Custom renovation (2024)

Our family had struggled to find a home we could call our own. Our town of Joshua Tree was experiencing a housing shortage fueled by a massive increase in short term rental properties. This demand had reached a fever pitch just before the Covid-19 pandemic and gained further steam as many sought refuge in small towns during the pandemic. My name is Tommy, I am a 47 year old musician, entrepreneur and life-long DIY enthusiast.  For us, "going tiny" opened the door for our family to buy land and build our very own home while living in our one of a kind Spartan Tiny Home. 

Our pathway into joining the tiny house movement began here in Joshua Tree where I met my wife in 2017. At the time, Kathryn was a single mom raising a wonderful 5 year old  girl named Sonora. I met the two of them one day while having coffee at a nearby cafe. Fate seemed to have planned our meeting as we quickly became inseparable. For a period of time, our newfound family fell into a storybook tale of life living together in a rented 3 bedroom / 2 bathroom home on 3 acres in a desirable area of Joshua Tree. 

Kathryn and I had discovered Spartan Trailers one day while researching possible ways to accommodate overnight guests coming in from out of town to work with me at my recording studio (I work as a music producer / engineer). We were immediately attracted to the robust build quality and striking presence of Spartan Trailers. After a few months of scouring listings online, we eventually found the perfect one for us to buy and begin restoring.

We had only just begun work on renovating our Spartan when we learned some incredibly disappointing news. Without warning, our landlord had decided to put the home that we were renting up for sale. During this same period, I had also been renting a warehouse space for my studio nearby. Just as we began to endure a steady stream of realtors showings up at the house, I received another devastating blow. My landlord at the warehouse had also decided to cash in on the "boom" that was happening in town and he notified me that he was going to increase my rent by 100%. 

Since I could not afford the increase in rent and still maintain all of our other bills, we entered into an unsettling reality. While Joshua Tree has become a tourist mecca of recent years, nearly all local business owners will tell you that spring and fall are the busy times while the summer and winter are not. These trends are common amongst many tourist driven communities. I was now faced with shutting down my business and losing our rented home simultaneously. This is when we began to consider the idea of renovating our Spartan to live in ourselves. 

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