Patrick Sughrue works on a tiny house design last week at his home office near Felida.
The 200 square foot “Metro” tiny house can be toured this weekend at the 26th annual Home and Garden Idea Fair.
Patrick Sughrue is no stranger to tiny dwellings. His first experience came in 1972 when he built a tiny house on the flatbed of a Dodge truck. Now, he helps design and orchestrate the building of tiny houses for owner-builders
After the design process is finished, owner-builders receive a packet consisting of a trailer, structural insulated panels, fasteners and various accessories needed for assembly. Patrick Sughrue said it takes about a day-and-half to put it together.
Patrick Sughrue is busy these days.
The Reflector caught him mid-phone call, spinning a 3D model of a tiny home around on his desktop from his home office near Felida last week, with a client out of New Hampshire on the line. The client was watching in real time as he went back over the design of the tiny house they were designing with Sughrue as coach.
While discussing tiny homes with The Reflector, following the cross-country review with his New Hampshire client, Sughrue would receive multiple other calls and when the interview was wrapping up, a call was coming in to go over more designs.
Sughrue’s busyness is on pace with a national trend over the last few years which has seen tiny house popularity catch fire. Along with New Hampshire, Sughrue currently has clients out of Alabama and California and a few locals.
Although Sughrue’s business has boomed in the last three or four years as the tiny house trend took off, living small isn’t exactly a new concept to him. One could say Sughrue was making tiny homes before “it was cool.”
His first was in 1972, built in the bed of a 1949 Dodge flatbed truck. He built it with the goal of joining thousands of others in the 1970’s Back-To-The-Land movement, which saw masses migrating into rural areas as a result of what Sughrue describes as being “done with the system.”
But “the system” proved persistent.
“The system didn’t go away and we all got sucked back in,” Sughrue said with a chuckle.
Sughrue’s tiny dwellings throughout his life also included a 177-square-foot accessory dwelling unit and a 384-square-foot cabin.
From the ashes of the 2008 recession Sughrue founded Artisan Tiny House in 2014 as a successor to his pre-recession business, Structures NW. Like his tiny homes of today, Structures NW focused on high performance structures.
Yet Sughrue doesn’t build the tiny homes.
He helps the buyer design it and provides a packet with all the material they need and instructions — imagine buying a wooden Lego set you live in when you’re done.
“We don’t build them; we help owner-builders build them better,” he said, adding with a laugh that’s something he can’t quite get through people’s heads.
Before receiving the material, owner-builders first design their tiny dwelling through a template and a 3D model in real time with Sughrue.
The packet of material consists of a trailer, structural insulated panels, fasteners and various accessories needed to assemble the building.
Sughrue said the process of assembling all the pieces takes, on average, only a day-and-a-half.
Structural insulated panels, used for the shell of the tiny homes, are a primary element of Artisan’s model. Sughrue has used them for over the last 25 years on a variety of buildings including cottages and cabins. They consist of two oriented strand boards with expanded-polystyrene foam in the middle held together with an adhesive. Sughrue has found structural insulated panels to be the most energy efficient building system in green construction, describing them in Artisan’s catalog as “extremely strong, energy-efficient and cost-effective, and require no additional frame or skeleton for support.”
Sughrue’s opinion on why tiny houses have quickly become so popular is straightforward.
He points to the world population hitting seven billion a half decade ago and how we’re running out of space for all the people.
“Too many people, not enough space,” he said, adding tiny houses might not be the best way to manage a rising population, but it is one way to help.
Another element of their recent popularity, he believes, is that many people simply can’t afford the rising costs of housing.
“The tiny man getting squeezed,” as he describes it, has led to the this new vein of alternative, affordable housing.
Artisan’s ultimate goal, as stated on their website and reaffirmed by Sughrue is to “produce the safest, most energy-efficient, and affordable Tiny House shell package on the market.”
For all the design options, other dwelling options, photo gallery, dimensions offered and more, visit artisantinyhouse.com or call 360-576-6311.
