Building Relationships and Skills Through Workshops and Projects

In this conversation, we will talk about the benefits of building with your community and involving your friends in your builds. And also how to do that so that it actually helps you rather than slows you down. We also talk about the importance and how to just get started on something small, maybe not starting with a tiny house first, but with a chicken coop or a picnic table. Jeff is something of an expert on tools.

He's written a best selling book called tools, The Ultimate Guide and we talk about why he wrote it and who it's for. I really enjoyed this conversation with Jeff and I know you will too. I hope you stick around. I love to cook in my tiny house kitchen but I don't always love to clean up. And one of my big concerns with going tiny was losing the convenience of a dishwasher. That's why I'm so excited to share today's sponsor with you the FOTILE two in one

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us.fotileglobal.com/thlp. That link will be in the show notes to upgrade your tiny home kitchen with FOTILE and experience the convenience of modern living in a compact space Alright, I am here with Jeff Waldman No relation. As far as I know, Jeff is a designer, builder and author of books on tools. He sells building plans and has a newsletter where he writes about both construction and community building and where those two practices intersect

for him. He's property in California Santa Cruz Mountains burned in the wildfires of 2020 but lives on as a canvas for new projects. Jeff Waldman, welcome to the show.

for me. And I just I rewatched the video and I was like, I gotta get I gotta get Jeff on the show, because this project is so just sweet. And and there was something about it that just made me want to be there. Yeah. But I guess maybe you could start with like, telling us a little bit more about about you. And just kind of your background in building in general.

And it's why in the intro, you're talking about my newsletter, or stuff that I tend to write about is like that intersection of community building and doing projects, because it's just more fun with friends. But I'll get a round of that. And the ethos of the property, I guess, and a bit better. Yes. So for me, I don't know, I'm 41 years old now. I've always built a little bit. You know, like skate park, as a kid, dirt jumps out in the field, a fort or whatever. But I mean,

nothing. All that professional. I was more like the guy that you know, if your kitchen sink was broken, we're friends might call me over to help you fix it. And not because I know anything about kitchen sinks, but you're like, I don't know, maybe you can figure it out. I had that kind of scrappy, I'll pick up various skills, kind of

attitude. And then yeah, into adulthood, I've just started making things a little bit more and more, but really just in my apartment, you know, little projects, small woodworking, I went and did a timber framing workshop out in New York, actually, in 2015. It was pretty formative. And then at some point, it was I can't remember it was right before that workshop or right after. But my partner Molly and I, we've been

together for 13 years now. We've been living in San Francisco, and we were just kind of ready to leave our apartment for more space. You know, we're really craving like house yard projects, build a thing. And we just couldn't get that in the city. So we thought about leaving. I mean, we considered moving to New England a little

bit. We talked about, you know, what about around the Great Lakes, she's got family in Chicago, we looked at the Pacific Northwest, I think we actually took a trip up in Washington or Portland and looked around. But ultimately, we decided that our community around San Francisco in the Bay Area was just too strong. And if we really looked at why we were kind of happy and content in our day to day, it was the people when we didn't want to like give

that up so easily. So as a placeholder, because we could not afford to buy a house with a yard space and room for projects in San Francisco or even the area right around here. We bought some land in the Santa Cruz Mountains, which if you look on a map is a strip of land that's south of San Francisco, near San Jose near Santa Cruz. Surprisingly wild and

undeveloped. And if you go like dead center to the middle of it, where you're kind of the furthest away from the beach, and from San Francisco, you get into some land that's it's not super affordable by US standards, but it's very affordable

definitely going to burn. You know, the people that can buy a big parcel that's sort of connected more to the mainland and the fire department knows about it and it's a nice flat defensible space. Yeah, that's a lot less likely. So we bought what we could, which is fine. And we did that with the intention of saying, Okay, we're going to be here for a while. We're not going to get a house with a big yard and big plot of land. We're not going to build something where we're living.

