Allan Smith sips his coffee sitting on a picnic table outside his new home.
Since moving into the 12 Neighbours community, he's finding his stride.
Now, even learning to build picnic tables when he had no prior experience in woodworking.
"I didn't at all, and there's a saw down there and Marcel showed me a lot of different things on it so I'm kind of learning as I go along,” Smith said.
The 12 Neighbours community which now has seven tiny homes began six months ago, and already has eight people living under their roofs.
Founder Marcel LeBrun's vision for the community is coming together quickly.
"I didn't think we'd start it quite this early, it just sort of happened when we were building a picnic table for the community and I said to the guys ‘do you want to start building these?’” Lebrun said.
“And put them for sale, and over the weekend we threw up a store on our website and now they're available for orders.”
They offer four varieties of picnic tables at different price points.
Customers can order the wooden tables from an online site.
"We call it our mega double wide,” Lebrun said. “It's basically a two by eight, hefty construction eight foot long table. One of our first customers called it his harvest table, and we sell them in either pressure treated wood or regular pine, and we can stain it.”
For Smith, who has been living in the 12 Neighbours community since Feb. 1, building gives him a sense of purpose.
"It's become something that I really love to do, I'm at peace doing it,” Smith said.
“I love being around Marcel, he's a good influence, and the people I'm building them with, there's two other people and they're great, it's fun,” he said.
12 Neighbours plans to expand to 90 tiny homes on Fredericton's north side over three years.
