Good bed design for truck camper conversion

At about 7:45.  Good design:  (1) uses cupboard doors as supports, not legs; (2) can access storage from front or from top.




--GG

Tiny house like my grandpa or like me

This first one seems like something my late paternal grandfather would've built:  partly the cleverness; partly the exposed wood; and partly how it reminds me of the upstairs bedrooms at his house (which he built himself, with his dad and his father in law).




This second one is like something I would do -- especially with the scavenged and re-purposed things (I like to come up with creative uses for things).  But I would've just used a ladder, not a climbing wall:  seems like a health and safety issue, esp. if you wake up in the middle of the night and really have to use the toilet!!!

--GG

Expressive or instrumental shed

Haven't posted a blog entry in a while:  just been busy (or preoccupied), I guess.


A few weeks ago I came up with an idea for a small shack:  just a proof-of-concept; something to make with the piles of salvaged lumber I have stashed around the back yard.  Or, more correctly:  I've made a pathetic little shelter out of a single-swing swingset by tying a tarp over it (so, an A-frame setup), and have that next to a small fire pit, which I sometimes sit next to on a wooden bench that I made and watch the flames.

This small shack is an extension of the little A-frame shelter:  wide enough across the back for a small bunk; deep enough front-to-back to make it unlikely for the fire pit (in the front right of the shelter) to throw sparks onto the bunk.  Has enough room for a small table/desk; a small standing-height workbench (mostly for firewood preparation -- but maybe also for food prep); room to store firewood; and a few shelves for misc. storage.

Thinking about having a second bunk across the back, just for the flexibility of housing a second person.  Otherwise, would just be used for storage.

It's more "expressive" than "instrumental" -- i.e. it fulfills something emotional or creative, rather than having a practical need.  Because of that, it'll (pragmatically) be years before I get around to it.  Although I might up the timeline by making it serve a second, "practical" purpose.

My current design has it with open windows and no door, just a doorway.  I suppose if I add shutters (or windows) and a door, and a padlock, it can be storage for the gardening tools (shovels, rakes, etc.):  currently they don't have a good place to go.

Or, I can make a "trench forge" in it (maybe as part of the fire pit):  the dirt floor would house the pit, and putting it all under a roof would help to keep the surrounding area just dirt, rather than grass.

I discovered the concept of trench forges a few months ago while laid up with a bad back:  I was lying on the sofa all day, just browsing YouTube.

This is my preferred approach (this guy also does sword-making, and viking reenactments):


This is a similar approach:



I think the idea of a shed or shack is a response to dim memories of my paternal grandfather's fishing shack, near the side of the river he used to fish at.  I went there once or twice (I think he actually had two different shacks), but my brother would remember better than I would, as he went there a lot more -- and for a longer period, and at an older age:  he actually likes fishing.

I did a bit of a YouTube search for fishing shacks, but just ended up with ice fishing shacks (similar, but not quite).  I also searched for tiny cabins -- but all were way too large (I think my grandpa's fishing shack was about an adult's arm width across:   door, with an embedded bench on each side of the door.  There was a small wood-burning stove, so you could sit inside during cold weather and watch your fishing rod through a window to see if it bobbed, in response to getting a bite.

This one is pretty close in size to my grandpa's fishing shack-- though not in layout:


Likewise, this one -- although I think my grandpa's shack would be a little narrower.  But:  I was a little kid -- so sizes would've seemed different to me compared to now.


--GG

Third floor men's room

Yeah -- this one probably seems a little random...


One of my peculiar hobbies is happening across small spaces (e.g. elevators, bathrooms in restaurants), and thinking, "Hm! You could totally remodel this into a perfectly usable micro-studio apartment..."

I found this one earlier this week, in the third floor of a government building where I'm helping out on a special project for a week or two:  it's the men's restroom.




As indicated by the paper towel that I put on the floor, each tile is 30cm by 30cm. I'll transfer the measurements to graph paper, and do some sketching.


