A small town professor and the Department Chair of the Creative Writing Department at Belhaven University, Dr. Randall Smith has decided to tackle the challenge of building his own tiny house once the school lets out for the summer. While watching videos he found on YouTube of people building their own tiny homes, what has stuck out to him about the tiny-house movement is that it gives him the ability to downsize. With the promise of having fewer possessions and responsibilities and more opportunities for experiences, Dr. Smith is fully committed to the idea of owning his own tiny home.
“It’s a simple lifestyle, it’s much less costly than a traditional home, and it frees up money and time to do things that you might enjoy doing.” – Dr. Randall Smith
When it comes to being sold on an idea, all enterprisers have to start somewhere. Dr. Smith and his wife had been looking at different housing options that were affordable and would allow for them to downsize when they came across the tiny-house movement online. Dr. Smith watched videos on YouTube of people that have tackled the challenge of building their own tiny homes.
As a teacher with a lot of free time on his hands when school lets out for the summer, Dr. Smith was inspired to try his own hand at building his own tiny home, armed with a belt of power tools and his own bare hands. His students have described him as “a talented craftsman” with “some really cool ideas”. Dr. Matthew Guinn, his coworker and the Associate Professor of the Creative Writing Department, expresses with great enthusiasm, “He was the only other academic I’d ever met who knew how to use power tools!”
“If anyone can make a tiny house work, it is Randall Smith. He has both the idealistic commitment and the practical know-how to make it happen.” – Dr. Matthew Guinn
Speaking of these “really cool ideas”, Dr. Smith envisions a 30-to-32 ft steel frame trailer within the width of 8 ½ ft and height of 13 ½ ft with three dropped axels and six wheels. He wants a tiny home that is small enough to transport on a normal highway. For the inside of the trailer, he plans for a downstairs kitchen, bathroom, and living area and then two upstairs bedrooms, one for the adults and one for the children.
As he is describing these designs, he softly gesticulates with his hands to help him express them, laying down the dimensions and the ideas for his tiny home on a mental blueprint.
Though this project is his next big thing to tackle, there is more to Dr. Smith than his excellent architectural mind and talented craftsmanship.
“His office blew me away with all the pins on the wall.” – Micki Brushwood
“I loved all the funny paraphernalia and all the books in his office.” – Olivia Lamm
When you first walk into the office of the Department Chair of the Creative Writing Department, you will see a wooden cork board filled all the way from top to bottom with what could only be hundreds of pins. Not a single spot of brown peeks out from between these bright, colored pins. Each pin sports a different message, reflecting the same uniqueness of the one who collects them.
On the right side of his office is a built-in bookcase. Each shelf is filled to the brim with books, instructions and advice for the trade of writing and examples of writing from published writers.
Not only is his office decorated with paraphernalia, but so is the classroom that he teaches in. He has all kinds of trinkets and statues and frames propped up on every self and window and pinned to each wall.
Though, Dr. Smith may be constantly late and chronically disorganized, it does not detract from his excellent teaching. “He is a great teacher first of all, but he is also caring. Dr. Smith loves writing and he loves his writers. His passion for what he does is inspiring,” said Micki Brushwood, one of his students and a junior at Belhaven University. He devotes his time and money into his teaching and class curriculum, which is probably one of the only things he has organized. “I was immediately impressed by how well he had organized the Creative Writing Department, from its curriculum to its physical space,” said Dr. Guinn.
In one of his classes, he would take his students out on small field trips to publishing houses and libraries. In another class, he personally ordered and paid with his own money copies of the children’s’ books that his students have written, one copy for the department and another copy for the student to keep for themselves.
Kind, welcoming, smart, and funny are among the first impressions he gives to the new students coming into his program. He is willing to take time out of his schedule to sit down and talk with his students and supports them in all of their endeavors.
“I was struck by his kindness and generosity, and remain so.” – Dr. Matthew Guinn
Once his tiny home has been completed, Dr. Smith plans to invite people over to enjoy all the work he has put into his project, both inside and outside his home. He will have a deck for his visitors to sit on and talk, a nice garden to look at, and a fire pit for a bonfire or a cookout in the fall.
As a small town professor attempting to build his own tiny home Dr. Smith has inspired others to try their hand at it as well. He has even offered to help Olivia Lamm and her boyfriend, Carson Hornsby, build their own tiny house once they have graduated and are married.
If you are looking for a new project to occupy all the free time you have on your hands, building a tiny home is one option for you. After reading this, have you been inspired to try your hand at designing and building your own tiny house? If you do plan on building your own tiny home, please comment an image of your dream tiny home.
If you are inspired to build your own tiny home, you can gain more information from these links down below:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiny_house_movement
https://thetinylife.com/what-is-the-tiny-house-movement/
Building a tiny house can be so simple that even a 13-year-old boy can do it at the cost of only 1,500 dollars:
https://www.directexpose.com/tiny-house/
To watch tiny houses being built in action, check out Tiny House Nation on Bravo and Tiny House Hunters on HGTV:
Tiny House Nation
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3869500/
Tiny House Hunters
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