This will serve as kind of our weekend getaway and the communal space that we've kind of always wanted to have with friends. It'll be a place and a reason to gather and somewhere that we can kind of exercise some, you know, creative muscles and designs and things and build some things and just like have that. Yeah. And so that's how it got its start. That was September, maybe a little bit earlier, but 2016

at the beginning. And then at the end, you're seeing little clips of other structures like outdoor bathhouse and, you know, a pergola with a clear roof and all these different structures that, you know, certainly didn't sprout up overnight.

here. But also, people in the city are just really excited to work on projects, to get their hands dirty, to get out into the woods to build some stuff in some trees very romantic. Yeah. And Molly and I were very intentional about creating a space that felt welcoming and open. So we hit the ground running. And I mean, when the first projects that we did were like, I don't know picnic table, I had to download some instructions off Instructables and had to go out and buy a

drill. You know, we're working real bare bones stuff yet, um, you know, the next weekend, another project and the next week and another project, we're making leaps and bounds, kind of jumping off from what we were doing before, you know, as we're building that confidence and competence. And when we're doing it, we're inviting friends out.

And something that I think she and I did really well is we would do a lot of project planning, making sure that the stage was set for them, having all your materials and making sure everything was gonna go smoothly, there was no last minute runs to the hardware store. And we've got food and

snacks. And even though like, until we had a bathroom up and running, people were pooping out in the woods and rain, Oh, hot showers doing what we can to provide, like, a pretty nice environment for our buddies. Yeah. And so it was fun for them, they would come out and they would be giving us you know, labor, but it was a really enjoyable build. And word of

that was kind of spreading. So what started out, as you know, half dozen friends who are eager to come if we became a dozen, and you know, they would tell their friends because it was just the it was the type of thing that really beckon to a certain type of person. And I think within a few years, like, our email invite less from when we were doing weekends out there was like 60 or 80 people or something. It was really big. You know, it's just one of those, like, build it, and they

will come and type things. Like if you're doing cool shit out in the woods, you might have folks come out to join you. Yep. So obviously, this is all like, very exciting for us. And we've got people that are very interested in contributing. So we went pretty hard. And I mean, shower, out house, the pavilion, a couple of little structures, a big part of the motivation. wanting to do something out in the woods is just like you walk village Treehouse stuff. tree houses. Yeah, love the

elevation, super exciting. So we started doing that I was actually just today, writing up a newsletter thing about the evolution of those projects in the trees. Nothing comes out in a couple of weeks. But, you know, we started small, like little platform, but that little platform is so exciting. Like you're having dinner on it, and you're sleeping on it, because it's a thing and it didn't exist before. And we kind of kept evolving in that way. When we

did our outhouse build. We'd never built a tiny structure before. You know, we'd read a lot about tiny homes and tiny cabins. You know, both like the quote unquote tiny homes on wheels and then smaller structures. We'd read a lot about the theory of homebuilding even on a small scale, but we've never done it. And we knew that we wanted to do a cabinet at some point. So when we built our first outhouse, we tried to do it, like really well, way better than you should never build an

outhouse. We tried to make it his practice for like, Okay, this is a house build just you know, that's, it was I think nine by nine feet or something. Yeah. which was great. And that baby step gave us enough confidence were like, Okay, we're going to break ground on this cabin. And the cabin build, I think all told from groundbreaking to like the last bit of interior stuff was maybe a year. And when I cut that video together that you saw, I think it was what we had finished the exterior closing

man. And, you know, that was a very exciting accomplishment. It was like, Alright, no matter what happens on the inside of this, we have a shelter now.

bottom. It was it was quite heavy after it was all built. And it was kind of floppy, you know? Because it's like, yeah, that floor. So I kind of assembled a big crew of family and friends to help kind of pick the thing up and put it onto the trailer. But that I remember that, that took like, a good half day of planning, you know, ordering the pizzas, making sure there were work gloves for

everyone, all that stuff. And it strikes me that like, once you get into the swing of things of having people help you on projects, you can get a little bit faster with it. And it's almost like, at some point, the balance tips and it goes from being kind of like a pain in the butt to have someone help you you're like, Oh, is it actually help? Or is it gonna be more work for me to have you helped me?

