The kids are very young, an infant girl and a three year old boy. In the long term (and long term is their hope and plan) the kids will need separate bedrooms. For me, for the long term, I need to be sure that this would be a viable house for a future occupant and I believe that one small (100 sf) and two tiny (70 sf) bedrooms will have a market niche. Now the challenge will be to see if I can squeeze that in to 600 sf.
@dragonmom - Yes, it will be custom, but it won’t be expensive. I’ve been down this road before and it’s all about design and implementation. I believe I can build it for about $120/ sf, or $72,000 total.
My kids spent most of elementary school sharing a 6’x10’ bedroom. They were very happy when we moved and they got their own bedrooms that were about 10’x11’. I’d never design a master bedroom that was less than 10’x12’ and that is tight. You’ll have 3’ on either side of a queen sized bed for nightstand/small bureaus and 3’ between the foot of the bed and the wall. That’s not really room for another bureau but will allow you to open a closet door.
If anyone can tell me how to post a link to a PDF I’d be happy to share the floor plan of the 600 sf 3 bedroom house I had designed. It doesn’t qualify as “tiny” but it’s certainly small.
@notrichenough is correct. Viewing it in my avatar would be useless. If anyone has a flikr account or any other way to to publish it I’d be happy to send it to them for them to put up.
While living in a tiny home isn’t for me, I welcome the trend of living in smaller spaces and using fewer resources. In the traditional the-bigger-the-better America, I think that’s a healthy change.
When designing small rooms, it is critical to place furniture in the plan. So much depends on the location of doors, windows, closets, traffic flow, etc. Actually that should always be done for larger rooms as well, but they can be a little more forgiving.
I currently have a 720sf 2-car garage w/apartment awaiting a building permit. Its not a huge downsize, about half, 2B/2B/office space, 2 laundry rooms, with full finished basement to a 1B/1B stackable laundry in a large bathroom w/ walk-in tiled rainshower, as far removed as I could design it lol. Of course, I"ll have the garage for storage as well. Its just me full time but I’ll buy a nice pull-out sofa to use if I have company.
I might turn the beds in the kids’ bedrooms to free up some space to get a dresser in there. The “master”… it’s pretty tight. Not sure there’s too many options… maybe get rid of the door to the bathroom from the bedroom? That would give some wall space for furniture.
It looks to me as if a small dresser would fit under the window in the kids’ rooms. I was thinking the same thing about the MBR bathroom door: one could fit quite a lot of storage in there.
I was also thinking that a farmhouse-style table–that is, with a top you can work on–might be better than an island, because then everyone could sit together for meals, plus other uses. But of course you’d lose the storage underneath it.
I like the tiny houses made from containers and would love a fully plumbed one on some family land. Reality is I can’t take being in the country for long and my husband is claustrophobic. It would have to be one level. No ladders to lofts. I love the air streams and the idea of “glamping”.
Hoping that’s a stackable washer/dryer in the bathroom. Maybe if you remove the master bedroom door you can use the space for stacking washer/dryer and get more storage in the bathroom
Looking at the whole ‘tiny house” topic differently, I think it’s helpful to look at this house and imagine it without the two small bedrooms, leaving a 400 sf one bedroom house. To me that house is as small as I can imagine as a functional dwelling, but still exceeds most people’s idea of “tiny”.
As they said in the 60’s, different strokes for different folks.
