In-Person & Online Carpentry Courses & Home Building Classes
Few things are more empowering than building your own home or adding personal improvements to the one you already have—our carpentry courses are here to help! With carpentry know-how, you’ll have the skills to fix things around the house and live each day surrounded by reflections of your own creativity and resourcefulness.
What’s more, we teach our students how to build tiny and small houses that are efficient, flexible, and offer the security of home ownership to folks who may have thought it was out of reach.
Browse our classes below; we offer both in-person and online carpentry courses & home construction classes.
Home construction classes & in person and online carpentry courses that give you the skills to build your dream home.
In-person Carpentry Courses near Asheville, NC
NC Timber Framing Classes
Four Month Hands-on Carpentry Program
Women’s Advanced Carpentry
Women’s Basic Carpentry Classes
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Tiny House Workshops
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Beginner Woodworking Classes for Adults
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Online Carpentry Courses & Construction Classes
Online Tiny House Academy
Living in a Tiny House
Everyone can learn how to build in our home construction classes for adults.
Our home carpentry courses bring together natural and sustainable materials, smart designs, and practical skills. Most of us didn’t grow up learning construction or carpentry, but everyone can do it. We bring years of experience to the table, offering clear, accessible guidance that leaves you feeling confident and capable. At the end of our home construction classes, you’ll be ready to tackle projects that once seemed out of reach.
If you want to learn the essentials, join us for our Woodworking Classes for Adults, which are open to all genders. You’ll become confident using both hand and power tools, and will walk away with the skills to take on basic home carpentry projects. Plus, you’ll experience it all on our beautiful outdoor campus in a woodworking camp setting.
We also teach classes specifically designed to elevate carpentry for women in the world. If you’re interested in women’s woodworking classes, keep reading below!
Women’s empowerment through home construction classes.
Let’s be real: women typically don’t grow up learning building skills. And it’s not always easy for women to jump into male-dominated projects to learn as adults. That’s why we offer two special carpentry classes just for women.
If you feel nervous wielding a hammer or drill, our introductory Women’s Basic Carpentry Class meets you where you’re at. We teach basic tool use and safety, give lots of practice time, and every student gets to build out their own small project.
For those who already have basic carpentry skills and are excited for next-level techniques, consider our Advanced Women’s Carpentry—we take a deeper dive into all things carpentry and work as a team on building a small structure such as a : wood-fired saunas or sheds. Learn how to frame a floor, walls, and roof, and even install metal roofing, to build a simple, stable structure.
Our comprehensive Tiny House Carpentry Courses have a natural twist.
Looking for a comprehensive, hands-on Tiny House Course? Throughout the year, we offer Tiny House Building Workshops that go well beyond the basics. 10 days of in-person hands-on framing and sheathing a tiny house will leave you feeling incredibly empowered, and tours of ‘real-life’ tiny houses will leave you inspired! This in-person building intensive is coupled with an incredible video library that you get access to for the rest of your life. These videos cover design, budgeting, architectural concepts, building code considerations, utilities, finish work step-by-step how-tos (including exterior siding, flooring, trim), and so much more.
Plus, if natural and sustainable building speaks to your heart, the online material has an entire section dedicated to topics like regenerative timber harvesting, milling your own lumber, the ecological impact of various building materials, and creative sourcing for up-cycled and lower footprint options, and different natural building modalities (plaster, cob, etc). This Tiny Home Workshop is hands-down one of our most popular courses year after year.
Carpentry and building are integral to sustainable systems and permaculture design.
Our passion for building grew from a broader interest in the balance, harmony, and beauty of sustainable living. We’re excited about the intersections between carpentry and permaculture, ecology and shelter. In fact, we can’t help but bring permaculture principles into our house construction workshops, and building skills into our Permaculture Design Certificate Course.
Human beings (the vast majority of us anyway) live in structures, and those structures play a major role in our day-to-day lives. How our homes fit into the wider ecosystems of our neighborhoods, farms, gardens, and communities impacts how those bigger systems work. When we have the skills to design and build structures that integrate smoothly, efficiently, and beautifully, the whole system benefits. When we build and repair our structures with our own hands using local materials, we disentangle ourselves from the extractive global economy and increase resiliency.
If you want to become a Permaculture & Gardening Apprentice here at Wild Abundance, you can learn all about sustainable systems first hand.
Our Carpentry Courses & Home Construction Classes help you create the spaces you want to inhabit.
Want a sunny kitchen? Need a bookshelf to fit just right in that tight corner? Want to get your garden tools organized without hiring someone to build your shed? All these things, and more, are possible. We are here to help you make them a reality in our beginner carpentry classes, advanced home construction classes, and immersive carpentry trainings.
Frequently Asked Questions Our Carpentry Courses
A beginner’s carpentry course should cover safety, tool use, tool care, and lots of hands-on practice guided by skilled and experienced instructors. Our Women’s Basic Carpentry Classes and Adult Beginner Woodworking Classes (open to all genders) cover all of this and more in a non-competitive and collaborative environment. We offer classes all throughout the year; come join us for a long weekend in the beautiful mountains outside of Asheville, NC.
Wild Abundance provides all large tools for our building and carpentry classes, and individuals are required to bring personal safety equipment like safety glasses and ear protection, tape measures, and a couple other small things. Some of our classes require students to bring their own impact drivers, others do not.
We sometimes have teenagers aged 14 and up join us for our carpentry classes. We find that younger teens and children can become worn out or unfocused during full days (which is distracting for the class as a whole). If you have a highly capable and focused child under the age of 14, you may be able to accompany them and take the class together. Please reach out to us with any questions at admin@wildabundance.net.
Nothing, everything, or anywhere in between!
Our Online Tiny House Academy goes into quite a bit of depth on many of the tools you’ll need to build a house, starting from the very basics of a carpenter’s pencil, utility knife, and tape measure, and going up through larger equipment like chop saws, table saws, and hammer drills. We highly highly recommend getting ahold of the tools you want to learn to use and practicing alongside the videos as you watch them. Nothing can substitute for hands-on practice developing that muscle-memory.
That said, if you’re a total newbie to tools & don’t yet own any, you may want to watch some of these videos before making purchases. They’ll break down different tool features and what all the buttons/switches/gadgets/doodads do, so you’ll have a better idea of what features are important to you when shopping.
Also, we highly recommend checking to see if there’s a Tool Library in your area. Check out a tool like you check out a book! It’s great for figuring out what to buy or if you only need a tool for a short period of time. Or check in with friends about borrowing as you get started!
If you’re going to actually tackle any sort of ‘real’ project, it’s almost certain you’ll need a pencil, tape measure, drill or driver, and some sort of power saw.
Tools covered in the Online Tiny House Academy:
- Carpenter’s Pencil
- Utility knife
- Tape measure
- Speed Square
- Chalk Line
- Plumb Bob
- Level
- Framing Square
- Hammer
- Drill
- Impact driver
- Nail Guns
- Hand Saws (both push & pull)
- Chop / Miter / Sliding-Miter Saw
- Circular / Skill Saw
- Table Saw
- Jigsaw
- Sawzall
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