to values. So many of the projects we did were not necessarily because we really needed to have that structure. It was just an excuse to do a project with friends. Yeah, there was a big tree deck that we put up that I just did, because my friend Drew was coming into town and I wanted to work on a thing with him. Yeah. And you know, that was a reason to gather another half dozen folks and do it. It wouldn't have gone... Like, did it go? Eight times faster? Because we

had eight people? Probably not. I mean, definitely a few hands on some big heavy beams helped a little bit. But yeah, I think for us, a big part of the experience has been, and hopefully will continue to be the community aspect of it. I mean, when we did the wall raising for our cabin, I think there was like 30 people there. We definitely didn't need that many people to raise those walls. It was, you know, it, it felt fun. Yeah. So it's, I don't know, there's definitely two

sides to that. Cuz I mean, there also is, it's hard to delegate, that's a whole different thing, managing an operation and figuring it out. I think that's what separates, I know a lot of very talented builders who work like crazy fast and while on their own, and it just doesn't come intuitively to them. And not always to me for how to really delegate tasks and make

use of bodies. What I tried to do, both to make it fun for our friends, and also to kind of make things happen quickly and to respect like, sort of the manpower and time they were giving me is I would show up for a project maybe a couple days in advance or both Molly and I would or something. And we would do all the foundational work, which might literally be putting down a foundation or laying out and marking wood or cutting it and, you know, marking it for how it's gonna get laid out.

Yeah, and when the day comes for assembly, it goes really fast and everybody has a really good time because they're basically just putting up Legos. And it is making use of their manpower and they're not all standing around while I'm like figuring out what the layout of the rafters are because they've already been cut labeled. like they're ready to rock and roll. Yeah, I also, I mean, and I think that this hasn't always been good for me.

Part of the reason why so many of these builds have gone off as well as they have, as far as our friends could tell, is cuz my mind is just like a little bit too obsessive. And I've been disassembling and reassembling that model in SketchUp 1000 times I've been lying in bed awake at night going through the process in my head, like when we did the wall raising on the cabin, which was wall raising rafters loft beams, temporary loft floor, the plywood over the

top of the rafters. We did it all in a day and a half, I think when we did all that, and these are some really big pieces to move around on a very small site. I obsessed over that dance of like, what goes where? Who does what what piece do I need? In terms of like, hours invested. It's not great. Like, I'm lying awake, it's costing me sleep. You know, but the payoff is on that weekend, everybody's

got a job to do. It goes off pretty well, because there's almost nothing I didn't think of and raise like, wow, that was really fun and amazing. Like, yeah, I mean, it only cost me six night's sleep. It was good. Like my superpowers being sort of broken and obsessive in that way.

But then having friends and family, friends and other family members come and kind of lend a hand, in a way made me feel supported by that whole group of people like, oh, all of these people believe in this vision of a tiny house. And so that's, you know, you're getting something there. That's more than just a set of hands to help you lift something heavy.

And that that's a, that's an old world community connection, like the folks that you're close to helping you build the thing that you're going to live in, and then sharing a meal on it. It's a very specific and special kind of reward that I just I don't get from like getting together with friends for a coffee or lunch date or whatever. You know, it's much more impactful. Yeah. Do you get having been involved with teaching? You said you were teaching some tiny house workshops with Yestermorrow.

course. And they were now kind of returning as the client and letting other students kind of build their tiny house.

house. But but that workshops are a great way to connect people put their hands on a project or get some skills, can you can you speak more to that? And with a tiny house, too. It's like you do you need to figure all that stuff out, but not all at the same time.

