Hi, welcome back. I'm Abel Zyl. I'm the founder of Zyl Vardos. I'm a tiny house
builder based in Olympia Washington. I'm currently working on my 24th tiny house.
I work with a crew of four to six carpenters and mechanical geniuses in my
workshop. The tiny houses I build start typically as a sketch. When I kind of
feel happy with the balance of the form and the design I take it to the 3D model
stage then I bring in my other designer, friend, carpenter. He works with me to get
all the parts and pieces made in the 3S world and fit together so that we have a
working model. From that point on it's just a matter of organizing the project
tasking small like two-person crews onto the various parts like framing the walls
building the roof structure, creating the windows, and hanging them properly in the
house. I often build the utility systems myself then the house goes on to this
really wonderful finish restage which is long-winded but really fun because
that's where we bring in the woods that we've been curating and we create trims
and curve pieces that go around the windows. We install cabinetry and
flooring and tiles then when the house is really close to completion there is
this testing and check off phase that is something I've gotten a lot better at as
I've gained experience. That's where I get to like hone how everything
functions together. I really enjoy that part of the building process.
This is the Damselfly House. It's got a 10-foot by 24-foot floor plan so it's
pretty big. One of my favorite parts about this exterior is the entry door.
This is Zyl Plank Door, which is kind of a very heavy laminated build up. A marine
plywood and then wood planks. It has a damselfly wing inlay of
contrasting wood. It turned out so beautiful. That ties into the roofline of
the house which is kind of unique. I've been wanting to do a double curved roof
line for a while, which is where it curves upward and then downward again or
concave convex. I used the on de'via roof again and it handles curves which is
where it's at for roofing for me. The Damselfly house has a lot of windows
which is what makes it so bright and airy inside and as per usual we
hand-built all of them in the workshop and this feature is one that I kind of
insisted to do despite the fact that there was barely enough budget for it
but that I wanted to build a window box in the kitchen.
Welcome to the interior of the Damselfly house.
Damselfly has a pretty good-sized bathroom because it's a ten-foot-wide floorplan.
You enter the bathroom through this Shoji door that I hand-built, has an
acrylic diffused filler so it'll last a lot longer than like Shoji paper. Right
Right above the bathroom is a not-large sleeping loft. It could also be a small
space for a desk. It has pretty good headroom up there. I designed these
stairs new for this house. I incorporated storage in the stairs. The rest of the
steps are drawers and behind this lower set of steps which is removable is the
hot water heater.
There's the kitchen.
Of course we built the cabinetry ourselves in the shop.
Then going over from the kitchen there's a flat-screen television, which is on a
like articulator bracket so you can either remove it kind of out of the way
if you don't want it in the kitchen area or you can aim it at the bed or the
couch. There's a bed platform in this end so you can sleep on the main floor
without having to climb stairs or a ladder. There's some of my
storage underneath the bed.
Small couch and a side table. You could also put a dining table and a couple of
chairs in here if you wanted or you could put up pop up tables and eat from
the couch if that's your jam, but I think this is a flexible space you could you
could do whatever you want with it. I think that 10-foot width is what
makes it feel more open than usual, but also we've been designing to keep the
floor low and the top of the peak high so there's a lot of vertical space
in here.
It's really tricky but fun to try to transcend the the box limitations of a
tiny house that's meant to move on wheels so by adding dimensionality to it
you open up the space more than usual.
I've been building small living spaces for 10 years now and I think one of the
most important things I've learned about building them is it's important to find
the right people to work with. That makes all the difference. It's really
difficult to find good people to have in your crew, but it's also like one of the
most rewarding things when you have a great crew. Over the 10 years I've been
building one of the most important features that a small space can have
seems to be flexibility. Like some space that's not built out or designated for
one particular thing. It seems like people enjoy their spaces the most when
they can kind of reconfigure it from time to time. I think the best advice
I've been given in my time building, which has been almost 25 years, is to not
sweat the small stuff, to work hard because really to build you kind of have
to put your nose to the grindstone and keep it there for a much longer time
than some people are comfortable with. If you take that original like florid pipedream of
an idea you had for a project whatever it is and cut it in half you'll end up
with something that's much more manageable. That's especially true if
you haven't built something like that before or you don't have the experience
to approach a project like that. Keep your dreams, keep your huge idea,
but build it in small increments, and don't get yourself into too much debt. That'll
give you the freedom to do what you want and go the directions you need to to
make a living doing what you love. If you want to see more of the projects that I
built there are images of them up on my website. There are also video tours up on
my YouTube channel. If you're interested in booking me for a tiny house build you
can find information about that on the website as well. Thanks for visiting my
workshop and we'll see you around.