JESS ONCE BOUGHT A 1,500-SQUARE-FOOT TRADITIONAL HOUSE THAT SHE THOUGHT WOULD BE A QUICK REMODEL, BUT IT TURNED INTO A FIXER-UPPER THAT DEMANDED ALL HER TIME. “I was working, working on the house, or sleeping,” she says. Coming from an environmentally conscious family, she started doing research on alternative housing that would be more practical. She soon met Dan and suggested the tiny house idea.

The couple decided to build their own tiny house in October 2012 and spent the winter designing it. They got started the following April and moved in during October of the next year with the interior details left to finish. Jess was traveling for work, and Dan was balancing his job and grad school, so they had to work on the tiny house during the weekends. Now married, the Sullivans are happily settled in their completed tiny house.

Jess and Dan did their best to reuse and recycle as many materials as possible in order to have an affordable, ecofriendly house. All of their windows came from Craigslist. A full-glass front door still in its packaging was another Craigslist find, worth $800 new but purchased for $125. They kept spreadsheets tallying their expenses and cost savings during the build, and they estimate that they saved more than $7,000 by using secondhand materials where they could.

They got their reclaimed insulation from a man who took apart a warehouse full of industrial coolers. All the insulation came in four-foot by eight-foot blocks, so they had to cut every piece by hand to fit them between the studs. They also had to carve grooves into the foam for all their electrical wiring. Tackling the insulation took weeks of work during one of the hottest Rhode Island summers on record.

The Sullivans used free shipping palettes for their siding. First they picked up the palettes from local manufacturing companies before other people could snatch them up for firewood. They broke the palettes apart, planed them down, cut them to the correct width, shiplapped them so they would interlock, drilled them to the exterior, and stained them all to match. It’s an ongoing, time-consuming process for Dan and Jess, but it was a great way to recycle free lumber, and they love the result.

Reclaimed doors add a lot of family history to the tiny house. Two doors came from Dan’s grandmother’s house, and a third door came from Jess’s father’s house. The couple used the doors as wall partitions and loft support throughout the kitchen, bathroom, and closet areas. They even kept the windows intact, which brings light into the closet.

One of their favorite features of the house is their ceiling, made of reclaimed barn wood from 1776. A man in New Hampshire was demolishing the old barn and offered the wood for sale. Dan and Jess used the leftover barn wood to build their library shelves, desk, and pantry. They say that the richness and character of the wood can’t be beat.

Photograph by Nat Rea Photography

The tiny house is a stepping stone that has allowed Dan and Jess to live their lives to the fullest. Within three months after they moved in, the house was fully paid off. They now have time to travel and do the things that are important to them. Jess has even been able to leave her corporate job and start her own business baking gluten- and dairy-free foods. And as Jess says of their relationship after building the tiny house: “It is five times stronger than when we started, and it was pretty strong to begin with!”

Photograph by Nat Rea Photography