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We welcome you to read through this page for a whole-picture perspective on the Online Tiny House Building Academy. If you’re looking for specific information, you can use the following links to skip around:
Why take a tiny house class online?
Our comprehensive online tiny house building program is like a toolbox that’s full to the brim! It covers: tool use and construction basics, natural building techniques well-suited for tiny houses, systems like electrical and plumbing, and ways to save money on your build.
You’ll learn how to build a tiny house online step-by-step, with detailed instruction on:
- Designing your tiny house
- Deciding whether to build on wheels or on a foundation
- Framing your home and building walls, floors, and rafters
- Installing windows, doors, siding, and drywall
- Trimming out your home with beautiful materials
- What regulatory constraints may apply to you
- Understanding energy-efficient options like passive solar design and solar electric
The basic steps for building a house are the same, no matter its size. We explain and demystify this process in our tiny house building classes so you can truly understand and feel confident as you embark on your own build.
Our Online Tiny House Building Classes include:
- An on demand, go-at-your-own pace content library
- Unlimited, lifetime access
- Comprehensive, yet down-to-earth instruction that’s fun and friendly
- Content appropriate for all skill levels
- Monthly “office hours” and responsive expert support
Looking for an in-person tiny home course instead? Or do you want to supplement your online tiny home building class with hands-on learning?
We offer several opportunities to study tiny house building with us in person:
What Our Tiny House Building Students Say
scroll right to read more
Samantha
Chicago, IL
Therapist
“I came with no prior experience, scared to hang a picture on my wall, and now I am so much more confident. I just love the instructional videos and the teachers are very open, really cool and personable, very easy to understand, and very welcoming.”
Dan
North Carolina
Store Manager
“I can’t count how many times I have had “AHA” moments during the Tiny House Academy… and the humor included is such a welcome bonus. The live Q&A sessions, and the fact that you can always return to these videos for reference, makes this learning system invaluable. “
Dare
California
Farmer, Chef, Activist, and Natural Builder
“Oh my gosh, this is the tiny home building class I’ve been waiting for my whole life! The design parts are there, how to read plans, all the carpentry, how to use basic tools, and especially the stuff that people who have been doing this a long time don’t even think to explain, like how to properly read a tape measure. It’s really important that Wild Abundance took the time to make carpentry so accessible.”
Josh
Mississippi
Real Estate Broker
“I took the Tiny House Academy because I’m in real estate but am not very handy. The class was extremely thorough and easy to follow. I feel ten times more confident now!”
April
Iowa
Home Health Provider
“I love the online videos! It’s so helpful to go through step-by-step and learn tools I didn’t know how to use, and how to use them correctly. These lessons have been instrumental for me right now because they’re meeting me where I’m at in terms of learning to build.”
Let’s build homes with beauty, individuality, ecology, and empowerment at the foundation.
Imagine yourself in a living space of your own design, built by your own hands, in a way that reflects your personal style and unique needs…possibly even made of beautiful materials sourced straight from the earth. Not only that: in this dream home, you get to steep in a sense of satisfaction and confidence, knowing that you have the skills to provide elegant shelter for yourself and others.
This doesn’t have to be just a dream! Our tiny house classes put all the tools and skills in your hands that you’ll need.
Bucking the trend of cookie-cutter behemoths with tiny house building classes
Right now, you probably live in a house or apartment that you had nothing to do with designing or building. If it is conventional construction, it was likely made in a way that was harmful to the earth. And you may or may not love the way it looks, feels, and functions.
The fact is, most of the houses built in the US these days tend toward the bloated and the cookie-cutter. Indeed, the size of an average single-family home is over 2,000 square feet, almost double what it was in 1960. These houses are generally built very quickly, cheaply, and poorly, and won’t last nearly as long as the simple, well-built homes of the past.
What’s more, many of the mass-produced industrial building materials that go into new homes levy a heavy tax on the earth. This happens through initial resource extraction, toxic processing, waste, and overall carbon emissions throughout manufacturing.
If the global cement industry were a country, it would be the world’s third largest carbon emitter, topped only by the US and China.