 --GG

Clever bike camper

I thought that this was well-designed and well-engineered.



--GG

Nice gate

Saw this gate yesterday.  Liked it enough that I took a picture.  In fact, liked it enough that I'm posting the picture on my blog.

Kinda "art deco".  I like it.

Oh:  wait.  Said that.


--GG

Guy who builds tiny houses from salvage

Thanks to Salvage Construction Lady for sending me this YouTube video.

The guy's a little wordy.  But the houses are nice.




I did notice that he kept comparing "modern" building materials as full of plastics and toxic off-gasses, versus "old" building materials that are "natural".  However, he forgot about lead paint...


I can totally see myself building something like these in my back yard, as a home office or guest house.  After I retire, of course.  ;)


--GG

Another tiny apartment

Another tiny, clever apartment.



Pretty neat.  Although:  hardly any food in the 'fridge or the cupboard; he doesn't have enough room to keep really anything relating to a hobby or collection:  LPs, books, DVDs...


(Thanks to Clever Building Woman for this video.)


--GG

Tiny house with good design

I liked the design of this tiny house.



Also this one:  green green green green green!



--GG

Tiny home for a tall student

I like this one.  Good design.


Although:  Even though I enjoy these "tiny homes", I notice that that anyone who live in them doesn't have a space-intensive hobby -- no model-building, no sculpting, no woodworking, music recording...

Instead, they sit around and read, or they write poetry, or watch movies on their laptop...


--GG

Tiny houses

A friend sent me this link to a blog about tiny houses, sheds, and such.

The blog has videos, as well, such as this one:


I can totally see myself building something like that.


Good stuff! 


--GG

Tiny living quarters

As I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before, for the last year or two I've become interested in teeny tiny living quarters.  It's probably a reaction to our cluttered house -- which one of these days we'll actually tidy up and pare back on our belongings.

Almost every time I go into a public restroom, I look around and visualize what a person would have to do to revamp it into a dorm room or a studio apartment.  A few months ago I was struck by the idea of turning my office building's elevator into sleeping quarters.  And then I sketched it out in my notebook.

When I retire -- or maybe even before then -- I can see myself building prototypes of "proofs of concept" versions of these things in our backyard.

We could use them as guest houses, or as additional home offices.


Here's somewhat of an example:


Although, the things I build -- at least, my designs thus far -- tend to be single-level.


--GG

If I had more time

Every once in a while, I take stock of what I would do with myself if I came into a great deal of money and could just do what I wanted with my time.

Not travel -- at least, not recreationally (ugh!). I gots too much stuff to do around the house -- which I would enjoy more, and get more satisfaction from, than bopping about the globe.


TOP TIER:
-Woodworking
-Writing and recording songs
-Learning to play various musical instruments

TIER 2:
-Martial arts (continue Krav Maga; maybe pick up another on side on a rotating basis, to round things out [Judo, Western boxing; BJJ])
-Weightlifting, body conditioning -- lifting things, leaping fences, increasing my grip strength
-Building musical instruments

TIER 3:
-Gardening
-Building micro-homes (tiny living quarters)
-Writing, shooting and editing film shorts and music videos

TIER 4:
-Robotics (programming)
-Electronics (guitar effects pedals; various contraptions)
-Computers (hardware; programming)
-Wilderness survival techniques

TIER 5:
-Costuming/sewing
-Steampunk
-Cooking
-Write children's picture books (someone else would illustrate)


Plenty to keep me busy, once I retire.


--GG

Tiny apartments

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm browsing YouTube for videos of tiny houses and tiny apartments.  Yesterday's post was on tiny houses; today it's on tiny apartments.

Not surprisingly, many of them were from New York City.


A small apartment in Japan.  I get the impression that this is actually a pretty standard-sized apartment.




