Magical Dwellings: Tiny Texas Houses in Focus

The Tour

The story of Tiny Texas Houses cannot properly begin without first introducing its founder, Brad Kittel.

Tall, lean, and muscular, Brad is soft-spoken with a big earnest smile. Years ago, while enjoying a successful career in real estate, Brad met another tiny-house builder, and reached a conclusion: he could build tiny houses more economically, and more environmentally friendly than other pioneers in the movement were doing at the time.

His vision was to make what was old new again, collecting materials that had already been created but discarded, and reusing them to build unique homes with distinct personality.

And that's what he's achieved. Each house Brad designs is different, utilizing special materials in creatively functional ways. He generally does not choose a theme for a house, and prefers a product that's more eclectic than thematic.

If there's a word that's most enigmatic of the Tiny Texas Houses brand, it's salvage. We see the phrase "reclaimed wood" a lot nowadays. But Brad doesn't refer to his wood or other building materials that way. Instead, he prefers to call them salvaged. The word itself means "to rescue", and that's what you discover when you inspect a Tiny Texas House: wonderful, old, and very functional materials are finding their salvation.