Why PAD Tiny Houses is Lowering our Tiny House Plan Prices

If you’ve shopped for tiny house plans, you have likely noticed that there is a very wide range of prices (from free to $700 or so), and an equally wide range of formats, design quality, and which details are included. Why all the differences? What gives? We can only speak for ourselves, but we want to explain why we’re lowering our plan prices as we launch the new Hikari Box Tiny House Plans.

Over the past several years, PAD has evolved from a custom tiny house design/build shop to one that educates the DIY tiny house builders of the world who want to create and customize their own spaces.  We’ve learned that most of our customers want a plan to start from, but not a plan to follow to the letter. They want a house that fits THEM, from the ceiling heights to the kitchen cabinets.  That’s why our plans don’t come with electrical diagrams or detailed interior layouts—because that is where you customize. We give you the information you need to build a house that’s safe, sound, warm and dry, but we think you know where your bookshelves should go better than we do.

Since PAD’s mission is about education, inspiration and connection more than drawing up plumbing diagrams, the tiny house plans we sell are an educational reference tool as much as a set of blueprints to be followed to the letter.  We want DIYers to have access to great designs that have already been built in real life, and been proven to work in real life.

We also want DIYers to know what they’re doing, which is why we recommend our tiny house how-to manual Go House Go with all of our plan sets. It’s also why we recommend our Tiny House Basics Workshop to anyone seriously considering building their own tiny house on wheels.

Here are the new prices of our plans for tiny homes on wheels:

• The Cider Box Tiny House Plans are gorgeous, modern and super-adaptable to individual needs. This plan set includes plans for a 20 foot design and a 24 foot design, increasing your options to build and design from, and we’ve just dropped them from $299 to $199.

• The Sweet Pea Tiny House is a homey, well-laid-out 16-foot house Dee Williams designed for a friend who wanted a home that could accommodate her plans to raise a baby. With a small tub and increased head height in the loft, it packs a lot of creature comfort into a small footprint. We’ve dropped the Sweet Pea price from $99 to $79.

• The ultra-modern Miter Box Tiny House Plans also dropped in price from $99 to $79. Fans of architectural modernism and clean lines will love the distinctive look of the Miter Box, a 16-foot long home with an eat-in kitchen that can convert to a second bed when needed.

• The Salsa Box is compact and super-portable – a 12 foot long home with just 93 square feet of living space but all the comforts of home. An ideal backyard cabin or towable vacation property, we dropped the Salsa Box price from $79 to $49.

Building a home on wheels is a science and an art. It’s like building a fine piece of cabinetry and bolting it to a trailer you’re going to drive down the highway – there is very little room for error. In the process of designing and building, you’re going to come up against puzzles and questions you didn’t anticipate, so it sure helps to have a basic grounding in what you’re doing and why.

If it were a paint-by-number scene, it would be easy to provide step-by-step instructions for every action along the way. But it’s more like painting a real live sunset: you’ve got to have the vision you’re shooting for in front of you, but you also have to know the techniques and processes that will help you create the final result you want.

You can learn all that with books, videos, or workshops, ahead of time or as you go. But you’ve got to learn it somehow if your tiny house is going to stand the test of time. Read some books about tiny house construction, and about ‘normal’ construction.  Get a set of plans and study them. Or better yet, get two or three, and blend your favorite elements together. The questions you develop about why one is different from another or whether you can alter one to include a new feature will lead you down paths that teach you what you need to know and add a richness and sense of accomplishment to your project.

We’ve seen DIYers take on the challenge of building a tiny house again and again, so we know it can be done. When you do your homework, you can build the house that you see in your mind, and in the doodles and drawings in your notebook. We want to see those doodles and drawings come to life. So take what the world of plans has to offer, fill in the gaps safely, and customize them with the confidence that comes from research and education.

Cheers to learning to make your doodle a reality!