My name is Abel Zyl. I'm the owner of Zyl Vardos which is a tiny house building
company based in Olympia Washington.
I guess the story goes back to when I
decided to build my first tiny house. I was inspired by Dee Williams. She lived
right down the street from me. I think I complimented her on her house and she
was like, "yeah, you should do that", and I was like, "yeah, why not?". I kind of had
other thoughts of building a small structure for myself around that time
but that kind of sealed it for me and I built a tiny house on a recycled trailer
with a whole bunch of materials that I scrounged up around Olympia. Not long
after that somebody hired me to build them a tiny house and I guess that was
about seven maybe eight years ago. When I started designing houses I guess I
just didn't know what I couldn't do, you know? I had a very small amount of like
over the table building experience. I kind of really quickly realized that
there's a lot more to you know creating a living space than just taking the
square boards that you can buy at the store and sticking them together. As I
continued that process people have egged me on so to speak so I have been
like very encouraged to build this way and I frankly enjoy it and there's like
a kind of a whole flow that you're trying to create with a project and no
matter what it is, it's not always the easiest way to do it, but it can be
really rewarding. This is the house we just finished.
It's one of my pinafore designs. The second one that I've built. The person I
originally built the pinafore for asked I could incorporate Gothic architecture
ideas and at that time happened to be reading a book of like gothic house
designs so I was like, "yeah." What I think I came up with turned out to be
something a little more like fairytale-esque but that's the
pinafore design. One of the most notable things that I like about this house
design is that it has an asymmetrical roofline and it gives you headroom to
ascend the stairs but allows them to be over on the side of the house.
The loft it gives it
this kind of like cubby hole quality which is really nice and then with the
Gothic window inside of that it has a really nice aesthetic. Another thing
that I'm like really into or excited about is my windows which we've worked really
hard to design and build. This is a double hung window.
The original pinafore had the big round one which people kind of know me for.
This one, well I can't say I designed it from scratch because I base everything
on you know some measure of tradition especially with windows. I build a lot of
casement awning windows and this is a this is a small awning window and they're
really wonderful to use and we build them out of solid fir. This is a casement
which just means it opens like a door. This one just for simplicity has a
electric heater, Stiebel Eltron, which is very simple. They're really safe.
They're very reliable. It's like a convective electric heater. They heat up really fast.
I also do propane like radiant heaters. I've done under the floor electric
heating but I also help people figure out wood stoves. That has its own set of
challenges because you know there's definitely safety concerns but
there's some really good, really compact wood stoves out there right now.
Usually the most efficient also tends to be like the most reliable. There's
something about that you know. Like a good design is a good design and I
really value like really good engineering and insist that like the
suppliers and the companies that I'm getting these things from also have high
standards for those so that's parts of my research just to find the right
thing but also the right company to support it. A good design is a balance
and there are various places you can create a balance but one of the
important things about building is the relationship by creative people. Each
relationship creates a slightly different balance so every house is
different but really the larger parts of the design are like how much is the budget
and what are the most important elements to have in the house and is going to be
easy to maintain and those things are really important to me because building
something that's going to start falling apart in 10 years is the opposite of
kind of the sustainability you know if you go through all the trouble to procure these
like amazing pieces of wood and all these like thousands of parts are going
into a house you might as well make it so you can keep them working for a
pretty good period of time and that's the most like green thing you can do I
think. Tiny houses are really efficient no matter which way you look at them. They
don't use a lot of materials. They give people this kind of flexibility that
they don't have with conventional structures. This is like a new way of
evolving a living space. It's like you get this like self-contained fully
functional residence and that's really profound.
Doing a project like a creative building project like I and my amazing
carpenters do really reminds me of putting on a theatrical production. When
I was younger somebody invited me to come try out some aerial stuff. He had
set some stuff up in his barn and that kind of original group of people that we
all kind of got together to play so to speak was what became a local performing
troupe that I was a part of. So I guess one invitation kind of got me started. We
would produce entire shows ourselves from the bottom to the top. Doing
lighting, the rig, everything. We didn't hire anybody. We did it all ourselves
and there's this really wonderful kind of gelling that happens when you have a
group becomes your family. And at some point you realize wow the people say, "the
show must go on", and what they mean is that you can get
through the most amazing things when you kind of create that that family of
people to work with and that's like a value that like has stuck in my soul. If
you get the right group of people you can do almost anything and it's
really it's a really sweet thing. But I think if I could give a piece of advice
it would be to do what your heart's telling you to and in many ways that's
kind of what I feel like some of the push of the tiny house movement has been.
It's like a whole bunch of people doing kind of what their heart has told
them to. In the end I think that creates like a much more rewarding way of life.
I hope that you guys enjoyed this week's film. If you're interested in learning
more about Abel and Zyl Vardos the links are down in the description box down
below. Abel is also setting up a weekly livestream which he is going to call 'Ask
A Builder' link to that down below as well. The easiest way for you to support
the channel is to hit the like button and share this video with a friend. If
you're interested in becoming a part of the team click the Patreon button right
there. Thanks again for watching, I hope you have a fantastic week maybe I'll see
you whenever I'm out and about or if not I will definitely see you next week
right here.