The Tiny House for Dummies

A typical tiny house

The good people of Demand Media¹ – the same people who brought you the mother lode of misinformation known as eHow.com – have been chasing the dream for several years. Unlike several other content farms outed by the Google Panda update in 2011, they're still around. In an attempt to burnish their bona fides, the company eventually began using only "verified professionals" and (sadly for our research staff) replacing some of the most egregious dumbassery with updated content. If, however, they're serious, DMS needs to be a little more... careful. Being more careful might have kept them from allowing self-described "licensed contractor" Laurie Reeves (aka Laurie Brenner) to pretend sufficient knowledge to rewrite "Building a Small Home" at Hunker.com We've already given Reeves a couple of DotD awards, one of them for... contracting!

Reeves, by the way, is the second person to attack this project: according to the Internet Archive, Jim Hagerty "wrote to this title" back in 2013 or so. He didn't get the point, either...

Had either Reeves or Hagerty bothered to google the term "small house" they might have run across the super-hot tiny house movement. Yep, googling "tiny house" turns up almost 16 million results! Yet neither "expert contributor" bothered with this step -- and given that she has claimed to be a licensed contractor in sunny SoCal, we'd think Reeves would at the very least have some passing familiarity with the term. But noooooo.....

Instead, Laurie wants you to "Design for the Location" and use "Bubble Diagramming" to get the optimum design, You should, of course, use "House Plan Software" (although unlike eHow's Kelly Sundstrom, Reeves doesn't tell you which software to buy). She even "informs" her readers that one way to "Keep It Simple" is to "Build Up -- Not Out." Hell, she even advises her readers, "Don’t forget to add a garage for your vehicles, and while you’re at it, a workshop area attached to the garage. Include built-in designer bookcases or shelving to keep floor areas free." Sheesh. eHow somehow got the impression that Reeves is an "expert" in construction (because she told them so?). That's why some equally uninformed "content editor" let her get away with doing little more than rewording a basic home-building flow diagram by sticking in the word "small" several times. What a pair of dumbasses!

\No, someone dropped the tiny ball on this. At least Hagerty got the point of the smallness question, mentioning that a typical small house is "900 square feet or smaller." However, our research staffers all think that the OQ was not seeking information about a "small home" -- he or she wanted to know about the TINY house.

We further think that any real licensed contractor would know about a housing movement sweeping the Millennial generation. But no: instead, this Dumbass of the Day missed the point -- again -- and thereby blew a chance for eHow to make itself more relevant, beyond all their cutesy niche sites. Tough to be you, Leaf Group.

¹ recently renamed Leaf Group; the better to protect the guilty, we suppose

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