All of these ecological ills, combined with the sheer size of modern houses, end up leaving a big, ugly footprint on the beautiful and generous Earth, and are a significant contributor to climate change.
You have the choice to do things differently.
But can you really imagine yourself as a home-builder?
Even as you feel inspired to create a home for yourself that’s aligned with your values, when you think of a carpenter, do you imagine a big white dude swinging a hammer? Have you ever seen someone who looks like you, who you can identify with, building their own home?
Unfortunately, in this culture, one subset of men tend to dominate the field of building. Folks who identify with them tend to grow up with a greater sense of confidence with tools, thus perpetuating a discouraging narrative about who can and can’t build things.
Let’s disrupt that outdated story, and together, write a new one.
We’ve taught hundreds of people in our tiny home building classes.
Anyone with a deep desire to build can learn how to do it. We know this from experience, because over the last 10 years we’ve taught hundreds of people, mostly women, these skills in our tiny house building classes. During each class, we’ve seen folks transform from newbies who are timid with the tape measure, to confident, budding carpenters.
The key is giving clear, detailed instruction in a space that feels welcoming and comfortable, and inviting any and all questions that folks have.
Some of our students have never picked up a carpentry tool before, while others have been contractors looking to broaden their skills and learn something new. They’ve been chefs, freelance writers, engineers, lawyers, nurses, physicians, full-time parents, and others, with ages ranging from 14-74. Many have identified as women and/or femme, and have been thrilled to finally learn in an environment where they’re at the center.
Gain the confidence to design and get started building your beautiful, ecological tiny house from the ground up, with your own hands.
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What To Expect – Learn to Build a Tiny House Online
This is a comprehensive course, probably the only one you will ever need. We cover the steps of how to build a tiny house, or any small house, plus lots of bonus material, too. Videos include clear and thorough lectures, hands-on demos, diagrams, humor, and personality.
The program is divided into 10 modules. There are dozens of video lessons within each module and each one is accessible and engaging. We invite you to watch sequentially, or skip around to whatever is most relevant to you at the moment.
Closed Captioning Provided
Closed captioning is provided in the Online Tiny House Academy. As we add new video lessons, our transcriptionist completes closed captioning within one month of publishing.
The Tiny Home Course Curriculum: Skills & Subjects Covered by Module
1. The Big Picture
2. How to Build a Tiny House: Step-by-Step Overview
3. Tiny & Not So Tiny House Design
4. Tools of the Trade
5. Rough Construction
6. Utilities and Systems
7. Finish Work
8. Legality and Costs
9. Natural Building and Ecological Construction
Bonus! Tiny and Not-So-Tiny Tours
Discount on in-person tiny house classes with Wild Abundance
When you enroll in the Online Tiny House Academy, you’ll also get a coupon for $200 off our in-person tiny house building class.
Tiny house building classes for all experience levels
Each of our thorough modules is carefully designed to meet you where you’re at. If you’re a beginning builder, you’ll likely watch all the lessons, rapt, and take thorough notes. Our guess is that you’ll get really stoked on the tool and rough construction modules, which teach you the basics for getting started.
Even if you choose to hire help with more advanced projects, like plumbing and electrical installations, those videos will be useful, too. After watching them, you’ll have much more confidence when talking with any contractors you hire.
If you have some background in carpentry or woodworking, you may not need to review the entire tool module, but you’ll be able to really dig your teeth into the modules on natural building and ecological construction, legality and costs, and utilities and systems. The steps for building a tiny house are the same, whoever you are, but the order in which you learn can be tailored to where you’re at.
There is so much rich material here that no matter your experience level, you will get a lot out of this course.