European open-plan apartment.  I like the narrow spiral stairway to get to it.  It's actually pretty spacious:  I could probably fit some recording gear, including a drum kit, up there.  My woodworking gear would go out on the balcony -- although I would have to install a better roof out there, or else I could only work on things during nice weather.




Secret cave apartment.  I like the secret nature of this, and it actually seems sufficiently larger. It's bigger than my first apartment!




Half-bedroom. This is a little bit of a "cheat", as it doesn't include the rest of the apartment -- so we don't get a sense of the rest of the apartment (e.g. cooking, bathroom).  It's clever how she uses the end of the bed as her seat for typing at her computer, and the lower shelf as her "desk". There's also a little entry area (closet items?) -- but it's not displayed clearly.

On the other hand, she could've had a loft, with a narrower bed, and then have all the rest of the floor space for a desk, a love seat, and etc.  But then it wouldn't have been as quirky.




Tiny Manhattan apartment. Not much in the way of cooking facilities.  Also I just realized that just about everyone in these "tiny apartments" is single. I appreciate her approach of whittling down her possessions to just what she really **loves**:  that way you're only surrounded by wonderful, meaningful things.




An even smaller apartment.  This is just about as small as you can get away with.  The sofa converts to a bed.  His desk is also his "kitchen".  A single, narrow closet.  It's a little bit of a "cheat", in that the bathroom is shared (out in the hall).  Also, he could've added a sleeping loft and really increased his useable space.




Top of the building.   Decent sized outdoors area, and he manages to have different "zones" in his apartment.  The kitchen is a useable size.





Seattle basement apartment.  This one is possibly my favorite, and the most like what **I** would come up with.  He's an engineer -- so presumably he could afford a bigger place if he wanted it.  But he enjoys the design challenge of fitting a lot into a small space -- seeing how much he can maximize.

I'd add a safety bar to the bed, so you don't roll out in the middle of the night.  And I personally wouldn't have the bicycles.  Also I'd have less steel and more brown-toned wood -- even though that would mean sacrificing the thin-ness of the material.

This would make **really** neat-o student accomodation.




--GG

Very small shacks and houses

For the last month or so -- off and on -- I've been dong YouTube searches for "tiny apartments", "micro apartments", and the like.  This probably indicates that I'm feeling frustrated with the clutter in our lives.

Here's a few that I liked, and wanted to share (and also gather into one place, for future reference).

These are the ones that are free-standing:  houses, shacks, and a houseboat.  I'll do the apartments in tomorrow's entry.


A caboose.  Pretty darned roomy, actually.  You could actually raise a small family in here, if you had to.



Living on a narrowboat on the canals in London.  Seems peaceful.  A little cluttered, though: hard to have any hobbies that need a desk, table, or workbench.




Small rectangular house on wheels.  I liked the full-sized kitchen on this one.  But it seems like your feet would always be cramped when using the desk:  they should've made it a little bit deeper.  The guy showing us around seems personable, too.




Small wooden house on a trailer.  This one is similar to the one above, but I like the design even better -- not sure why.  Maybe it's the closet and the stairs.

Note that the house itself doesn't really get shown until around 1:50.




Small two-story house in the woods.  I can actually see myself living in this one.  It has a fair amount of room -- simple but functional.  Maybe as a summer cottage.  I can also see Guitar Cousin and his wife building it, then retiring to it.




Converted toolshed.  By the same guy as above.  (But where does he cook?)  It doesn't get much simpler than this.





...except for this.  Tiny shack in the woods.  Note that you don't actually see the shack until about 4:10.




On one level, I appreciate the "tiny living" idea.  On the other hand, it would only work for people that do everything on their computer -- or at least have small hobbies.  If you're a video game programmer, or do jewelry making or model airplane building as a hobby, you can probably get by with a little 3 foot by 3 foot working zone.  But if you want to record a drum kit or do woodworking -- well, you probably need a bit more space.

Unless, of course, you rent or own additional space, off-site.


