Mortgage-Free Living in a Hand-Built Tiny Home

By Lloyd Kahn
Published on July 5, 2012
article image
courtesy of Shelter Publications
A tiny Texas house nods to the Victorian era.

An Authentic Life, Doin’ What He Loves

Just a few years shy of his 80th birthday, Lloyd Kahn is among the most enthusiastic, dedicated, hardworking and athletic — yes, athletic — guys I know. If they were to put a photo next to the definition of “authentic” in the dictionary, it could be a picture of Lloyd.

When Lloyd came back from his stint in the Air Force in the late ’60s, he went to work as an insurance broker. But what he really wanted to do was surf and build houses, and he seems to have quickly picked up the habit of doing what he really wanted to do.

His first building project had a living roof. Then he built a home in Big Sur from railroad timbers and used lumber. He built geodesic domes for five years, before concluding that they don’t work well as homes. His present home in Bolinas, California sits in the midst of a large vegetable garden, includes a striking 30-foot-tall hexagonal tower and is covered with hand-split cedar shakes.

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