New Mexico Tiny Houses

Downsizing: Trend or Foe

By Andrea Solis

(Photo provided by Drew Wyrick)

It’s 2009 and the housing market crisis has just foreclosed the house of a family of four with a baby on the way. They have no idea where to go, who to turn to, and the baby only has a few weeks left before being born. This was the reality many people faced.

Tiny houses emerged in the late 1980’s but didn’t take hold until the 1990’s. The trend took flight in 2009 when the housing crisis happened, and many people had their homes foreclosed. With nowhere else to turn, they took to the tiny housing market, knowing no mortgage was necessary and the option was cost efficient. (https://www.curbed.com/2017/7/19/15974554/tiny-house-timeline)

Though tiny houses emerged during hard financial times, there are many benefits to owning one — it is environmentally friendly and cost-effective.

Drew Wyrick, a tiny house owner and also a sales-person for The Sheraton Albuquerque Uptown Hotel, took on the project of setting up a tiny house. He has lived in cities from the East coast to the West coast and finally ended up in The Big Apple.

“The lifestyle that I wanted wasn’t really the lifestyle I wanted, so I moved back to New Mexico — slower-pace life, cheaper, and of course, for my family,” Wynrick said.

The fast-paced life of New York City was not one that Wyrick had been looking for. He jokingly says his mom had a really late mid-life crisis among other things.

“Her plan didn’t go as planned and she just had a tiny house she had bought from California sitting out on our friends’ lot,” Wyrick said. At the time he had been looking for a house and if he found one with a big enough yard he would buy the tiny house from her.

Wyrick ended up finding a house with a double lot and then began the journey of setting up the tiny house. Wyrick was intrigued by the tiny houses after watching documentaries on Netflix.

The tiny house sat upon a 20-foot trailer bed and was located on the little town of Pojoaque, New Mexico, an hour and a half outside of the city. Before bringing the house down, Wyrick had to get the lot set up.

“I had to dig a hole that was 50 feet and about 12 inches deep to line the sewage drain, so I was digging every day for the whole summer,” Wyrick said.

Suited up with a pair of gloves, a shovel, a pickaxe and countless YouTube tutorials, Wyrick was a complete professional. He would come home after work and dig about one to two feet every day until exhaustion took hold.

“I had never been that sore, it felt like I had just been hit by a truck or something, that was probably the worst experience of it all,” Wyrick said.

The tiny house was finished last year.

Decorating the house was Wyrick’s favorite part; he has taken pride in a small antique pine cabinet that his mom had bought.

“We cut out a hole and put in a drop-in sink, so you could do dishes and wash your clothes, whatever you wanted to do in this area, it was a really smart idea for something cheap,” Wyrick said. The cabinet was a perfect fit, the top part of the cabinet was detached and now the sits above the sink.

The project took about a year and a half, and it was not an easy one. Albuquerque has a lot of city codes about what is defined as a tiny house or an RV, and since the tiny house is set on a trailer bed, there was a grey area, yet Wyrick continued his journey.

Since tiny houses are a way to downsize and are eco-friendly, Wyrick spent time making his tiny house unique and found ways to optimize the water consumption, as well as finding special heating and cooling devices. The tiny house is now up on Airbnb (https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/18385402)  and gets a lot of traction from travelers.

“I get younger couples or younger females that are really excited about a tiny house and want to experience it, or they just found a cheaper alternative to a hotel,” Wyrick said.

Because Wyrick works in the hospitality industry he is always looking for ways to make his tiny house better for guests. He currently has an artist working on a mural on the wall beside the tiny house, which will add to the uniqueness of the home.