I found this very interesting:

http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/category/community-design/



This page was a lot of fun to read:

http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/category/sustainable-living/


Today is Labor Day and I am celebrating by not doing any.

A developer in my area built a tea house and a reception hall, then renovated an old "to be moved" home next door into a bed and breakfast, then moved in three small cottages, complete with tin roofs and picket fences, to lease for small businesses. I guess she still had some energy left after all that because the next thing I know, she bought the small apartment complex next door to renovate...and now they are upscale luxury apartments. Last week I saw three small "tiny houses" on the property which she will convert to mini B&B's. She and her husband, a contractor, have accomplished all this in such a short time. The property values on the street are starting to rise in this area best know for storage shed complexes, mechanical shops and other industrial type businesses. She is also a chef, which explains the rumor that the tea house menu items are quite a treat...especially in a town with no tea house. I will get pics of the tiny houses as soon as they are ready to view.

Check out this site with their variety of good floor plan options. Of interest to me is the R-38 in the ceiling compared to the R-11 in a lot of the less expensive park model homes. Nice little site but needs more interior photos. Good effort in offering a smaller footprint along with high energy efficiency. Once one of these houses warms up, it will stay warm for quite a while longer than another home of the same SF. Warms up quickly and stays warm longer before the heater has to cut back on. If the home is built in an area that has any rolling blackouts, like the Houston area had day before yesterday, at least the temperature in the home won't drop so drastically. Our 30 minute blackouts would not impact an R-38 home nearly as much. People need to sacrifice the tall ceilings and marble counter tops and get smart about what it takes to insulate their home for the future...when the blackouts may last a lot longer than 30 minutes at a time, IMHO. The most efficient way to cut back on our electric bills without sacrificing comfort and conveniences is to insulate.

http://www.smallhomeoregon.net/philosophy.php

My Green Drinks meeting recently held our mixer at the Silver Sycamore, a beautiful event complex in Pasadena, TX, with five old buildings restored with reclaimed materials as well as the newly built energy efficient conference room. The tea room, the gift shop, the spa, the bride's room, the larger bed and breakfast...all beautiful tributes to a long gone era. My personal favorites...the three Tiny Texas Houses being used as individual bed and breakfast cottages. I had a great time at the Tea Room, especially since the owner Jackie Spigener is also the Chef, and the tour of the tiny houses was fantastic. I never dreamed they would be so functional and so roomy inside. When I opened the door to the bath, I was expecting something on the lines of my travel trailer bathroom only more "quaint". I got quaint for sure, with the clawfoot tub and beautiful woodwork. What I was not prepared for was how large the bath was...plenty of room for a small vanity and a decent size dressing area. My travel trailer bathroom is quite nice but I doubt if it is any larger than one you would find in a pickup camper.

I thought I could live comfortably in a 400 SF park model home but this great little floor plan is only 12 X 18 is perfect for me...with lots of shelving in the living room to hold my milk glass collection. My stemware would have to hang from a suspended shelf, as would my stainless steel pots, pans and bowls. Still, that is a great look. I doubt if I would climb the stairs to the loft every night to sleep or every day to my office. I am not a fan of heights. However, that loft could be a great place for Christmas decorations, winter blankets, winter coats, gloves, space heater and a stack of scrapbooks. Only one thing stands between me and that tiny house (besides the $90,000 or so it would take to buy one that looked that perfect)...I have to go paperless in my office. I can do it...it will just take a lot of time scanning stuff.

View these fantastic little homes at:

www.silversycamore.com as well as the manufacturer's site, www.tinytexashouses.com (this site also features the three homes that TTH made for the Silver Sycamore.

If you get a chance to go through a tiny home, 200 SF approximately...well under the 400 SF park model homes...please jump at the chance. It was completely different from what I expected and a joy to witness some great use of old lumber and building materials. The Tiny Texas Houses owner lets people go through a lot of old building materials he has and pick out things they like...then he designs the interior around what the people have chosen.

There is something so special about people like Jackie and Gary Spigener and the Tiny Texas Houses people who try to keep things as they were and not fall back on an assembly line popping out cheap imitations. I really felt like I was in the moment touring these elegant structures. Try to visit these sites when you catch a few minutes.

