Home-Free!

I’m not sure how I managed to miss This Tiny House, a blog about everybody’s favorite topic, but it found its way across my radar this morning and I’ve been browsing through it since.  They find an awful lot of neat stuff!

One of my favorite posts so far is one about a man in Texas who is recycling all sorts of things into homes for the working poor.   The part that really grabbed me was this video of him speaking with a reporter:

I love the idea of people having a hands-on part in the construction of their own home, and of home ownership being made affordable to more people who are willing to work for it.  I like what this guy’s doing. 

Two other tiny house things I’m loving today:

This post over at RowdyKittens about a workshop given by Dee Williams and KT Anderson, and Into the Hermitage, a blog which makes me think I should slow down and notice the details a little more often.

So that’s the roundup of my netly tiny housing for today.  As for plans for my own, I’m playing around with some ideas on graph paper and trying to get a handle on what I really need to have, what I can leave out, and what I need to adjust a little to work better for me.  One thing that falls into that last category is the question of how to get into the sleeping loft.

Most of the tiny houses on trailers I’ve seen online have used sleeping lofts to make the best possible use of space.  That makes a ton o’ sense, and it seems likely that I’ll make the same choice.  If I do, though, I’d like to try to find a way to fit in some stairs.  A ladder makes the best sense for conserving space, but I have some balance and coordination issues (especially when I wake up) that are a concern.  Also, my dog usually sleeps by my bed, and we’d both prefer not to change that.  He can climb up and down some ladders, but he’s getting older and I’m not sure how long that will be easy for him.

I could make the loft space into storage and put my sleeping space downstairs, but so far I haven’t worked out a floorplan for that that’s totally satisfactory.  I’ll keep tinkering with it.  My dad, ze builder/designer extraordinaire, says a small set of stairs with built-in storage should be no problem – he’s done them in some of his previous tiny cottage designs – so both options are evenly in consideration.   I just have to think how to fit everything together.

I want to get at least an idea of how the inside will be laid out before I get serious about how the shell will look/be shaped.  My dad did a quick sketch during my visit of a timberframe style building with the “front” of the house on the long side of the trailer, the peak of the roof running perpendicular to the “front,” and I’ve been playing around with some variations on that.  I’m still not quite sold on the roof running in that direction, though.  I do like it visually from the outside, and wonder whether it might be more aerodynamic for towing.  The thing I’m not sure about is whether it makes the space inside the sleeping loft very usable/comfortable.

Anyway, I’m still at the thinking-tinkering stage.  If you’ve got ideas to share, I’d love to hear them!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 1:43 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.