This Is Vashon: A Tiny House That Goes Very Big on Family Living, With Sleeping for 8

Tiny houses aren't new, having first started gaining traction in the early 2000s when awareness of environmental issues prompted a call for housing solutions with a minimized carbon footprint. In recent years, tiny houses have become very popular – if not actually trendy – because they also favor a more mobile lifestyle while addressing the ongoing financial and housing crisis.

Tiny houses don't represent a perfect solution that simultaneously addresses all modern ills, and whoever claims that is obviously lying, with intent or not. Tiny living entails a series of compromises that can be genuine deal-breakers, and that list paradoxically includes the very thing they're most famous for: the compact footprint.

Because they come with severe spatial limitations, tiny houses can be considered ideal only for singles or couples or, at most, for families with one or two young kids. The recent proliferation of these mobile homes has changed that, though: tiny houses can also work for extended families.

Call it large-scale downsizing, if you will. It's possible through park model tinies, which sacrifice a degree of mobility for extra living space and could easily compete with brick-and-mortar homes in terms of finishes, features, and comfort. A good example is the Vashon Edition unit unveiled this month by Vancouver, Canada-based builder Mint Tiny House Company.

The Vashon Edition is based on the existing L6 Ruby Loft Edition model, so it's 34 feet (10.3 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) wide and sits on a custom three-axle trailer. It boasts no less than three different bedrooms, with the ability to sleep an extra two people in the living room and an expandable couch.

The total living area is 386 square feet (35.8 square meters), which arguably isn't that impressive if you compare it to a brick-and-mortar family home. The builder promises it lives much bigger than that thanks to expansive glazing, a smart layout, and the use of full-size appliances. The video tour below is meant as proof of that.

But this isn't a sell. Even if you're not on the market for a tiny house and you're perfectly happy with your non-mobile, non-downsized home, the Vashon can serve as an example of how downsizing has adapted to suit the demands of an ever-larger market.

This is still downsizing but with a twist due to the increased sleeping capacity and an abundance of features that want to rival standard living solutions. The promised bonus is movability (but only with special permits since the trailer is oversize), turnkey availability, and comparative affordability.

The Vashon puts the main bedroom on the ground floor and offers an oversize kitchen with all the basics – and then some. The kitchen is perhaps the first indicator that this home is meant for family living, with an L-shaped large unit that holds everything from the four-burner gas stove, the oven, and the microwave to the fridge and freezer and the residential dishwasher and heaps of storage space.

Also here is a dining table, though it's definitely not large enough to hold the entire 8-person party who'd be sleeping in there. The kitchen space spills into the living room, which integrates stairs to the big loft, and leads to the main bedroom, located on the ground floor.

Ingenious solutions like a proper wardrobe hiding behind a barn door in the bedroom, storage integrated into the lidded stairs, or floating shelves where you least expect them, emphasize the family living goal of the home.

The bigger loft sits right over the main bedroom, while the other is at the other end of the trailer, over the bathroom. Both feature in-built storage and ample glazing to make up for the lack of standing height and even offer a sense of privacy thanks to half-walls that isolate them from the rest of the house.

The bathroom is large, mostly because it wouldn't have made sense to have a smaller unit in a home that could sleep as many as eight people. It features a laundry station with a stacked washer and dryer, a glass-encased shower, a standard flushing toilet, and a sink on a vanity with even more storage.

The Vashon comes with in-wall heat registers throughout, a dual mini-split, and insulation that renders it suitable for all-season use. The builder stresses that it's beautiful and functional in equal measure "without sacrificing comfort or aesthetics." It is also offered as almost live-in ready: the unit shown in the video tour below is for sale, with an asking of CAD177,130/US$130,000.

Park model tiny houses go big on space and functionality, but they also come with higher price tags, to play the role of Captain Obvious. Still, in territories where financing is possible, they're more affordable than renting – or so this builder says.