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A 240-square-foot cabin on wheels just redefined what “tiny” luxury actually means.
The Alpha Tiny Home has been turning heads on the dealership circuit for a reason: it doesn’t feel like a compromise. Built by Nashville craftsman David Latimer through his company New Frontier Design, the Alpha packs a full kitchen, a hotel-grade bathroom, and a king-size sleeping loft into a footprint most people would call a large bedroom. It’s become the reference point other builders get measured against when the conversation turns to high-end tiny homes.
- The Alpha measures roughly 240 square feet and is finished in charred Shou Sugi Ban cedar siding with mechanical opening systems built into the exterior.
- A full-glass garage door drops down into a fold-out patio deck, erasing the wall between the living room and the outdoors entirely.
- Custom orders start around $185,000 and climb toward $225,000 or more depending on finish selections, putting the Alpha at the top end of the turnkey tiny-home market.
The Design Behind the Alpha
David Latimer didn’t set out to build a smaller version of a normal house — he built something that reads more like a boutique cabin than a trailer. The charred cedar cladding, a nod to the traditional Japanese Shou Sugi Ban technique, gives the exterior a blackened, weatherproof finish that ages well and needs almost no maintenance. Paired with the mechanical opening features worked into the shell, the home feels engineered rather than assembled.
That engineering shows up most obviously at the front of the house, where a full glass garage door lifts to connect the living area directly to a fold-down deck. There’s no threshold, no step, no separation — just one continuous space that can be indoors or outdoors depending on the weather. It’s the kind of feature more commonly seen in modern architecture-firm builds than anything towed behind a pickup truck, and it’s become the Alpha’s calling card.
Living Large Inside a Small Footprint
Latimer’s team treats every surface inside the Alpha as a piece of furniture doing double duty. The kitchen sits on a raised platform and comes fully equipped, but the real trick is underneath the floor: a dining table and bench set built for eight people slides completely out from a hidden compartment when it’s needed and disappears when it’s not.
Upstairs, the sleeping loft holds a full king-size bed — a rarity in a home this size — reached by a custom rolling or sliding ladder rather than the fixed steps most tiny homes rely on. The bathroom breaks convention just as hard, fitting a full-size Jacuzzi tub, a separate shower, and dual vanity sinks into a space that in most tiny homes would hold a single narrow stall.
A hidden eight-person table slides out from under the floor of a 240-square-foot house that also fits a Jacuzzi tub.
Total Cost of Ownership
None of this comes cheap. As of early 2020, a custom-ordered Alpha started around $185,000 and could run past $225,000 depending on the finish package a buyer selects — materials, appliances, and custom millwork all move the number. That price tag places the Alpha well above the DIY tiny-home builds that dominate the genre and closer to a small luxury cabin, which is exactly the market New Frontier Design has built its reputation on.
For buyers weighing that investment against other compact-living options, it’s worth stacking the Alpha up against builds like the container-house alternatives gaining traction elsewhere in the market, or against fully custom projects such as a dream home built from a kit, where owners trade some of the Alpha’s finish level for a lower price point.
New Frontier Design keeps rolling Alpha units out to dealership tours and showcase events, and each one that goes out the door tends to carry its own custom twist on Latimer’s original layout — different wood tones, different appliance packages, but always that same glass garage door and hidden dining table underneath the floor.
INSIDE a $10,995,000 HOLLYWOOD HILLS Modern Home with the Views of the Entire City!
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