Small houses challenge our notions of need as well as minimu

[Steve-SKO]

An article about living in a 96sq ft house. Skoolies are bigger than that!

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2007/04/27/carollloyd.DTL

 

[the_experience03]

They sell those things prefabbed all over around here. The difference is that ours are panelled in cedar and have a big wood stove in them. The Finns might not be good for much, but atleast they gave us saunas.

That's sow-na, not saw-na for the record.

 

[Elliot Naess]

I have long been in favor of smaller houses. There is so much crying about "affordability",
but few seem to want to address the real issue. My last house in Sacramento was
1170 sq ft, and it was bigger than I needed, with lots of space wasted by a
"rabbit's warren" floor plan.

Here in Clearlake, I have a 600 sq ft trailer house, and it is enough -- just poorly laid out,
again -- long and skinny -- all corridor. My excuse is that I bought the place
for the land, cash.

I will be building my new house right here to replace the trailer shack, with my own floor plan.
Just one problem: The City requires at least 1000 sq ft for a new home.
Stay tuned to this station.

Meanwhile, the building permit is almost ready for my 864 sq ft "barn". That's what many
of us really need -- a place for our hobbies, side-line jobs and so forth. Much
cheaper to build per sq ft. Thus more realistic for a poor dude.

Not one word about Millicent in this post!

 

[the_experience03]

[quote="Elliot Naess
Not one word about Millicent in this post! [/quote]

Does that count as a word?

I agree...I'm all about the 600 square foot house with the 2 acre hobby shop. Houses are for sleeping. Workshops are for living.

 

[Elliot Naess]

Hey, I want some credit for not mentioning Kinetic Sculpture Racing in that post!

So... if I have the House/Shop ratio correct, why am I still single? Ah, yes. It's a Guy Thing!
Guys want shops. Girls want palaces. I knew there had to be some kind of difference.

The female member of our core Millicent / Kinetic team wants to shower Under The Stars.
The guys want to get the mud off.

 

[Griff-SKO]

More tiny houses here:
http://tumbleweedhouses.com/houses.htm
I had checked into these before the skoolie :idea: lit up over my head.

 

[the_experience03]

So any idea how much those things weigh? Are they something that could be attached to a frame to make a sort of house truck....er...trailer?

 

[soused moose]

Here’s a link to a site that shows Jay Shaffers Mobile Hermitage being built ….
This is his tiny house model built on a trailer frame.
The site is designed in a wacky way….to see it all you click on the various pictures to see different construction aspects which makes it a bit hard to navigate ...but its worth the trouble .This is a very nice Tiny house

http://www.resourcesforlife.com/groups/ ... /index.htm

 

[pete c-SKO]

I have long been in favor of smaller houses. There is so much crying about "affordability",
but few seem to want to address the real issue. My last house in Sacramento was
1170 sq ft, and it was bigger than I needed, with lots of space wasted by a
"rabbit's warren" floor plan.

Here in Clearlake, I have a 600 sq ft trailer house, and it is enough -- just poorly laid out,
again -- long and skinny -- all corridor. My excuse is that I bought the place
for the land, cash.

I will be building my new house right here to replace the trailer shack, with my own floor plan.
Just one problem: The City requires at least 1000 sq ft for a new home.
Stay tuned to this station.

Meanwhile, the building permit is almost ready for my 864 sq ft "barn". That's what many
of us really need -- a place for our hobbies, side-line jobs and so forth. Much
cheaper to build per sq ft. Thus more realistic for a poor dude.

Not one word about Millicent in this post!

elliot, why don't you just kill 2 birds with one stone. Build yourself a 1500 square foot house. Make about 500 sq ft of bath/kitchen/bed/living room and the rear 1000 ft a work shop errrr I mean great room. Cathedral ceiling that section of itso it will look like the inside of millicent. And paint the exterior in skoolie yellow!!!

 

[Elliot Naess]

I certainly considered that. An extra advantage would be that the whole thing could be converted
to dwelling for resale. And I may very well do that with the house. I'm actually thinking of
leaving part of the house "un-built" except for slab, steel frame and roof -- creating carport
type of covered space at the north end of the house. This will depend on sneaking it
past City Hall. But I'm going with a separate shop building first.

The overall idea is to create an old fashioned farm yard tableau. Red gambrel barn on one
side, with main door on the long wall facing towards middle of lot. Off-white house on
other side, with full length covered porch also facing the center (facing the barn).
That will create a courtyard between the house and the barn.

Third quadrant of the lot already has a garage, and the fourth quadrant gets a couple
of rows of grape vines.

But this is a ten year plan. The barn goes up this year. The house will take muuuuuch longer.

Oh, I should mention that I'm building with steel. This is wildfire country, and I routinely set
things on fire with my own sparks. All right, my tools' sparks.

I'm done babbling now.

 

[soused moose]

Someone sent me this link to a company that builds some very good looking ‘Mobile Homes’…..
http://norwesterindustries.com/home.html

If I was to think of building something semi-permanent … I’d go for a couple of these built so that they could be connected together in an L shape….

Here’s an interesting site where people use Shipping Containers to make some pretty good looking homes…
http://www.fabprefab.com/fabfiles/containerbayhome.htm

 

[Elliot Naess]

I picked up my building permit today -- for my 864 sq ft workshop. I believe the
correct uttering now is... "WOO-HOO". Hmmm... should probably add an "!".

No, I ain't starting no project thread called "Kinetic Barn; Crazy Man tries...."


Silly thing is, I had to pay the school district fee for the square footage, as if the shop
were dwelling space. The city said a "hobby shop" counts as dwelling space. That
may turn out to be... my loop hole around the 1000 sq ft minimum for the future
new house!

 

[delbertinie]

heck my house is not quite 900 square feet I want a skoolie so i can increase my squarefootage
my shop is three times as big as my house, but .......... I have no mortgage and I recently went debt free
dale

 

[Elliot Naess]

Yep... no mortgage and no debt here also. There are tradeoffs, like my rough neighborhood, but WOOHOO it's a great feeling to have no debt.

No, I don't mean to brag -- heaven knows I have been in the "debt trap". I just want to recommend that living debt free is worth almost any sacrifice to get there.

My steel barn kit is scheduled to arrive in two weeks.

 

[the_experience03]

Well if only you lived closer. We could have a bolt turning party...we'd get a barn built and some roofs raised.

 

[delbertinie]

boy howdy I went through it too I had a couple of heart attacks and had a bunch of personal debt too. took us 7 years to get out
with the medical debt house and all we paid off 324000.oo I am bragiing al little but I am damm proud.
I would love to come help too

 

[Elliot Naess]

Just to make it clear to any innocent bystander who might come stumling in here,...
We are ranting about having gotten out of debt because it is so darned important that young folks learn to be careful about taking on debt. Don't ever buy "all the house you can afford". I did. In the long run, in the real world, I couldn't.

All rightythen. Sure guys, come on over and help raise the barn!

Actually, there is plenty of cheap real estate for sale here in Clearlake -- if any of you want to move to a snow- and rust-free area. But there are tradeoffs.

 

[delbertinie]

talking about being off the subject. lol but I really think credit could be the ruin of our younger generation.
Instant gradification will get you into financial problems every time
listen from our mistakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! save a little spend a little don't borrow any

 

[Elliot Naess]

Not off topic at all!

Oh, and this... from memory...

"Sure, I'll tell you the secret of our success. We don't borrow money."
-- Henry Ford, circa 1925.

 

[Steve-SKO]

Think Ford is still not borrowing money!