like, This is too much. I can't It's like no, no, you can just, I mean, when we started on our cabin, even though at that point, we built up enough confidence to like, figure that we could start on it, I really only committed to putting down a foundation and joists and a sub floor because I was like, if nothing else, we've got a yoga deck. Like that's it. Yeah a

really nice designs. Appreciate projects that you're cutting your teeth on, but like you can start down the baby steps of some sort of tiny house type it. I'm curious, you know, I want to kind of talk about the thing. And it's not A monumentally like, daunting financial prospect. Right? You know, just like ease down that loss of all of this. Because you know, you you've, it's clear

road a little bit. Hopefully, that this was such a pivotal and meaningful experience for you and your partner, and for your friends who, who kind of put all this time and love and energy into this project. Was it? Was it in your head the whole time? Like, okay, if a wildfire comes through here, this would be in trouble, or was it? You know, was that always in the back of your mind? Or was this kind of like a surprise?

wildfire happens? Just because wildfires have always been a problem in California, and especially over the past decade or so it seems like every wildfire season has been getting worse, and when you look around at the thick tinder that is our property and the way that it's laid out, just unless you clear cut the entire mountain side, there's really no way to do it as defensible space, because you're on the slope, and the trees are sort of looming over you for higher neighboring

property. So it's just like, if a wildfire comes through here, boy, is this gonna go. And even though we knew that, and we were accepting of the risks, because I didn't want to minimize the amount of money that we spent, but of course against like, I don't know, buying and building real houses, it was a fairly

trivial amount. We were just, you know, we were accepting of the risk and the cost and the consequences, but at the same time, you still kind of think that it happens to somebody else, not you, you know, yeah. So there's a surrealness when it actually does occur. Yeah, it's funny, the last didn't hit me at first. Because it was just stuff. And it's just projects.

And I get really excited about projects, I really want to see them through, I want to have the experience of creating a thing, conceiving of how it can be put together and doing it with friends. And then I don't actually need to own it that much afterwards. So that didn't bother me too much the loss of that work. But the wildfire

happened during COVID. And things were just really getting shaken up around COVID, you had friends that were leaving the city, we're at an age where a number of our friends were having kids, people were just less sociable for various reasons, then the wildfire happened. So our property as a social tool, as time went on, I was like, oh, man, this really

took a hit. Because the truth is, it's we've rebuilt a little bit there, but it's not, it's just not what it was, you can't go back to like that really sweet time where, you know, everything that we had there. So that's been a bit of a bummer have definitely lamented that it was clearly a phase in time that was particularly sweet, and you

can't quite go back to. The land itself has recovered pretty well, we've had to do a lot of work clearing trees that either fell in the fires or in the storms afterwards, or didn't quite get consumed. And we're just standing dead. And now like it's doing all right. We spent a couple of years without water, we finally got water back up and running, because all of the infrastructure for that burned. Yep. And then we've built a

couple of new structures. We have an outhouse and the little tiny a frame and I think that's it. But both of those, the fire really informed their design, whereas like, Okay, I'm willing to build something else here. Because really, I just want to have a project I wanted to design a thing and make it but like, I'm only going to invest so much time and so much money

into this. So where's the first iteration of some of our stuff with like, how nice can we make this and how much time can we spend on it making it Oh, so cool and perfect. The next ones were like, Okay, what's the most cost effective way I can make something that's still fun and attractive, but is going to really not put me out financially or put So you know too much time, which is a great

design exercise. So we made this little tiny a frame that is basically a hard wall tent, and we threw it up in a weekend with some friends. I think it cost $2,200 or something. Our outhouse was less than that. I think it was like 1500 bucks, because I opt in for some, some siding looks a little bit nicer. But it too was, I think, a weekend or two project. So that's definitely changed the ethos of things a little bit. I'm tempted, we had a bunch of

redwoods that came down. And we milled them with a chainsaw mill on the property. And I've been thinking about how to put that wood to use. And we've been tempted to do like a small cabin build where the old cabin stood. And there's that knowledge of like, this still isn't the type of property you can really defend against, there's still a chance that wildfire could come back through. You know, this is

