Tiny house draws big bids
STEAM Club students auction off latest creation
SOUTH COVENTRY >> It was a big moment for a group of Owen J. Roberts High School students who had just finished building a tiny house.
They watched as community members toured the 200-squarefoot structure, admiring its cozy pine walls, compact kitchen, bathroom area and sleeping loft.
And then, before bidding farewell to the house they’d spent two years designing and constructing, the students witnessed a bidding war as their project sat on the auction block.
At the conclusion of the auction outside the Owen J. Roberts High School on Friday evening, the tiny house fetched the sizable sum of $13,100.
The buyer was Karel Minor, an OJR school board member and
CEO of Humane Pennsylvania, a non-profit animal welfare organization headquartered in Reading.
The tiny house will serve as a mobile veterinary clinic that will provide both preventative and emergency services to neighborhoods that might not otherwise have access to veterinary care. The house will also be available at various Humane Pennsylvania events that focus on adoptions, rescues and other animal welfare issues.
“This was really perfect for our needs,” said Minor, who noted that Humane Pennsylvania had recently been awarded a grant to add a mobile component to its services.
“There are people in Reading who can’t get to a veterinary hospital so we bring the hospital to them,” Minor said.
When he learned that the tiny house was to be auctioned off, he realized it perfectly suited the needs of his organization. He particularly liked the fact that the facility had a homey feel.
“It’s not industrial,” he said. “It’s welcoming.”
The house is, in fact, more than welcoming. It’s downright adorable, inside and out.
Measuring a mere 14-feet-long by 8-feet-wide, it consists of only 112 square feet of living space on the first floor, plus two loft areas accessible by ladder, that add another 64 square feet of storage and sleeping space. It also includes a bathroom with a shower and space designated for a composting toilet.
The entire structure was designed and constructed by students who decked out that teensy-weensy space with pretty tonguein-groove pine walls and trim, decorative window boxes, built-in seating and a surprising amount of windows.
The house was built over a two-year period by the high school STEAM club. STEAM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Math, and club members said they learned a great deal about all those subjects by building the house.
What was the hardest part? Plumbing, said club member Nico Mancuso.
“The plumbing was giving us problems from the beginning to the very end,” Mancuso said.
But club president Capri Norris noted that problem solving was part of what made the experience of building the house so engaging.
“There was a lot of trial and error, and it was exciting to see how it changed over time,” Norris said.
During the open house, Norris, Mancuso and fellow club member Cameron Cooper said together in the loft area of the tiny house, greeting visitors and answering questions. It was a bittersweet moment for the three high school juniors who had embarked upon the project during their freshman year.
“We’re beyond happy with the finished product,” Norris said.
In addition to learning such skills as using power tools, installing plumbing, and hanging windows, club members also developed strong bonds with one another.
“We all got so close. We really got to know each other,” Norris noted.
The project was originally expected to take one year, according to high school engineering teacher Bill Crowl who, along with former teacher Bill Richardson, led the club and served as an advisor.
Crowl said the club was inspired to create a tiny house after watching a television show that highlighted tiny houses.
Working with former high school Principal Richard Marchini, the advisors devised a plan to build the entire house using donated and second-hand materials.
The first item to be donated was an old equipment trailer no longer used by the district maintenance department. The trailer serves as the base for the structure, and its oak plank floor was repurposed as exterior trim. The roof was salvaged from a section of high school roofing that was replaced after being damaged in a storm.
Because all items were donated, the project took much longer than originally anticipated because the design had to be altered repeatedly to accommodate various elements, such as windows or cabinets of an unforeseen size.
Ultimately, the club members left the auction ecstatic over the price paid for their labor of love.
Bidding started at $10,000, with Meredith Jacks making the opening bid. Jacks is a real estate agent at Styer Real Estate, which provided marketing assistance to the STEAM club. She and Minor were the only two bidders, but they quickly got into a bidding war that ended with Minor’s $13,100 price point.
Crowl said the club hopes to donate a portion of the money to the Owen J. Roberts Education Foundation, which provided some grant funding for the tiny house. The rest of the auction earnings will go into their next project. That could be another tiny house, or possibly a mobile STEAM lab crafted from an old bus.
But before launching a new project, club members took some time to savor their most recent accomplishment.
After the bidding, club member Marlena Langdon gazed appreciatively at the tiny house.
“Never in a million years did I think I could do something like that,” she said.