13 April 2009

Mini House Dreams

When I am not knitting or fooling around with some other craft, I am dreaming about mini houses. What is a mini house? Well besides being an obsession of mine, it is a house that is less than 250 square feet or so.

I'm not sure how this all started. Maybe it was my childhood ambition to become an interior designer who exclusively worked with children's play houses. My "big" idea back then was to paint yellow stripes on the floor that would serve as sleeping bag parking spots. We can say that my tastes have changed a bit since then.

About a year ago, I stumbled across the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company website. The ingenious and teeny houses really inspired me to design my own. Since I am slow as molasses, I finally got around to designing my own trial sized house today during my lunch break.


This is my idea of drawing up architectural plans - in Excel, using shapes and text boxes. Low-tech . . . yup. My ideal tiny house would be about 15' x 20'. I decided to scale it down to the infinitesimal 5' x 8' for one reason. If you check out the Tumbleweed site, you'll notice that a lot of the smallest houses are built on trailers instead of foundations. Well, my Dad has a 5' x 8' trailer and he seems interested in helping me build this. So this nutty dream of living a fun-size life MIGHT actually happen (one day . . . maybe).

The house is basically a small room with a walled off toilet/shower area, a small kitchen and a living area. You climb a rope ladder to access the sleeping loft above. This drawing is missing a lot (like its bottom third and . . . um . . . windows), but it is a start.

I envision that the mini house would be permanently parked on a beautiful piece of land with views of the NC mountains. While getting super lost on the way to Caroline's baby shower, I spotted potential "parking spots" in Stokes County. It is close to home, but far enough away for a little vacation house.

I would have just enough room in the mini house for a few knitting projects, books, my laptop, food and (maybe) my dog, Iris. Any visitors would have to sleep in tents or curled up in the living area.

So is this totally nuts?

3 comments:

Elizabeth said...

That's a beautiful idea! I've been in a house like that - it's absolutely enough for one person. And lofts are great for sleeping. Do it!!

Anonymous said...

What a great Idea. Go for it. Darrell

Caroline Armijo said...

I have had the same dream, have a small space in Stokes County, for a very long time. Maybe we can park next to each other. I know some people who have a lot of land.