--GG

Differing visions

On Friday, during her lunch break, a co-worker was looking at a real estate listing for a house she was thinking of buying as an investment property:  buy it, remodel it, sell it as a profit.


From memory, this is what it looked like:

Single story; open carport; laundry through the kitchen.  Note that in a lot of older (1960s and earlier) houses around here, the toilet room is separate to the sink-shower-bathtub room.


Her vision for remodelling was something like this:

Knock out the wall between the kitchen and laundry room, to make a larger kitchen; put a deck off the back of the kitchen; enclose the carport for additional living space; and put a carport in front of the old carport -- I forgot to draw that.


But -- that's not at all what **I** saw when I looked at it.  My first thought was what a single person who was waaaay into woodworking would do:

Enclose the carport -- for extra workshop space.  Make the former carport area your handtool space (smaller then the old living room), and link it to the laundry room (for the shop sink).  Use the old living room as your "power tool" room -- bandsaw, table saw, etc.  Put a door on the kitchen, to keep the sawdust out.  Eat your meals in the kitchen.  Use the larger of the "bedrooms" for your wood storage.  Use another bedroom as your "living room" -- you should be able to fit a t.v., sofa, and comfy chair in there.  And that's all you need.


My second vision is what a recording musician would want.  Again, one who lives alone:

The former carport is enclosed and merged with the former living room to create a "tracking room" where the instruments are recorded; probably have the drum kit in the center, guitar amps around the periphery of the room.  A few sofas and such in the room, so it can double as a living room or lounge: the components of a living room actually have fairly good acoustical properties.  The laundry room gets a double-thickness window and becomes an isolation booth for recording vocals or solo instruments -- although it would still retain its "laundry" functionality.  Meals can be eaten at the kitchen table, and the kitchen can serve as a breakroom and lounge.  A door is added to the kitchen, to isolate it from the tracking room (e.g. refrigerator hum, people talking while in the kitchen).  A door is also added to the hallway, to help acoustically isolate the other rooms from the tracking room.  The larger bedroom has a double-thickness window added (to allow visual contact with the performers), and becomes the control booth, with the mixing board, signal processing gear, playback and etc.  The middle bedroom is still a bedroom -- because this is someone's house.  And the top corner bedroom becomes a guest bedroom with four bunks, in case the band that's being recorded is from out of town.


Different eyes, different visions.  :)


--GG

Tall skinny apartment

On Monday of this week, during my lunchtime walk (I work downtown), I happened across a blopped-on section to a string of three-story office buildings and restaurants.  I peered in through the dusty first-floor windows and saw that there was a car parked in there, and there was storage (piled up old furniture) at the nose of the car. Also that there were fairly high ceilings.

I took some measurements of the exterior of the building -- using the small tape measure that I always have in my pocket (doesn't everyone?) -- and found that this appendage to the main building probably had an interior of 2.8m by 7.8m (I'll let you convert it to feet...).

I also noticed that, based on the windows, there were two floors of living space after the parking level.  So, windows on the long side, and the ends, but just wall on the other long side.


Based on all this, on the way home (on the bus) I sketched out a reasonably detailed "What if I Lived There" floorplan, with the first floor with the car, a stairway going up, and some storage and a chinup bar and weight stack under the stairs.

The second floor was the (very small!) kitchen and kitchen table, and sitting area (with a t.v. and built-in bookcase).  The stairs going to the top floor emerged in the small woodworking room.  A hallway passed the (very small) bathroom on the right and storage cupboards (above the stairs from the below level) on the left, and emerged into the bedroom/music room.  I managed to cram a single bed, small closet, and built in desk in there -- with room for a keyboard stand and pair of amps as well.  Guitars and basses would be stored under the bed.


The next day, I revised this floor plan a bit, using white-out.


On Wednesday, I totally re-thought my layout.  The first floor -- with the single-car parking space -- now had a very efficient woodshop in the area at the front of the car, which is under the stairs leading up.  This includes room for a woodworking lathe, a modest amount of lumber storage, and a rolling ''archive-style'' shelves.