a fun design exercise. And it's great to be able to build a thing and, you know, maybe inspire others or sell some plans or whatever. But how do you how do you keep this like pretty minimal in terms of both effort and cost while still feeling satisfying? And so I haven't fully fleshed out a design for that yet. And I don't know if we'll ever do it. But yeah, potentially some of the redwood we will, that's what

we'll kind of put towards. We're still hanging out there with friends and friends borrow it now, especially now that it took a couple of years for it to be more usable place. But now it's it's a lot different than what it was. But it's not a bad little retreat in nature. Nice if you visited it now having never been there before. You'd be like, This is great. It's like yeah, well, you think it used to be different.

something for everybody. So like, if you're really familiar with tools you read through there, and you're gonna find some esoteric variations you've never heard of, or some trivia or history or details where you're like, but this is new to me. Right? But for the person who doesn't really know anything about it, my hope is that it kind of demystifies a lot of it because I think a big part of the problem when you're first getting started is you don't have a language around this sort

of thing, right? And so if you have a little bit of a roadmap that can start to plug those puzzle pieces together, right, it allows you to fill in the gaps more. We're like, Okay, I'm starting to see it all now. That was a fun project. It's it's done decently well, better than I thought it would. But it was my COVID project, which was great. Everybody was lamenting, like being locked down and not being able to do anything. And I was like, happily typing away. So it was nice.

can learn on YouTube. But when Lloyd was making a book, you know, when he started, it was like, that was the resource or some of the resources for how to build certain things, or what was out there.

would be useful for. But it's also nice to know, like, this is, this is what this is called and this is what it is used for.

called. Yeah, that's, that's a real challenge, when you're just designing and building stuff is trying to figure out what the name of the thing is you're looking for? Once you figure out like, a name or an adjacent name, it really unlocks like, Oh, now now I know what to ask. I mean, it's, I think that there's a certain romantic quality to flipping through a book and looking for it. I just acknowledge that. You know, it's also all out there on the internet, too.

fairly remote. Sometimes we can get things delivered or delivered close very often, we had to track it all in and hand carry it. So you're, you're really trying to think through exactly how much stuff you need. And I found SketchUp to just be the easiest way for me to kind of figure that out to tail. And then when I'm planning how a build is going to go together. Being able to examine all those little layers and connections and flesh them out in a way that I just really can't do with pen

and paper. It's It's proven for me to be a really instrumental tool. Because you know, you're building a thing digitally, and I might do it a dozen times or more before doing it in real

life. I wish I could draw that's I have a friend who kind of draws all of the stuff that he designs and it just feels a little bit like a superpower to be able to whip out a pad and sketch what you need, because I can do, you know what I'm creating in SketchUp is arguably more useful, but boy does it take me a lot more time to do it. And it doesn't look as cool. The drawings look look fun.

it. But if you can get over that hurdle a little bit. I feel like the ability to practice building that picnic table on your computer a dozen times before you go out. Saw your first piece of wood is totally monumentally helpful. Absolutely. And workshops I wrote about in my newsletter recently, it's something that's a big proponent of just skill building in general, I think taking workshops where you're, most of us are, at least, you know, most people my age are past being in

school. So being in a situation where you're kind of challenging yourself, having to learn some new skills, work with some people that you don't know. Yeah, getting to intimately know some people by working alongside them, and perhaps building some new relationships with like minded quality individuals is obviously Nice. Yeah. Yeah, I just, I think that it's an

untapped resource. Because as much as people might say, I enjoy baseball, or woodworking, or pottery, or plants, or whatever it is that they consider to be their hobbies or their passions. They don't really think like, oh, for fairly nominal fee in my city, I can, you know, probably go out and engage in some extra adult curricular learning on this. I think that it's a really cool resource, and I'd like more people to look into them. Awesome.

for this week. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.