After Losing My Job, I Built a Tiny Home That Led to a New Career

This story is based on an interview with Melanie Copeland, 45, of Buckingham County, Virginia, the author of “Trailblazing Tiny: A Guide to Breaking Free.” Copeland runs a handyman business with her husband, John, 46. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

My husband, John, and I had been considering moving into a tiny home for a few years before we finally did so in February 2018.

The popularity of tiny homes on wheels was significantly smaller than it is now, and it was challenging to find a wealth of information on blogs and social media platforms, such as YouTube.

Still, we did our research and due diligence because the idea appealed to us so much.

We’d always been pretty minimalist people, and even when we “lived big” while renting a two-storey house in Charlottesville, Virginia, we didn’t own a lot of stuff.

The catalyst was being laid off

But I’d work the entire week in a busy, full-time job, ranging from financial and legal editing to real estate, only to spend at least one day cleaning the place and doing laundry on weekends.

There wasn’t much time for John and me to have fun and enjoy ourselves because we were tethered to our property.

So, when I was suddenly laid off by my realty agency in December 2017, it seemed like the perfect time to downsize.

There is no way we would have been able to afford the project without an interest-free loan from my mother. She lent us the money for our $27,000 contract with the Incredible Tiny Homes company in Tennessee.

It included a meeting with a designer who advised us on aspects such as window placement. The price included materials, not labor.

We had never been DIYers

During a weeklong workshop, John, my mother-in-law, a friend, a volunteer, and I lived in a bunkhouse at the company’s warehouse in Inca, where we built the tiny house ourselves. They provided us with three meals a day.

A supervisor demonstrated how to operate the equipment and tools, such as the saws. A plumber and an electrician came in to comply with safety regulations. But the rest of it was up to us. We cut the wood, put up the walls, and laid the floor.

John and I had never been DIYers, so it was a steep learning curve.

Luckily, I’m naturally inclined toward mechanics. My sister was usually the one throwing the doll’s tea party when we were little, while I was playing with blocks and Erector sets.

The workshop was completely hands-on, and although we made mistakes at times, we eventually figured out the spacing and how the pieces are put together. By the seventh day, before the hauler arrived to take our 144 square foot home to Virginia, we knew it wasn’t rocket science.

We lived in a friend’s backyard and at a campground before obtaining a farm loan and purchasing a 1.07-acre plot of land for $16,000 in 2000. It was relatively cheap because it had a burned-down house on it, and we had to clear the debris.

I didn’t want to be nose to the grindstone

John and I put our life and soul into the property. We taught ourselves how to paint, stain, and do polyurethane and finishing work. We made some frustrating mistakes, but we learned and continued to learn.

We now know how to fix everything in our home because we built it ourselves and understand its components. You could call it skill-building.

I took another real estate job in 2019, but quit around the same time we closed on our new land. I didn’t want to be nose to the grindstone anymore.

John reached the same conclusion in 2023 when he left his position as the manager of a parking garage. By then, we’d figured out that we could live in the tiny home for less than $300 a month, including the land payment, tax, insurance, and power bills.

Then, in 2024, we decided to leverage our newly proven DIY abilities and launch our own business. We make and fix things for other people now.

We rely on word of mouth

We’ve worked on a few tiny homes and shed conversions. But it’s mostly regular houses. We just finished staining a huge deck, and I built a custom bookcase inside a beautiful, 18th-century house.

We have no marketing budget and rely on word of mouth. Last year’s income from the handyman business was $80,000, and we’re on target to make $100,00 by the end of the year.

Building our 18ft by 8ft tiny home opened up a whole new world for us, and one of the best parts is being our own boss.