These are Tuff Sheds. They are NOT “tin sheds”, but actual 2×4 stud-built houses, some of which can be made very liveable for VERY little money, and I mean VERY VERY LITTLE money.
I’m including a photo of “Mamie’s Place”, a small drive-by takeout food and coffee shack, often called, quite correctly, a “Cash Cow”, because the cash flow never stops, I’m told. You can place one of these on a highway and take in a few hundred a day just from that.
Mamie’s Place, the food shack pictured above, would cost around $6,500 to build the way you see it here, plus any county requirements for food handling, etc., but where can you get a food shack at that price??? More like $150,000 would be what you’d be looking at, and with good reason, but there are ways around everything, and my workarounds for restaurants are legendary and they work and they’re legal.
How could you construct a building like this in just a few hours??? The crew delivers and constructs your building as part of the total price. That’s right, INSTALLED prices run from as little as $1,824.90, which would be the TOTAL COST of installing this building on the Ashram IN THIS COUNTY, right now, today:
The next photo shows my favorite MAIN HOUSE, which is a huge apartment over a garage, the whole thing measuring a whalloping 24’x40′, an incredible footprint for the $14,500 price tag, plus interiors — fully detailed, it’s still less than $20,000 fully finished to decorator quality styling and trim.
This is the only one of the buildings that falls outside the “Below the Radar” level, meaning that this would require a building permit, but little else in the way of outside expense, and the building is already approved, and it will be installed by company experts, and they take all the responsibility for it. On top of that, you can price these sheds for your area by entering your zip code. They calculate all the costs and present you with an estimate of what it would cost to install the building on your property or in your county.
Below, you can see the interior of a small studio shed, finished to be comfortable, with insulation and electric, heating and cooling and running water, none of which presents much of a problem and can be less expensive if you rent a ditch-witch to run your power and water lines out there, or you can use a chemical toilet and tank water, 12 volt lighting with a solar panel, etc. to stay even further off the grid, and yet have the comforts you need to carry on, do work, rest well, etc.
Here’s a snapper of an art gallery built by the owner of the shed. It’s a simple plan and an easy finish, and if you know how to drywall, mud & plaster, you got this knocked. A little skill at finish carpentry and shelving will go a long, long way. Actually, you could make a nice living just finishing these things in custom fashion, and it costs almost nothing if you put the work into it instead of buying other peoples’ labor by getting everything pre-cut and organized for you.
This small cabin is perfect for a single or couple or sharing with four people, if you can work out the areas okay. It’s small, but very comfy and amazingly roomy when you get inside it.
It makes a great weekender and a wonderful retreat getaway. A large property, even a leased land at 99 years, would work just fine, because these puppies can be moved, although it’s not a piece of cake to do it.
Here’s another treatment of the same building, this time as a small meditation space with a surrounding Japanese style garden.
My personal favorite for a small building that is under the radar and provides really nice living quarters combined with roomy and comfortable work areas is this model:
The high roofing allows you to put TWO overhead storage areas in, or make a loft for extra guests who don’t mind a sleeping bag arrangement. There’s enough room in this little tall barn to make room for at least six, maybe eight, sharing it for a weekend workshop, for instance. This Blue Barn is the one I’d like to build as an experimental model here on the Land as an experimental Pilot Model Home.
Then there’s the MAIN HOUSE, and you probably want something that can contain a large semi-commercial kitchen and bathrooms, plus office space and admin and dining areas, so this might be something to consider, at a total cost of only $38,500 finished as you see it.
This HUGE Two-Story New Orleans Antebellum Style Tuff Shed can be made as large as 22’x40′ and there are even larger Tuff Sheds. Why Tuff Sheds and not the cheaper brand?
- Tuff Sheds are NOT tin sheds, not storage sheds. They are legit building code housing and will stand up to weather just like any other house built to modern standards.
- The authorities both county and municipal RECOGNIZE these sheds and respect the company, which does all the interactions to get your shed built, and the few things you have to do as an owner/builder are minor.
Let me show you another photo, one that might be very revealing.
This treatment of the interior as a “Man Cave” might give you some ideas of ways YOU could finish out one of these cute little cottages.
There are so many ways to finish these both inside and outside that you will be amazed, and the best part is that they fall well under the construction code limit, so you probably will NOT need a building permit unless you opt for the larger buildings, but that will depend on your local building codes. Here, in this county, we CAN DO THIS without getting into trouble with the authorities. They LIKE Tuff Sheds and encourage their use, so it goes right along with local government planning and preferences, which is how I expect to shove this past their thoroughly unpleasant minor official power-hungry faces.
Now, about my plan. I HAVE NOT PRESENTED THIS TO THE BOARD, so they might have objections to several parts of my plan. I present my plan, subject to approval, therefore, of the board of directors, so here goes:
We will need a piece of property, hopefully at least 20 acres, but 5 acres will do just fine if that’s all we can get hold of. It can be a purchase or a lease, and for the first experiment, I’d build it right here on this property, so I can work on it personally, and use it as a test of its comfort and ease of use.
There are some wonderful pieces of raw land that could serve us well, some of which are on traffic areas and could be connected to a small pastry shop, or some other commercial enterprise or store, and a commercial property could be dressed up and used to the max with these little buildings.
