Over the course of three days, I put together this to scale model of the most up-to-date design for my tiny house. It was a lot of fun to make and really helped me gain perspective on the full scope of the house. All of the designs I’ve made over the last 8 months have been drawn on grid paper, and always from a top view, but making this 3D model helped me to recognize some detail work and issues I haven’t had the chance to up to this point. This model isn’t perfect; I still have some corrections and alterations to make here and there, but I’m excited to take you on a brief tour of my current design for my forthcoming tiny home.
On our first stop of this tour, we see an overhead shot of my tiny living room. To the left, the french doors open up to front, and my closet is just to the right. The two benches to the right of that will function in a few different way. Besides the “L” shape seen here, they can also be put together as a guest bed, or put across from each other with a murphy table in between that can hang flat against the wall or drop down to a dining table/desk. I will point out here that a huge part of designing a tiny house is figuring out creative ways to use small spaces in big ways. That means furniture almost always needs to be multifunctional. I have a lot of other ideas and plans for this that I will save for another day. Finally, note my shallow storage loft above. I am a musician, so this is where I will store my instruments, and I will add a window above that loft as well.
Here we have the kitchen, in which I want to point out the bookcase right away. I have often said the only two things you can buy with money that have true, inherent value are books and art. Therefore, it is vital to me that I have plenty of space for my books and the art I will commission from my friends who paint. However, I think I will forgo this particular bookcase for more countertop space and make ample shelving for books around and above the living room window in the previous picture. Besides that, I will do all of my cabinetry through IKEA. Expect more information later on my kitchen, I think I am more excited for this space than any other in the house. Now let’s move through the pocket door at the back of this picture and into the bathroom.
Not much to see here at this point, as the bathroom will exist for two primary purposes: the composting toilet and shower, although I do have some fun storage and space-saving ideas I will share at a later time. I will mention here that one of the common concerns I hear about tiny houses is the toilet. Some people go for the flushing toilet, but the much more environmentally friendly and, I would argue, less gross (when done properly) option is the composting toilet. I will write more on this in the future, but in the meantime, I highly suggest you read the Humanure Handbook if you have more questions about composting waste.
The final space is the sleeping loft. This sits over the kitchen and bathroom and will have two dormer windows on each side. These will provide a crossbreeze, which is important since heat tends to rise and settle in high up spaces like these.
Well that does it for my first tiny house tour, but before I go I have a couple other items of business I wanted to mention:
Yesterday I went to the Eugene Home Show at the Lane Events Center and got the chance to see a few tiny houses! I didn’t get to take as many pictures as I had hoped, and the houses were packed out from the start, so I also didn’t get to spread out much to get a feel for the space, but they were definitely the cutest and most well made tiny houses I’ve seen to date. Here are a few pictures:
And finally, I want to run this by you. I’ve said that I want this blog to be used for writing about my tiny house adventure, theology and pop culture. I love the idea of these three distinct topics intersecting, but I am also aware that lots of the people reading for updates on my tiny house probably don’t care much about my thoughts on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, liberation theology, Kendrick Lamar’s latest album, atonement theory, Adventure Time, etc…. So I’m considering making two separate blogs: one for my tiny house, and one for pop culture and theology. I would appreciate your thoughts and feedback, thank you for reading!
-Sam
Tiny Home Sweet Home 