Welcome to Tilly’s Rest. 

We would love to extend a warm welcome to you and thank you for choosing to stay at our little piece of paradise we’ve named “Tilly’s Rest”. Tilly being the name chosen for our tiny home and “Rest”, being the journey it took to get her here, practically and figuratively speaking. 

My wife and I had looked for a while, knowing that we wanted a little piece of land to use as a get away and somewhere we could make memories with friends and family. 

After an extensive search we stumbled on this little diamond in the rough. At first my wife, who loved the place but couldn’t see my vision was some what hesitant, took a little bit of selling, but the picture I painted to her was of a little cabin, just enough to be nested in the trees. Just the essentials, but done in comfort and style. To bring the wild life close and try leave as small as footprint as possible, to enjoy and soak in the beautiful surroundings and created memories with family and friends. 

After purchasing the block we started the process of looking into building our small cabin nestled in the scrub but we’re alarmed an disheartened to find that because of the strict rules put in place after the devastating bushfires, we would be expected to cut down almost all the trees on our block and possibly some of the neighbours, to creating an 8 meter fire zone around the house. Something I wasn’t really prepared to do. It  would totally defeat the purpose of why we bought the place. 

It was time to think outside the box, and that’s when we stumbled over the idea of building a tiny home. A house on wheels, totally self sustainable. That can be just big enough to have all the essentials we would need to enjoy the place but be mobile if needed, so we could leave a minimal footprint on the land, and hopefully bring the wildlife back to share with us. 

After researching the rules and looking at and even staying in many models, we decided on 2 Tiny homes placed side by side, to create something comfortable enough to share with a few people, with all the luxuries you need but still integrating with the land, and if ever needed in a pending fire emergency, could be easily enough disconnected and moved, given enough time. 

Being a carpenter with over 20 years building experience, I decided to build them myself. Following the guidelines set and researched extensively, we came up this what your standing in today.  

It took just over 3 months of part time building on top of running my carpentry business and whist building and documenting our process on social media, we were inundated with interest and enquiries, so we decided what the heck,” let’s just start another company and see how we go!”  And we created Aspire Tiny Homes. Trying to fill a hole in the growing niece market in the southern suburbs of Adelaide and its beautiful coastal and wine regions which, while still in it infancy is really starting to take off! 

Once completed in our workshop back in Old Noarlunga, the homes made their way across the Bass Straight to their final resting place, hence the name Tilly’s Rest. 

We have tried hard through the whole process to conserve the land and put back in, and that why we’ve gone with the option of a composting toilet. That as time goes on we will use to get the green house running, with herbs and vegetables for our guests to share.
We’ve also got grey water systems that filter and re use the water though the irrigation that runs through the native trees and scrub in the back of the block. We’ve also removed some of the original steel fence sheets and planted grass in the back to try encourage the wallabies and wildlife to find refuge and share the block with us, trying to make what was a dream and vision into a reality…and we’re now proud to be able to share that with you.

– Chris