The main floor is essentially the same as the previous version, although the kitchen is better thought-out and therefore roomier.

The top floor is more open, in that instead of two rooms at either end of the floor I now have a unified open space.  Except for the bathroom, in the corner of the floor nearest to the stairway opening, there is very little "hallway".

In the previous version I'd intentionally sequestered the woodworking from the music gear/bedroom; but because the current version has the woodworking downstairs, I've made the end of this floor a larger music room/bedroom.  The drums are up on a waist-high riser, with storage underneath.  The front of the drum riser is recessed, with a clothes bar (i.e. my closet).  The bed is a Murphy bed (i.e. folds into the wall when not in use).  I now have room for two four-drawer filing cabinets, next to the drum riser.  And I have an additional stairway, up to the roof.

The roof has a small rooftop garden (mostly fruits and veggies), a storage shed for the gardening supplies and additional lumber (but not too much, as it would be a pain to carry it down three flights of stairs), and a small carport-like structure that shields my punching bag and multi-gym from the rain.


I think my floorplan would actually work -- and I enjoyed figuring it out.

I think I would've made a decent architect.  Not the outside of the building, so much -- but I like working out floorplans.


--GG

Old buildings

I don't like old buildings enough to be an architect.  But I like old buildings enough to like old buildings.

I discovered this building today, across the street from the training center where I'm taking an ''Advanced Excel'' class.

I feel sorry for it.  The soot stains (I presume) above the top-story windows suggests a fire.  The entire bottom front is boarded up.  So, I'm guessing that that at some point there was a fire, which made it unsuitable for use, without major repairs.  But because (I'm guessing) it's a ''historical'' building, it can't just be knocked down.

So, there it sits.


I wish I had some government-issued authority to explore the interior of any building I wished.  That would be neat-o.


One of these days I should find out how to get building permits (or some-such) from the building.  If I can't explore buildings, at least maybe I could look at the floor plans.


--GG

Small houses

This series (available on YouTube) looks interesting.

This one is about a houseboat with enough room for band practice (!!!).




And this tiny row-house is pretty nifty, as well.




--GG

Parallel life

When I travel on my own, I often get day-dreamy and philosophical.

These photos are snapshots of the hotel room I hung around in from about 6pm one evening until noon the next day.

It's not a whole lot: a bed; a lamp and a reading chair; a desk and desk chair; a t.v.; a microwave and mini-fridge; a dresser, a closet; and a sink and (not pictured) a bathroom.

18 ft x 12 ft (yeah, I measured).

It was large enough that I didn't feel claustrophobic at all. And my mind wandered to the notion that, if I was a single dude, I could live a pretty comfortable life life right there. I'd come home from work, microwave some food, sit in the chair and read. Have a desktop or laptop computer at the desk: check e-mail, surf the net a bit.

Most of my hobbies would be severely curtailed: I'd have a hard time doing woodworking (although! If I shoved the bed into one corner, I could probably fit a small workbench in there...). And my audio recording would be limited to things I could jack directly into the computer: no acoustic drums! Either an e-drum kit, or just program the beats directly.

**Very** hard to find a place for a multi-gym. I'd have to get a gym membership.

And I'd have a lot more un-occupied time in the evening: sign up for martial arts classes again.

Oh -- and I'd have room for **far** fewer "things". I'd have to be **much** choosier about which books I kept, how many tools to keep, and far less keeping things "just in case".

And I'd probably be a bit lonely, now and again (but I highly doubt I'd get a pet). So I'd probably socialize more with co-workers, to compensate.

Yep -- a **very** different life from my current one. Not a horrible life -- just more peaceful than the one I have. And lots of people live ones very similar to that.


BUT -- my regular life is **very** good, as well. And I'm not interested in trading it.


Just the mind-wanderings I get when I travel alone.


--GG