Conceptualizing the Tiny House

     When we started talking about building a tiny house, it was just for fun. Once it became very serious, we started to ask ourselves the essential questions.

     Would we do it on wheels, or on a foundation?

     The benefit of wheels is that we would avoid zoning. That's a lot of money being saved, and that means debt free. We eventually settled on a trailer, wheels. Then it was time for more questions.

     How big could we build it? How big did we need it to be? How big did we want? Could we fit?

     We did just come from a boat, so we knew we could fit. There would be no downsizing, actually there would be more space. Being that the average size of trailers for tiny homes is about 8'x24'. We only need a 8'x24', but we want something like a 8'x40'. So we decided on 8'x30', it would be more than we need, and just enough of what we want.

     That is of course keeping in mind that we would have storage sheds for our hobbies, and most of our time would be spent outside. So there would be very little limiting of items. As for the things we would keep in the house, there would be very few but very important items. Sort of like the families in this article here which really breaks down some barriers between cultures, and necessities.

     [( http://flavorwire.com/205437/photos-from-around-the-world-of-families-and-their-possessions/1 ) this is the link to the article where those photos came from]

     Since we settled on the trailer it was time to design the layout. The most feasible option available would be a loft design. The kitchen, bathroom, and entertainment area would all be downstairs. The bedroom would be in the loft area, and the roof would be more obtuse to provide ample headroom. When we first started looking at floor plans for the trailer it wasn't hard for us to come up with some layouts. After all, our boat was essentially a catwalk with kitchen, breakfast nook, bathroom, and bedroom adjoined to it. We drew up several different floor plans and explored the idea of all of them.

     Here is a few:

      This one above was the first, where we explored the idea of using a 40' trailer. Which ended up being a lot of unused space. There's no loft area drawn in on this one.

     This one is 30' and closer to our final floor plan, again no loft.

     This is our finalized floorplan,with the loft drawn in, and the furniture/rooms set up the way they will be.

     So once we had a floor plan laid out, it was time to try it on. We used masking tape, a rock, and a tape measure to see what it would be like.

     This photo is looking through what would be the front door. The first square on the left would be the sofa, the second square that is on the right would be the dining room table. The L shaped square in the back would be the kitchen counter. Through the little walkway between the top right edge and the wall would be the door to the bathroom.