Our tiny house building classes are for you if you:
- Get all tingly and excited when you imagine building a home with your own hands
- Feel excited, but overwhelmed, about how to begin learning tiny house building
- Love working with your hands and building things, but never felt welcome or supported in the world of carpentry
- Feel stoked to learn at your own pace, in your spare time, and be able to refer back to the material again and again
- Want the flexibility to design and build based on your needs and budget
- Are excited by power tools, but also feel intimidated by them, and want clear, thorough instruction on safe, effective use
- Can’t make it to one of our in-person classes, but are drawn to how we do things and what we’ve got to share
- Want to design your own space instead of downloading a cookie-cutter plan
- Want support with putting your vision into action
- Care about the planet and want to build a house that incorporates natural materials and techniques
Please note: This tiny home building course is for folks in the US and Canada, or for those who have access to the tools and materials that are available here.
Because of the type of building we teach, this class on how to build a tiny house is most appropriate for students in the US, Canada, and other regions that have similar material and tool availability. Feel free to reach out to onlineclasses@wildabundance.net to help determine if this program is a good fit for you.
Not your typical construction workers…
If you’re tired of being “mansplained” to by well-meaning carpenter friends or sweethearts, or feel confused by DIY YouTubers with bad camera angles and poor explanations, then you’ve come to the right place!
How students feel about our instructors
“They really break it down and talk to you at a beginner level, while not being demeaning. I feel like I know them! They’re very open, cool and personable, very easy to understand, and welcoming.” ~ Samantha, Therapist, Illinois
“It’s difficult to find people who are on this path, and seeing those who have done it outside of the traditional structures of society is really awesome.” ~ Kayla, Auto Mechanic, New Hampshire
This program is taught by an enthusiastic, friendly, and unconventional team of instructors with various backgrounds and identities, led by women. Each of them brings a unique perspective, body of experience, and personality to the table. As a result, we’re confident that you’ll feel respected and welcomed, and you’ll get your questions answered, even the most basic ones. Throughout the video lessons, new vocabulary is explained and demos and diagrams help make everything more clear.
Think of this tiny house course as your gateway into a new world of building
One where belonging is based on inspiration, enthusiasm, and a commitment to learning, not on how big your hammer is, or if you already know all the jargon.
Creativity is Queen in our Tiny House Building Classes
Everyone’s tiny home dreams — and needs — are a little bit different. To honor this, we explore a variety of options to help you work through what’s best for your situation, climate, and budget. Instead of laying out cookie-cutter designs and approaches, we teach you how to be your own designer. This way, you can feel empowered to customize your tiny house for your unique aesthetics, desires, creative inspirations, and lifestyle.
Beauty ✦ Individuality ✦ Imagination
Resourcefulness ✦ Ecological Awareness
These characteristics of the lost art of home-building deserve to be revitalized!
Realistic and experience-based, no claims of $300 tiny houses here!
Your instructors have built and lived in multiple tiny houses, so everything you’ll learn in this class is based on real-world experience. As the tiny house movement has become more and more trendy, we’ve noticed articles and posts claiming that you can build a tiny house in a tiny amount of time and on a tiny budget. Seeing these makes us feel frustrated, because with all of our years of experience and various backgrounds, we just haven’t found this to be possible.
Since we want people to succeed at building their own homes, it’s important to us to provide accurate information and clear guidance. This class will show you how to set realistic goals and walk you through the important steps to reach them.
Learn building skills that apply to more than just tiny houses.
You can apply many of the skills we teach in this course to lots of different building projects. Here are some examples of what we think you could bust out after moving through the lessons. (Note: The course doesn’t include step-by-step guidance on how to build these other projects, but it does teach you the foundational skills necessary for doing them):
- Sheds (“she-shack”, “man cave”, wood shed, goat shed, etc.)
- Outhouse
- Wood-framing for a greenhouse
- Doghouse
- Kids play structure
- Covered porch
- Simple gazebo
Lifetime Access to Our Library of Tiny House Building Resources
This program can be watched, class by class, as a comprehensive building education. Or, you can think of it as a toolbox to help you manifest your dream of building a simple, sustainable home. Just reach in and grab what you need, when you need it, as many times as you want.
Tiny House Plans
This course keeps getting better and better! This online tiny home building class includes plans for a beautiful tiny house that you can build as is or alter for your needs. It is one of the plans that we build during our in-person tiny house class.