Here is a link to a tiny house forum...actually, one of the best. I thought the breakdown of SF for the different type houses was worth posting. I wanted a tiny house (400
SF park model home) until I saw a Texas Tiny House (a little over 200 SF), which according to this scale is a Teeny Tiny House. Now that I have "customized" it in my head to have my veggies and fruit suspended in wire baskets, my pots and pans and bowls suspended from a pot rack, and my stemware and other related items suspended from a special rack I designed myself (box and 4 chains), it is not so teeny tiny any more so I will continue to call it a tiny house. Here's the link.

http://tinyhouseblog.com/tiny-house/small-cool-house-contest/

Sometimes it is just as much about the people who live in these tiny homes as it is about the tiny home itself. Look at the sacrifices this young woman was willing to make. She built her own portable home because she could not afford land. When she moves, she has a tiny rental for another adventurous soul. I hope you visit the site and come back and post what you think of her design.

I loved her R-38 rigid foam insulation floor. The shell is fastened to the trailer and the rigid foam blocks appear to be the entire floor with no extra decking under it if I understood correctly. I like that she rummaged for the building materials, that she has a system for giving the structure strength and that she has a "convertible home"...something that may not fly down here on the Gulf Coast. Uh, maybe I said that wrong. Maybe it would fly.

She has addressed the issue of possessions, knowing that she cannot accumulate a lot of stuff because the house is so small. Wise thinking. For those of us who had stuff before we went into a small or tiny home, it is a hard decision to let go of our keepsakes and memories.

Naturally, the tiny homes were not meant for families with children or lots of keepsakes. They are for those who are happy with less SF and don't consider living in them a sacrifice. I doubt many could stay in one for very long if they didn't love the concept as well as the statement they were making to the world about the importance of a smaller footprint. For people in college who think they can save money and have more quiet study time, these are perfect solutions depending on the local codes and on the availability of safe neighborhoods.

http://www.thetinylife.com/3500-tiny-house/

http://www.allmanufacturedhomes.com/html/vintage_mobile_homes.htm

Someone did some serious work to pull all these vintage trailers together by year. I loved the ones produced during WWII. It takes a while to click on every year BUT well worth it for the Vintage "nut" who loves to look at these old trailers. A trailer is considered to be vintage if it is over 25 years old. People went nuts for these trailers back then. Today folks are buying them and restoring them...travel trailers and mobiles. Great idea if you travel or if you own some acreage. But living in a park? Not such a good idea, maybe.

I like old mobile homes. They are pretty cool.

Hi, Perky,

We have one in our park that is only seven feet wide but it is so sweet. I watched the mountain climbing episode of "The Long, Long Trailer" the other night on Utube (Desi and Lucy) and could not stop laughing. Still, it was scary. That old trailer should have gone to the Smithsonian.

Me too. I like those that date from an ancient time when they were still "mobile".

I like to see them coming and see them going . . . . and keep on going. Please don't remove that hitch anywhere close to me !

But I must say, in Real Estate, they have been good to me: trailers, tubes, tin cans, single wides, double wides, double longs, even one double high . . . . some are pretty big.

I'm laughing, Dale. "Coming and going" - good one. Now where can I find a rusty ole trailer hitch and someone with a pickup to leave it on your doorstep...anonymously. Ha, ha.

Seriously, I have seen those trailer sites where people are trying to set the world's record on the number of appliances in the front yard.


I saw an Airstream a few days ago priced at $147,000...an old restored one. I might like to breathe some of that air.

Also, on the Tiny Houses site, there was a new gypsy wagon that is just gorgeous. That one might win you over. And it is tiny so it's very mobile. Now come on...you know you want to buy one and put your real estate office in it.

I love that movie, The Long Long Trailer!!!

Did you ever see this site? It's HILARIOUS!

http://missouritrailertrash.com/

This weekend is Lucy's 100th birthday. Maybe one of the stations will run that classic movie. I'd like to see what type trailer it was. Back in those days, people flipped over those big trailers. They were very modern for the time and young couples wanted them for their first home. People still want them IF they are from that era.

Here is something that is just too cool. I may need another ten feet to the home and a sightly larger patio so I could walk around the trailer and also have a small outdoor kitchen. This is just very sweet. I would love to stay at this hotel.

http://elitechoice.org/2011/06/04/wooden...otel-in-berlin/

http://hookedonhouses.net/2011/09/07/decorating-three-tiny-houses-on-design-star/

If you are a tiny house nut like I am, you will enjoy looking at what the three Design Star challengers came up with when required to work with empty interiors. I loved them all but believe they should have considered putting a larger wet bath in the back of the little home. Also, I loved the sliding ladder that one of the Challengers added...much more functional than a fixed ladder or none at all. These were all very original ideas that will challenge even Jay, the Tumbleweed Guy. Bet he is happy his little homes were on HGTV. It's fun to watch and the tiny homes are beautiful inside. This is not the official HGTV site link but it has all the photos. Enjoy.