to see dad as freely as it had been in the past. During the season I had taken dad to numerous targeted radiotherapy treatment sessions, which seemed to be holding the growth of the cancer at bay for the time being.
A race against time
As the fire season ended, I hit the ground sprinting, this time around at 120%. I figured if I wasn’t going to be able to see dad as often as I wanted to then I was going to hold up my side of the agreement and make him as proud as possible of what we were working towards. By now it had become clear to me that even though I was completing most of the work day-to-day myself, this project had required a team of people to get it to this point. So I made it my mission to finish the house before the next fire season and vowed to document every minute of it in the process. Documenting came in the form of a new update every morning on Instagram, meaning dad could start his day in isolation by following the journey as closely as possible. Naturally he would access Instagram the only way any 80-year-old logically would, by turning on his laptop and typing “Instagram” into Google each time. This part of the project was pretty much a blur, I would wake up at 5:30 in the morning and work 12-14 hours a day. I did this for 167 days of a possible 181 and operated at a level far beyond anything I’ve ever operated at before and possibly ever will again. For me, it was simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating - like I was stuck to a giant snowball, that just kept travelling down the hill whether I liked it or not.
We are capable of more than we know.
During the fire season I had been cash flowing lots of purchases for the impending off-season. I wanted to have all materials and items for the house good to go when the season ended, to be as efficient as possible. So once again, I began crossing projects off the list – bathroom tiles and features, the staircase, steel balustrading, concrete moulds for benchtops, bed frame, electrical work, installing AC units, painting, and plumbing.
For the first four months of this gruelling six-month period dad’s health appeared to be stable. Unfortunately, a recent scan revealed that the cancer had spread into his lymphatic system, when I asked a dear friend Kris what this meant, her response was, “it’s a highway to the rest of the body”. It was crushing. This cloud of uncertainty loomed above, how much time do I have left with dad? Will he make it back home again to see the house finished? Will I finish the house before he dies? Will he die next month, next week…. tomorrow?
Have supportive people in your corner.
The last two months were the hardest of the entire journey. Morale, motivation, and energy were at all-time lows. I was being held together by the drive to finish the house for dad so that we may see out the project together just like we started it a few years prior. During this madness, with a month and a half to go until the next fire season, a very good friend of mine, Josh, dropped around one evening to say hello. He arrived on the cusp of dusk as I was hastily packing up and cleaning all my tiling equipment while at the same time rushing about the garden planting natives in the dark with a torch. The man can hold a straight face, but I could see it in his eyes - he was thinking, “this bloke is insane”. We had a yarn, I explained I was optimistic about the timeline. He mentioned that there was every possibility I could request to push my start date back. I decided that maybe it would be a good idea for me to delay my start date, so I messaged Josh, who promptly responded, “good idea, I put the request through a couple of days ago and it’s been approved if you want it. I felt this immediate sense of relief as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders and clarity resumed. Have good people in your corner, whether they are directly involved in the project or not, let them in, be open, talk through your ideas and emotions with them. Sometimes we are so fixated on one thing that we need someone else, with fresh eyes to break our perceptions and help us see things clearly.
Back yourself
It was two weeks out from the beginning of the fire season and the building inspector was coming the following day to complete the final inspection and hopefully grant me an occupancy permit. Everything was almost ready, all I needed to finish now was the continuous handrail around the spiral staircase. Somehow, I had managed to give myself one day to figure out how to make and install this thing! After 14 hours I stood victorious. I nervously left it to dry overnight. When morning came around, I held my breath and took off all the clamps - everything remained in place, and I exhaled in relief. Working quickly, I sanded all the joins and gave it a well needed oil.
Three hours later, Jason, the inspector, came through the front doors and began doing his thing. He cut a few casual laps while I nervously provided him with idle chit-chat. Two days later, I received an email with a signed occupancy permit for the Nook. We. Had. Done. It!
Back yourself - if you’ve put in the time, done all the research, and worked to 100% of your abilities, then you have no reason to doubt yourself. Your best is your best.
A week later, dad, myself and a small group of friends gathered to cut the ribbon and open the house. It was a monumental moment for me, to be surrounded by some of my closest buds, who had all in some way supported me through the last few years of chaos. I am a better person because of all of them and seeing dad there at the house was indescribable.
Moving in and accepting what will be, will be
I entered my third fire season exhausted. Holly and I slowly moved from the shack into the Nook over the course of the next month. Fortunately, the 2020/21 fire season would be incredibly quiet, something I took full advantage of. Although the house was liveable, it was by no means fully “complete”- the image I had been dreaming in my mind was yet to be completely fulfilled, but there was no time to waste energy thinking about that, the focus was now completely on helping dad through the final stages of his life. Throughout his journey, he would always say, “all will be well” and “what will be will be”. This was my final lesson: resisting acceptance of how things will go requires more energy than any of us will ever have. Eventually we will break. The sooner we lean in and accept what is happening the sooner we can, as dad would say, “get on with it”.
A farewell
On June 8th, 2021, my best friend, Robert Henry Webb, died; a happy, fulfilled, loving, passionate, devoted 85-year-old man.
Since then, the Nook has been looking after us both. Providing us with a beautiful space to rest, relax and enjoy each other's company. I took the opportunity to go slow, something I regularly needed but had rarely been able to implement. I concentrated on doing the things that I wanted to do, many of them still on the block and the house, but I now found enjoyment in cruising along and being creative at a pace dictated by nothing other than my own desire to do the work.
Undoubtedly, I couldn’t have achieved this without the unwavering support of one person, my endlessly patient and immensely compassionate partner, Holly. Her hundreds of pep talks, thousands of cups of tea, countless bear hugs and beautifully deep belly laughs dragged me out of some significant holes and inspired me to keep going. Thank you, Madam Pestington, xx.