Included in the plans are:
- A downloadable PDF and Sketch-Up file of the inside and outside of the finished building
- A downloadable PDF and Sketch-Up file of the framing plans, to get you started on your build
- A materials list for framing and sheathing, so you can go ahead and order materials to start building
Personalized and Live Support
Any burning questions you have about your building project or the tiny house building class materials are answered by knowledgeable instructors via our online forum and live Q & A sessions in the months following your enrollment.
“Feedback from instructors has been really incredible. The responses that I’ve received have been really thoughtful, you can tell they took time to encourage in their comments.” ~ Anna
Start learning how to build a tiny house online, so you can bring your project to life!
If you want to build a beautiful tiny or not-so-tiny house with your own two hands, there is no time like now to get started! The rewarding journey of home-building begins, like all journeys, with a single step. And while you may think that’s when you cut the first board, it’s actually when you begin to materialize your dream into an action plan. Giving yourself the gift of this course will help anchor your visions and aspirations into a concrete action step; one that will guide you along the steps that follow.
Let’s build a world of beauty, sustainability, and style.
Frequently Asked Questions about our Online Tiny House Building Classes
The Online Tiny House Academy course is designed to cover all the bases, including the most basic carpentry skills. We walk you through tool use (including the carpenter’s pencil and tape measure), design, and the steps of actual construction. If you identify as female, trans, or nonbinary, and you’ve never picked up a carpentry tool in your life, we welcome you to check out our in-person Women’s Basic Carpentry Classes or our Beginner Woodworking Classes for Adults as an adjunct to this program. However, with commitment and practice, the videos here will guide you toward competence, too.
Yes! We’ve been teaching in–person tiny house building workshops for over a decade, and have seen folks from all different backgrounds, with all different skill levels successfully build their own tiny houses. What’s covered in the Online Tiny House Academy is similar to what we teach in-person, and covers even more topics and alternatives such as solar electric systems, passive solar house design, and the basics of electrical and plumbing systems. Plus, with the online format, you can refer back to the lessons again and again. If you follow the lessons and put what we teach into practice, you can absolutely learn to build a tiny house online.
If you already have some carpentry experience, great! Unless you’re proficient with building houses from start to finish (including design), you will still learn a lot through this program. The Tiny House Academy includes thorough, in-depth coverage of rough construction and finish work, detailed demos of concrete footer and pier foundations, and design all the way up to the rafters!
Even if you feel competent with carpentry tools, you may learn better, safer, and more effective “proper” ways to use them, as well as some pretty cool tips and tricks from our very experienced teachers. Plus, if you sign up and discover that it’s too basic for you (unlikely, unless you’re already a contractor), you can get a full refund within 2 weeks.
Yes. Instructor Alex Henderson shares eight lessons on design, including detailed guidance on creating your own sketches and diagrams. He’s an unconventional architect with a passion for design/build projects, permaculture, and place-based construction. In addition to these design-focused lessons, you’ll get several virtual tiny house tours, which will give you a sense of various layouts and designs in real space.
Registration is open during three annual enrollment periods. If you’re reading this in-between enrollment periods, get on the waitlist to be notified when enrollment opens back up (waitlist folks often get special discounts, too). Once you gain access to the program, you can view videos and move through the lessons at your own pace. You’ll have unlimited access to all the material for life, and can watch any lesson again and again.
Yes! At this time, partial scholarships are available to anyone who feels they need one. In addition, we give out limited numbers of three kinds of full scholarships: one based on financial need; one for folks who plan to use this knowledge to benefit a larger community or organization (especially underserved communities); and one is a racial equity scholarship for African American and Native American students. The scholarship application can be found here (live during enrollment periods only).
Full scholarships are available to anyone who lost their home to Hurricane Helene.
In the Online Tiny House Academy, you’ll learn how to build a small, basic house, tiny home or other structure. You’ll get step-by-step guidance on:
- Tool use
- House design
- Basic construction
- Plumbing and electrical
- Ecological design like passive solar
- Overviews of natural building techniques
- Information on legalities and costs of tiny houses
- Whether to build on wheels or on foundations
- How to apply your new knowledge to not-so-tiny houses.
