VALDOSTA STATE MAGAZINE 71 What set Free Range Tiny Homes apart from the competition right from the start were the luxury finishes its team members used — a stark contrast to the minimalist, utilitarian designs that most tiny houses employed at the time. “In the beginning all the tiny houses were very cut and dry,” Ringer said. “They were very mountain cabin-ish. Because of our experience in remodeling, we brought higher end housing into our work, using things like granite and wood countertops and shiplap. We had a different house, so when we showed up to these shows, our houses were like a real house. You walked into our houses, and it looked like your house. “Now everyone is doing the same type of thing, and some people are doing crazy things that I’d never even thought about, which is awesome. But in the Southeast, we were kind of one of the first ones to really push the envelope, which was a lot of fun.” Free Range Tiny Homes had the chance to push the envelope even further at the beginning of 2017 when the United Tiny House Association asked Ringer to build a one-of-a-kind tiny firehouse. Ringer’s job was to build a firehouse-themed tiny house that could be taken to various festivals around the country and used to promote local fire departments, which would also receive part of the proceeds from the festivals. Free Range Tiny Homes decided to build the house at cost as a way of supporting the United Tiny House Association’s charity work and crafted a three-month timeline for the project. HGTV caught wind of the project and asked to film the construction for its show “Tiny House, Big Living.” The network’s involvement meant condensing the work into one month. “It was wild,” Ringer said of the filming experience. “It was a lot of fun, but it was very stressful. It was a lot of late nights.” HGTV filmed Ringer and his team eight separate times during that month, meaning Ringer had eight strict deadlines to meet in terms of construction progress. “It was a blast, and I wouldn’t take back any of it, but it was a lot of work,” he said. Free Range Tiny Homes was challenged with doing things that had never been included in a tiny house before. The end result was a tiny house with a working fire hydrant, a hot red garage door, a sliding pole to get out of the loft, and an array of amenities crafted from firehouse memorabilia. Theepisode,titled“TravelingTinyFirehouse,” wasfilmedinearly2017andairedthatAugust.It alsoairedonHGTV’ssisternetwork,DIYNetwork. Thetinyfirehousehasalsogainedwidespread attentionfromnationalmediaoutlets. Throughout 2016 and 2017, Free Range Tiny Homes built around five homes a year. The The tiny firehouse