Colonial Williamsburg carpenters cut a timber frame for a tiny house that recalls traditional ways of living.
BY PARISSA DJANGI
Between late 2021 and early 2022, Colonial Williamsburg’s carpenters used historical methods to build a frame for a small house that represents big ideas. Though the structure is their 49th building since 1979, it is unlike any of their previous projects.
Measuring just 14 feet by 14 feet, the tiny house is not located in the Historic Area or anywhere associated with Colonial Williamsburg, though it likely would have fit into an 18th-century landscape. Instead, the house, which was a collaboration between Colonial Williamsburg’s Historic Trades and Skills and the nonprofit Innermost House Foundation, stands in nearby Surry County as a tangible example of a simpler way of living.
Uncluttering Their Lives
Diana and Michael Lorence’s experience of living in the Historic Area inspired their pursuit of authentic living in small spaces.
Michael Lorence and his wife, Diana, began their own experiment in simpler living 25 years ago in a small home off Duke of Gloucester Street. For two years they embraced their surroundings. They even weaned themselves from electricity, Lorence said, “in order to gain access to an older and, to us, deeper way of experiencing, thinking, seeing and listening.”
That experience set them on a path to recalibrate their relationship to the world, Lorence said, and embrace simple living in small spaces. It sparked another experiment, one that paralleled the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, who famously found refuge in a small cabin on Walden Pond in 19th-century Massachusetts.
When people embark on these journeys, Lorence said, “they deliberately reach back to their roots to renew their sources of life.”
The Lorences found renewal in the remote woods of northern California, where they built a one-room, 12-by-12-foot cabin that reflected their principles. It was a shelter built around a fireplace accommodating basic needs. The house had no electricity. They lit candles and cooked their meals in the fireplace.
They focused on a life of quietude, reflection, and. . . .
The Innermost House Foundation is an entirely volunteer organization
dedicated to renewing transcendental values for our age.
IMAGES
Virginia House Roof Assembly, by D. Lorence
Diana and Michael Lorence, by Jerry McCoy