If you follow along with the lessons and put what you learn into practice, you’ll be able to design and build your own tiny house, plus do lots of other carpentry projects as you see fit.
The Tiny House Academy is taught by a dynamic team of instructors. Some are professional contractors, others are unconventional architects, and still others are DIY enthusiasts with a knack for teaching. We carefully select our instructors for their skills and knowledge, plus clarity and accessibility in their teaching styles. Additionally, we strive to work with teachers of various identities (i.e. they’re not all burly white guys…no offense to burly white guys). For a full list of instructor bios for this program, scroll down.
You can learn to build a tiny house online by watching videos, reviewing written material, then mimicking the steps that are demonstrated with your own hands, on your own projects. If you’ve got a carpenter buddy to join you in the journey, that’s great too. The Tiny House Academy is your one-stop shop for learning to build a tiny house online.
We’ve created this program to be comprehensive, from tool use, to design, to the actual steps of building. Lessons are offered in clear video format, with each lesson organized in an easy-to-navigate online classroom. Some video lessons are accompanied by written materials for reference. You can review all the material as many times as you need so that it can truly be a companion as you embark on your own building projects.
Well, not to toot our own horn, but as far as we can tell, this is the most comprehensive and versatile online tiny house building class out there. No other program we’ve found covers tiny houses on wheels and on foundations, includes natural building techniques and ecological considerations, and shows you how to use tools and do the actual building in detail.
We’d love your input here, too; when you sign up for the Tiny House Academy, let us know what you think!
Building a tiny house includes most of the same steps as building a “regular” or larger house. Of course, if you build your tiny house on wheels, it will be different than building a regular house on a foundation. That’s why we include lessons on both in this tiny house building class, so that it’s a more versatile and applicable resource for all your tiny and not-so-tiny house building needs.
It’s important to note that legalities and permitting for a larger house may be quite different, so be sure to check in with your local authorities if you plan to build any permanent structure.
The best way to learn how to build a tiny house is the way that you’ll actually follow through on! Seriously, if you have time, money, and energy to dedicate yourself to apprenticing with a tiny house builder, and you happen to have one nearby who is looking for help, go with that! If that’s not available to you, taking a tiny house workshop is the next best thing.
Over our many years of teaching how to build tiny houses, we’ve found that the best way to learn is to soak up the theory, then put it into practice with your own hands. In fact, perhaps the most important step is putting what you learn into practice on your own projects, without someone always there telling you what to do. In lieu of having someone experienced by your side, we think taking an online tiny house building class and simultaneously working on your own tiny house can be a great way to learn.
Tiny houses on wheels and on foundations both have advantages and disadvantages. One is not fundamentally better than the other, it just depends on your needs, budget, and circumstances. Put very simply, tiny houses on wheels are great if you plan to move your house frequently, while tiny houses on foundations make sense if the house isn’t going anywhere.
Trailers can be quite costly, so choosing to build on a foundation, if you have a permanent place to put the tiny house, can save a good bit of money.
Since both tiny houses on wheels and on foundations can be great for different reasons, our tiny house classes include lessons on how to build both.
This online tiny house class includes a substantial library of on-demand material, plus access to your instructor for questions through the online classroom and Q&A calls in the months following your purchase. We also strongly encourage students to share their stories, questions, and ideas with one another through the online classroom. In short, this class is as interactive as you choose to make it, with several opportunities to engage, while also being flexible and asynchronous to accommodate different schedules and lifestyles.
Instructors
Natalie Bogwalker
Nadi Udros
Keenan Phillips
Pete McKelvey
Jeramy Stauffer
Danielle Swift
Quetzal Jordan
Robin Greenfield
Mollie Curry
Ella Scotto
Alex Henderson
Pricing for the Online Tiny House Class
One time payment: $787.00
Payment plan: $131.17 each month for 6 months
The following is included in registration: unlimited lifetime access to a well-organized and comprehensive library of video lessons, open invitations to all live Q&A sessions, one-on-one instructor support through the online classroom, live online orientation call with your cohort of students.