Tim’s Tiny Home Project Notes 2

This is the second part of a continuing series.  Part one here.

Construction Issues

Many of the current tiny homes are built on trailers to avoid odious issues with building codes as well as to aid in their being more easily transported and relocated. While understandable, this imposes some serious limitations on the weight, size and height of the overall structure, as well as the type of building materials and construction details involved in the planning thereof. The smallest tiny homes are under a hundred square feet and the largest I’d consider ‘tiny’ would measure in at under twenty feet per side. Anything more than ten or twelve feet wide is going to be near impossible to relocate at any reasonable cost. Any way you slice it, portable or fixed location, a home with less of a footprint than four hundred square feet is definitely tiny by any normative American standard.

Here’s an example of an anchored tiny home built more along the lines of what I’d envision as ideal.  The only thing missing from this scene that would make it more appealing to me are solar panels on the roof.

With space constraint at the forefront of design considerations, everything must be built into where it’s always going to be. Most of the cabinets and closets are best built tailor-made to hold the specific items necessary to support the cleaning and maintenance of the occupant and precious little space is left over for new acquisitions, let alone ‘junk’ to accumulate!  This necessarily imposes a lifestyle conducive to minimalism and utilitarianism.  I find both of these “isms” extremely attractive in what portends to be await me in my future as a lonely widower with a hobo-honoring, hippie-loving liberal lifestyle.  My blessings to those who try to live as a couple (or worse,a FAMILY) inside the confines of a tiny home!  I’ve seen enough families living in converted school buses on YouTube to know better than to recommend this type of lifestyle to anyone who isn’t single. It would even be a struggle for most couples who are past that stage in their relationship where all their free time is spent humping each other like horny bonobos.

Acclimation

I am getting used to living in a small corner of my European upstairs apartment to prepare myself for the vast reduction in living space of your average tiny home. I think I’ll be able to stave off cabin fever and claustrophobia though the incorporation of prodigious amounts of windows, loft roofing and perhaps a skylight.

Design Philosophy

While there are those who look towards tiny home living as a ‘bridge’ to a larger place, or even as a temporary and hastily constructed shelter in the midst of hard times, my goal is to re-create a modern, upscale living environment on a smaller and more ecologically sustainable scale that could potentially carry me through to the end of my days, should they be few or should they be many.  Tim’s Tiny Home project will attempt to approximate a ‘normal’ living environment in an otherwise obnoxiously undersized amount of square footage without losing sight of the quality of life and living within that space.  It’s my goal to share my thoughts and progress in regard to this process aid and inspire others.  If everything doesn’t go all oblong in the end, it might even act as a beacon of Tiny Home design.  A design hopefully built with a bit of more a universal commercial appeal than your random shopping cart based, tiny home conversion.

Click here for part three of this continuing series.

Enjoy.