If everyone votes for privacy and silence, we can get remote property incredibly cheaply, and if we don’t mind taking the risk of leasing, we can pick up a fabulous GOLD MINE LEASE, but that would cost upwards of $50,000, while we could BUY a small piece of property in an Aggie Zone for much less than that, these days, with the growers priced out of the market by legalization, making room for us homesteaders.
The property need not have large buildings, or indeed ANY buildings, already on it, but if there’s ONE main building on the site, that would take care of your bathrooms, showers, kitchen, dining room and meeting space. Either nobody lives there, or there’s a caretaker, depending on the situation and decisions made by the community in this regard.
It would be nice to pick up a raw property that has ELECTRIC and GAS and WATER and SEWERS, but that means money — however, there are some great properties up in the hills that have everything for very little money, mostly because nobody wants to live all the way up there, and you might not, either.
One thing that would help a lot is an RV, to allow me to travel around again, do lectures and demonstrations and workshops — I could range all the way to San Francisco and Marin County on the one side, and Reno on the other, meaning I could once again host Reno Runs and other outdoor events, plus get out to the GOLD CLAIM to set up a mining shaft and get some gold out of the ground up there.
Could we build on the claim site? No, that wouldn’t be allowed, but there are large raw land properties that are on UNREGISTERED gold claims, and that might do.
If there’s no power, no water, no gas, no sewers, we have alternatives galore, as I mentioned above — solar and wind are easy for us, and we have lots of skills and knowledge in off-the-grid technology and living styles, including non-hybrid food seeds and micro-biological gardening and paleo cookery, so we’re ahead of the game.
If you want a place to go to when the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd becomes too much, or when shit comes down so heavy that you have to bug out or die, this is a great working solution that we can enact before we’re no longer able to do the job.
We can work on a timeline, allowing folks months and even years to get the wherewithal together to put their cabin up, starting with just a half-dozen sheds and a main house at first.
If $4,500 looks like a heap of money, you can stretch it out across six months or a year, to put up what is essentially a vacation bungalow or retreat house, but we will definitely need the money to buy the raw land first, and I can see that happening at a price below $20,000 for a remote area, and about $45,000 for a lot somewhere on a county road, making a commercial usage possible, such as a small bakery and coffee stop on the way to and from work in Auburn, for instance.
Now, who actually owns the buildings? Well, technically, the Institute will have to own them, for thousands of reasons, not the least of which is liability. These have to be insured before we use them, of course, and that costs money, every year, and the cost is considerable. You’ll have to donate the cash to build the shed, so you’ll have to trust us, I guess.
How do you benefit?
The building that you pay for is for YOUR USE. It’s YOUR little bungalow, and you can use it pretty much any way you like, provided you adhere to the Best Practices Rules of the community.
You can share it, use it alone, or rent it out when you’re not using it, like time-share. If it’s not rented out, it can be used for temporary storage or as a craft shed, so it will always be appreciated and in some sort of useful function.
This is an afterthought, but must be considered, and I’m not sure how it would sit with the Board, but if you have donated to support one of these bungalows, and then you decide to leave the community, or you make other housing arrangements, such as buying or renting your own home, I propose that you might be allowed to auction off your “use rights” to the building to another member of the community Sangha, provided they are approved for community living by the council, which is composed of students at the Ashram plus the teachers and staff members. I don’t vote or command any power at the council or Board, so you’re pretty much on your own, there.
These sheds can go up one at a time, but if everyone in our Work Circle brought, say, $2,000 to the table, and we had a group of let’s say 20-30 interested parties, we could put up something right away that would do quite well for weekend retreats, at least for the first two or three years. If the numbers grow, we can put up more sheds, within reason.
If someone wanted to live on the Ashram full-time, I expect that they’d have to help support it financially by donating some amount, I have no idea how much or little it would be, toward paying the monthly land bills, which might not be awfully much, but again, I have no idea about this aspect — it would require research, but I suspect the taxation would be zero or minimal, and the initial cost and upkeep would fall far short of an ordinary house.
I would very much like to build a “Pilot Project” Tuff Shed here on the Land and finish it out myself with insulation, drywall, roof and ceiling treatment, heat, light, flooring, all the extras, to see how far it can be taken.
I would be happy building something rather small at first, to get the hang of it. I’d like to start with the Tall Pro Barn, which will cost around $4,500 to construct here on the Land. It will look absolutely smashing, and it will give me a studio space, allowing me to do some daylight painting. My eyes could use the help, these days.
Now, the thing is, if you want this to happen, YOU have to do it. I can only present the ideas, just suggestions. Making this come true is up to you, and you’ll have to work as a cooperative team to get this happening NOW.
That’s the main point, cooperative action, affirmative action, pre-emptive action.
Go for it!!! If you succeed in making this project happen, I’ve got yer back, all the way!!!
[NOTE] Karen is doing well, and thanks everyone for their efforts. She has two guides and is very stable and, as I said, doing quite well, in very good spirits, and her little Bardo Companion, “Goodness”, our little parakeet friend that passed at the same time, waves her feathered wing in greeting.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby