Pumice Tiny House Is Probably the Most Surprising and Awesome Tiny Ever

Pumice Tiny House is a tiny house (duh) located in the Ohakune mountain ski town in New Zealand. It is technically a tiny house, since it’s built on top of a double-axle trailer, but it is not made to move around. Ever. In this sense, it’s more of an offshoot of the tiny house movement or a good example of upcycling a disused truck trailer, but what makes Pumice all the more special is Pumice itself.

It is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful, creative, and surprising tinies around. It also gets points for being environmentally-friendly, since it’s made with straw and lime plaster, and uses mostly repurposed materials for the custom furniture inside. It has to be seen to be believed, so Bryce Langston of the popular Living Big in a Tiny House channel did that just recently. The resulting video is available in full at the bottom of the page, and could be the best way to spend 17 minutes of your time if you’re into tiny house living. Then again, if you’re ever in the area, you can check it out for yourself.

Pumice is named this way because of its unique shape, which makes it resemble a rock. The name also refers to the unique material used for the construction, which is structural hay, covered in lime, which gives it sturdiness, breathability and the unique shape. Kind of like the volcanic rock of the same name.

There are no corners or edges to Pumice, in the most literal sense. Built by two old friends, Evan and Kevin (that’s Evan in the video) as a ski retreat, it started out as a truck trailer and became a labor of love. Lime, Kevin explains, is very durable, resistant to all kinds of weather, yet breathable. Like hay, it is also cheap and environmentally-friendly.

Kevin jokingly describes it as an “oversize pizza oven,” and he’s not wrong. But it’s a very beautiful pizza oven, what with its swooping roof, its shallow, rainwater-fed koi pond at the entrance, the exterior barbecue area on the covered patio, and the outside fireplace made solely of large blocks of volcanic rock. Pumice is 33 feet by 18 feet (10 meters x 5.5 meters), and offers a living space of 484 square feet (45 square meters). Its walls and ceiling are made of 20-inch (51-cm) thick bales of straw, which creates the impression of a cave dwelling.

Once you cross the “moat,” you enter directly into the living room. Because of the curved structure, all furniture and fixtures are custom-made for the place, from the kitchen block to the master bed and the shower. Wherever possible, Kevin used lime, including for the kitchen block and the sink. He also upcycled whatever he could, like large sheets of metal that he used as wardrobe face or the bathroom door. Elsewhere, he integrated salvaged materials and even driftwood, which he kept in its original shape.

The tiny offers proper living amenities: an open-space kitchen and the living, a bathroom with a bench, flushing toilet and sink with vanity, and a bedroom with a fireplace. There’s underfloor heating in the bathroom, including in the shower bench, which helps with the lime’s insulating properties to keep the place toasty on cold winter nights. Instead of an AC, Pumice again relies on lime, and natural ventilation through the windows placed right at the water edge.

Pumice isn’t impressive because it’s able to pack all these things in a relatively compact floorspace; after all, we’ve seen countless smaller tinies do the same. It is what tinies are best known for. Pumice is impressive because of the attention and love that went into every little detail, from the handmade cabinet handles, to the breakfast bar, and the TV stand that you can wheel out of sight into the headboard, so that it doesn’t disrupt the flow of the space.

As expected, all this love and effort came at a high cost, though not necessarily financially, compared to other tinies. Evan estimates he and his team and family spent a combined 5,000 working hours to build it, and a total of $218,000, including the price of the land it sits on. We’re assuming that’s New Zealand dollars, which takes the total cost to US$134,000 at the current exchange rate.