I don’t remember my first encounter with Guillaume Dutilh and Jenna Spesard.
I remember seeing their website and wondering who this couple was with the high quality images, zany poses, quick wit, and lofty goals.
In their own words they started their tiny house project as a 3-step process.
Step 1: Build a tiny house on wheels.
Step 2: Travel for one year.
Step 3: Find a place to settle and make North America our own backyard.
Guillaume and Jenna dared drive their tiny house through downtown Manhattan on one of their earlier stops in their adventure.
Leaving It All Behind
Guillaume is a former engineer who quit his 9-to-5 to pursue landscape photography, downsize into a tiny house, and start Tiny House Giant Journey.
His partner Jenna worked full-time in the film industry until recently. She’s also a hilarious writer with a solid voice and humorous tone.
The Los Angeles-based couple are currently on the road touring their tiny house, teaching workshops as part of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, seeing the nation, answering questions, and exploring the minimal life with maximum fulfillment.
Guillaume and Jenna in front of their tiny house
Having the opportunity to speak with Guillaume and Jenna is like watching an episode of ‘Friends’ or reading a Bill Bryson novel.
They are equal parts comedy and adventure!
Guillaume is filming and photographing their whole adventure, and you can follow them on their blog and Facebook page.
Guillaume and Jenna had a huge support team and often had friends over to help in the build. Their Sunday builds (complete with homemade barbeque and beer) became known online as the BBBQ Builds!
Andrew Odom: When did you build your tiny house and is there one reason in particular that you did so?
Jenna Spesard: We started our build on September 2nd 2013 and finished on September 2nd 2014! We decided to build this house to pursue our dream careers of travel writer and photographer. We had a little bit of savings, quit our jobs and decided that building a tiny house to travel the country with would be a fun way to achieve our goals.
AO: What are the size specs of your tiny house (size of trailer if applicable, square feet, number of stories, number of occupants, etc)
Guillaume Dutilh: Our trailer is a Tumbleweed 20′ trailer. Our house is 20′ long and about 13’5” high. Inside, it’s 6’8” wide and about 10’5” high. It’s around 135sqft.
We have a small porch on the left side and 10′ long a sleeping loft. We are a couple living in it, with our 35lb Australian Shepherd.
Midway through the Tumbleweed build
AO: Are you living in your tiny house? How long now? If not, when do you expect to move in?
GD: We’ve been living in our house for three/four about weeks and 4,000 miles.
AO: How do you feel about the tiny house movement and being such an instrumental part of it?
GD and JS: We are very excited to see people willing to change their lifestyles and habits for something less impactful on the environment.
It’s also refreshing to hear that people can pursue goals that they just wouldn’t be able to with a regular mortgage situation.
We decided to tow our house all over this country to make a living off of what we love, but also to preach a different lifestyle.
We’ve had hundreds of people visit our house and we love to see how it resonates with our visitors.
The couple has made numerous stops and plans to make more in order to show off the tiny house, advocate for the tiny lifestyle, and just generally meet great people!
AO: What is the one thing in your tiny house you couldn’t live without?
GD: Well, this might seem too specific and obvious, but our Nature’s Head composting toilet is up there on the list. Being able to take care of our business and not deal with black water is great… and there’s no smell!
AO: What one thing would you do differently or do you wish wasn’t part of your tiny house?
JS: Oddly enough, we wish that our porch were on the other side of our house.
We travel so much with it and end up stopping on the side of the road. When we want to get in and out of the house, our porch leads us directly onto the street.
Having the porch on the sidewalk side would have made our travels a little safer. Oh, and our house is also a bit heavy!
Thanks Guillaume and Jenna for the interview!
Hanging out in the loft, doesn’t it look like fun?
All photos courtesy of Guillaume Dutilh and Giant Dream Photography
