Saturday, September 13, 2008

House plans, again...still...(hope you're not bored yet because I'm just getting more excited...)

Tiny house on the brain---getting so close to groundbreaking.

The lumber we bought at the mill where my mom works...they sold it. Yeah, so we have to wait for more to be cut. And Keith goes on a 1-wk catering gig next week, I think, over in Hamilton, Mont. Probably looking at starting the stem walls when he gets back.

But we're getting more specific on specifics. [General Specific.]

I'm glad Keith didn't let me buy the double concrete sink in Moscow because WE DON'T HAVE ROOM.

Here's a new sketchy sketch of the house plans as of this minute, subject to change at all times. Fairly accurate, square footage-wise. See: no room for 5' sink.

Click on it for a LARGER SIZE, yo.
I have several favorite parts of the house, even though it only exists in my brain. Keith's signed on to this sketch.
Highlights
1) The toilet. This is going to be hard for some people to accept (hi Mom, Dad), but I want to have a composting toilet and I am 98% sure I can convince Keith. The Humanure Handbook basically lays it all out. So our toilet will be a (tiled?) box over a 5 gal bucket that gets dumped in a compost pile. With probably sawdust as a cover material. Yep. That's the simplest composting toilet there is. And this guy Jenkins who wrote the book has been using this system for 20+ years. THE TOILET is in the corner of the shower room, just a tile box in the corner. And looking straight ahead there's a 2-way mirror so you can look out in the goat field/up the hill as sit there. Calming, you know? (With a half wall on the left, with sliding doors for bucket storage. Shelves backed with glass above the half wall for storage on the kitchen side.)
2) The reading area. An L-shaped bookcase, 12" deep on the bottom shelf, 6" deep up the wall, around the short, wide window in that corner. Also, on the more western wall there's the front door, a set of French doors with the one closes to the corner being stationary (except in summer, or whatever). A lot of light, I hope.
3) Trap door under the sink! I forgot to include it on the sketch. We're going to box in a space under the subfloor (when we pour the stem walls) to have a trap door root-cellar-type thing. Since we won't have a fridge we can keep things that need to kept cool down there.
4) Slat headboard. Taking up most of the wall that the bed is on. We don't have a lot of room over on the bed end. Small block storage on either side, probably 1'x1'. Also, storage under the bed, of course. Anyway, headboard: horizontal wood slats that can hold adjustable cantilevered shelves. Also could be great space to hang art--since we don't have many other whole walls. Also, I like this idea for a night table. Maybe I can get Keith to build me a small one. 5) Fold-down table. We want the floor to be as open as possible since we're working with such a small space. So we decided a fold-down table would be the most efficient. I saw this space with chairs hanging on the wall on dwell (guilty pleasure, though I can't bring myself to buy the print version) and thought, with only 2 people, we could get away with that. So the table folds up against the wall and the chairs hang on it. We can't quite decide what is an acceptable material for a table. Also, I really liked the kitchen shelves in the same space on dwell.
6) Hanging windows. A wall of small, old, chipped sash windows hanging from the roof joist, between the bed and the fold-down table.

The guys have been doing a GREAT job on revamping the stove. They completely disassembled it, made some new parts, ground all the years of soot and grease off of it, washed it, painted the base,and now it's almost reassembled. I hope it works as good as it looks!

Goats love cantaloupe!


Tomorrow: LUMBERJACK DAYS! (in conjunction with the Clearwater County fair)
Birling, springboard chop, axe throwing, horizontal chop, speed climbing, jack and jill bucking?! Tell me that doesn't sound like fun.

5 comments:

evangeline said...

this is SOOOOOOOOOO exciting!!!

Anonymous said...

Yo, April, what square footage be that plan? I'm a little confused as what's going on around the T. Is the toilet outside or inside?

I'd like to try to live in a 12x16' cough shack cough for a while. Being under 200sq ft, a permit isn't be required. I'd have closet/storage space along on the 12' side. The only furniture would be a twin futon and a desk. A 5gal crapper and a solar shower outside would be the amenities. I'd probably get sick of it after a while, but it'd be a good experiment.

April said...

the outside measurement of the house is 12'x20' and the inside is 11'x19' --so over 200 sq. ft. of living space.

The toilet is inside, but there are two half-walls separating the shower/toilet room from the rest of the house (glass on top of the half-walls).

Your experiment sounds good---have you checked out this book? Invaluable resource for ideas about planning a small space.

Anonymous said...

April, I may have looked at that book. Not sure. I've looked at a couple small homes books that featured very expensive and very fancy small homes which is not what I want. I really do want a shack so that I can "start over." I'm tired of living in too large of a house, but am not sure what the right size is for my lifestyle. By starting with something minimal and adding on only when I've reached a pain point I can determine what it is that I really want and need.

Your half wall idea will be good to bring in a lot of light. Methinks you're going to need more clothing storage.

April said...

The houses in that book are all fairly simple and look inexpensive to make. Anyway it's a good way to start some brainstorming about how you want your space to look. We started out with a plan to build one of the houses in that book, but we've been modifying it so much you'd never recognize it. Still, it gave us a lot of good ideas.

I agree, a $20,000 "tiny house" seems ridiculous. But we're finding out just how much is does cost, doing it with the bare minimum of materials (while still keeping a certain amount of efficiency) and it's adding up. Then again, you can go as simple as these guys, depending on where you live.