This 100 year old structure survived a 4 mile move to our farm and is now undergoing an addition—”250 to 450 square feet with minimum foot print addition”—and renovation including a loft. Year three of the project is seeing it get closer to completion…
Steven Houck
“Old-timers remember Malvina Reynolds’s satiric song, ‘Little Boxes.’ Penned in 1962, the song heralded the coming suburban blight, where poorly constructed houses “were made of ticky-tacky and they all looked the same.”
How times change. Today, scarce resources and staggering home costs have created a new definition of the “little box” – the Tiny House. And Mendocino College is at the forefront of the movement.
This summer, the college’s Sustainable Technology program is offering a summer course on Construction Fundamentals and Green Building. The course, taught by Mendocino County native and PhD. Jen Riddell will attempt to build a Tiny House in 15 days…
Another interesting fact, according to Riddell, is that currently there are no codes that govern the construction of houses on wheels. “Right now, they fall into the category of an RV, so no permits are currently necessary,” she explains. That doesn’t mean that students will be learning sub-standard construction methods, however. “Our Residential Electric class will be doing all the electrical installation,” Walker explains. “It’s building as you go. It’s very nice not having to go to the county if you decide to make a design change mid-stream,” he continues.…”
From Ukiah Daily News, click here.
From Dee Williams today (what a nice video!):
“Hey, I hope you are doing well and enjoying this roll toward summer!
Hopefully, I’ll see you at the tiny house fair in Vermont… and if not, sometime soon.
Last summer I sent out an email to try to encourage folks to contribute to Kim Langston’s rebuild of her little house. As you might remember, her house was destroyed in a fire last year. The cool thing is that this summer, she’s going to rebuild! This is it!…”
Got to my hotel around 8AM Sunday, no room available, so I walked over to the Le Pain Quotidien bakery/ cafe (wonderful chain with farm tables, country kitchen ambience), had a Belgian waffle and latte, then took off on foot for the Museum of Natural History.
25 years of trail running has given me certain mobility skills negotiating busy streets and crowded sidewalks. I think of it as ballet. I jaywalk at every opportunity (which most pedestrians do not, surprisingly, do here in Manhattan). If I have to rush to get across an intersection and have my backpack on, I do a sort of shuffling run.
The city is in a good mood. This organism that is Manhattan definitely has its moods, depending on weather, world affairs, planetary influence, and other intangibles. Check out this lovely little park on the Lower East Side; birds were singing loudly in the trees:
Houston Hall, 200 block on West Houston
“Homeless” tiny home city reality:
All his gear in cart at right. The guy was inside the darker blue tarp.
Could hear him talking. Privacy.
What ingenuity!
“In December, Designboom showed the full scale model of a housing unit by Chinese designers Studio Liu Lubin that was ‘…based on the minimum space people need for basic indoor movement, such as sitting, laying and standing.’ Now the first unit has been placed in a Beijing park.…”
Click here.
The Maker Faire was just great. I’d never think that something so nerd-oriented would appeal to me, but there was soul in addition to all the robots and tech wizardry. We had a booth in the “Homegrown Village” section and sold more books than we have at any event ever. The booth, designed by Lew Lewandowski and manned by Lew and my son Evan, was mobbed the entire 2 days, most of the interest being in our Tiny Homes book.
My talks on “The Half-Acre Homestead” went well; maybe 125 kindred spirits in the audience each day.
“In Luke Clark Tyler’s last New York City apartment, his shoes had some unusual companions in the closet. The shoes sat, in neat pairs, on a rack, directly below his dishes and right next to the microwave. A few inches away, a hip-high refrigerator lived beneath his desk. And the apartment was so narrow that Mr. Tyler could sit on a sofa pushed against one wall with his feet propped up on the opposite wall.
This was because Mr. Tyler’s entire home was only 78 square feet. And while his “Midtown mansion,” as he called it, was a far cry from the lavish town homes and shimmering penthouses that have spawned a thousand lustful television shows, a video tour posted on YouTube of Mr. Tyler’s little room has been viewed nearly 1.7 million times over the past year and a half. A similar video, about a 90-square-foot apartment on the Upper West Side, has been viewed even more times.…”
“When Greg Cantori and his wife, Renee, are ready to retire, they will not only have to pack up their respective offices, but also downsize their home, in a big way.
The Cantoris of Pasadena, Md., plan to retire in a 238-square-foot house on wheels they purchased two years ago for $19,000.
The couple lives with one of their two grown daughters in a 1,400-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home on the same lot where their future retirement home waits on wheels. ‘We don’t know how many years it will be but we’re getting there,’ said Cantori, the president of Maryland Nonprofits.
…”
Click here.
Photo: Kenneth Lam/MCT/Landov
Name: Malissa
Location: Snohomish, WA Square Feet: 170
Division:Teeny-Tiny
What I Love About My Small Home: The most powerful feeling that I have about my small home will always be the love I feel while nestled inside it. It’s cozy and comfortable, a great space to do my creative art, while also serving as my perfect retreat. I love everything about it!
Biggest Challenge of Living in a Small Space with two people and two cats: finding your own place. My house is only 170 square feet, and in a space that small, it’s important that you feel you can go to your own place and do your own thing. It’s amazing that we are able to work on our own projects while in the company of the other. My husband will be working on his photography on the computer while I’m up in the loft diving into a good book. The house was designed for us, and that’s what makes it work.
Click here.
“Now here’s a tiny cabin with a twist that I wanted to show you.
It’s best built on stilts so you can make the best of use of the fold out porch area.
The tiny home is named The Forrester’s Cabin. It was built in 1996 and has a 24′x12′ footprint.
Once it’s closed up it looks just like a shed. But once the porch platforms are dropped it reveals the beautiful home inside.
It has a double bed alcove inside with a kitchen, bathroom, and more.…”
By Alex, May 8, 2013, on Tiny House Talk here.
Roderick James Architects