Wee Irish Cottage New Build
Mike Irish just contacted me with an update. He says, “Last year I bought a big house to remodel and it seems to take lots of money and time. I think I like the wee houses better.
The good new is I have another Wee Irish Cottage almost finished. It is 8ft X 26ft with 8ft X 20ft insulated living space with loft, and a covered 8ft X 6ft trek deck porch, insulated windows and door. The outside is covered with cedar bevel siding and the inside is T&G pine with bamboo flooring.
There is a small kitchen with a sitting area and under counter fridge, 36 in. shower stall and composting toilet. Downstairs there is a hide-a-bed if you don’t want to use the loft. I am advertising the Irish Wee House on Portland Craigslist for $12,500.
Two Bathroom/Laundry Ideas within the Footprint of a Small Home
Guest Post by Deb Durham
Deb Durham here again. Yep, the tall broad with a penchant for small spaces and little automobiles.
When you can’t afford or don’t want to expand a home’s footprint, here are 2 remodel ideas for transforming existing space to best advantage. This is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath, 1,200 sq. ft. home I renovated outside of Santa Fe, NM. I call it Asian Adobe.
The Tiny Cottages of Faubourg Marigny
The French Quarter of New Orleans usually gets most of the attention for its architecture, stylish balconies and lively street life, but a small neighborhood just east of the Quarter has a selection of some of the best Creole and Classic Revival cottages in New Orleans. In addition, many of them are tiny.
My husband and I recently went to New Orleans to visit with family and we rented a small apartment in the Fauborg Marigny area of the city. It’s only a few blocks from the French Quarter, but it feels like a different city altogether. The vibe is more historical and bohemian and less touristy and Bourbon Street-y. The main road is Frenchman, which is called the “local’s Bourbon Street”, and is known for its great restaurants, coffee shops and jazz clubs. Because the neighborhood is on higher ground, it escaped the worst of the Katrina flooding. Continue Reading »
Brookside Cottage
by Christopher Stoney
When I consider all of the hurdles and hassles associated with building a tiny house in this modern time of high land prices and restrictive zoning, I find myself extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to buy a small cottage. My cottage has remained essentially unchanged since the 1940s when smaller houses were the norm.
I have always had an idea of just what kind of house I wanted to live in. For years I had been keeping an eye on the market for the perfect house. Finally, in 2006, I saw an ad in a real estate flyer: ‘Brookside cottage with claw foot tub.’ This I had to check out, even though I was in a perfectly comfortable living situation at the time. When I visited the house, I felt a sense of recognition. It was as if I were returning to a home I had built for myself in a previous lifetime. In a flurry of negotiations I got the price down to what I could afford, and with the help and advice of a Tarot reader, I overcame some legal hurdles and I became a homeowner.
Although I think it would be closer to the truth to say that this house owns me. Even as I have chosen this house to be my home, I feel that in some sense I have been chosen by this house, and by the woodland spirits that live here, to be its caretaker.
Since then, I have been redecorating/remodeling the house one room at a time. The claw foot tub is still there, although the rest of the bathroom has been completely redone.
Little House on the Prairie
Guest Post by Jerry Hambley
In 2004, my wife and I decided to purchase 20 acres in rural Kansas about 45 minutes away from our suburban home in Overland Park, Kansas. With a daughter close to graduating from high school, we thought the best way to transition to the country might be to build a small cottage that would serve as my home office. I sat down and made a list of requirements for the office and decided it might be wise to add a small kitchenette and second floor sleeping loft just in case we wanted to spend the weekends at the farm.
Exterior of the cottage after roofing
After a good deal of research, I settled on a set of plans called the “Weekend Warrior” by Robinson Residential. Using those plans as a guide, I expanded the footprint of the cottage by three feet and added a full second floor sleeping loft. Continue Reading »
Mad Woman in the Forest
Take a look at that window. That glorious window was the catalyst for the design of Laurie Halse Anderson’s cottage in the forest. Laurie is the author of several young adult books and historical thrillers and she writes in a small cottage in the forest. She expressed her need for a “room of her own in which to write fiction”, and her video from 2009 recounts the conception and building of her writing cottage. It was built over the course of a year by her carpenter husband and several of his friends. Laurie and her family wanted it to be off-grid, made with reclaimed materials and easy on the environment.
That amazing window (which Laurie called “a magic window”) was found lying up against a barn and turned out to be a church window from the 1800s. Custom glass was made for each round section of the window. She and her husband also perused the salvage yard and found old growth pine boards to use for the floor and chimney pots for the roof. Soybean based foam insulation was sprayed into the walls and the roof is Vermont slate. The house is powered by wind and solar. Continue Reading »
