Thursday, August 28, 2008

Tiny Tiny Houses

I inherited my mom's love of tiny living spaces. Which is fortunate because for the first 6 months of our marriage, Daniel and I shared a TWIN bed in a very small, Japanese, one-room apartment. Our whole bathroom was molded from a sheet of plastic that we could hose down with the shower nozzle. We prepared meals on a fold-up tv table and cooked them in our toaster oven. And we line-dried our clothes on our 1' deep by 6' wide back porch (accessible only by crawling out the window). Ah, the good life.

In the past few weeks, as we've been talking possible future living arrangements, I've researched seemingly every possible tiny living space idea---from goin' it Gilligan-style on a house boat to hippie-chic-ing it up on a rehabbed school bus.

Having two kids and living in the city limits a lot of our tiny living options. Nonetheless, here are some of my favorite tiny houses:



THE LUSBY::TUMBLEWEED HOMES
My mom thinks, her last name being Lusby, that this house is meant for her. At a whopping 117sq feet it actually sleeps 4! The company, Tumbleweed Homes, makes this and several other models--all preeeetty small. Check out photos of the interior and the other home here.



SOLO::MINI HOMES
A few steps up size-wise is our other favorite (this, and the other Mini Homes). You can see an HGTV video tour of the inside right here. And it's made with all kinds of cool green materials. The kitchen counter?--it's made of craft paper!

OOORRR...


there's the idea of repurposing some sort of space or vehicle into a living space. Can you guess what this little pad really is? Yep! You guessed it! It's.....a garbage truck. Seriously, how DID this guy do it?!


You can see more photos on the Apartment Therapy post right here. I'm still not convinced that it's not some sort of photoshop trick.

So, I've been dreaming up tiny living space rehab projects as of late. For example, as we ALL KNOW, nothing says "I'm hip, I'm mobile, I'm eco-chic" like an old-school Airstream Travel Trailer. The "Silver Bullet" as those of us in the RV world call it. So I've got my eye on this Craigslist beauty right here.


Sure, you see a 30' hunk of metal with a bit of a rust problem and no wheels to speak of. I see the home of my next dinner party.... Coffee? or Tea? : )

1 comment:

Cascade said...

This post totally speaks to me! One of my fave quilters in CA, new mom as of last month, recently built a tiny house (I think based on the Tumbleweed design if that is the guy out of Occidental, CA) and lives in it, on a flatbed trailer, on an organic farm. And my dad is a travelling ag economist living out of an airstream! Recently my relative big house has been making me think that smaller might mean happier...:) Thanks for the fun pix!