Small House Building Blog » tiny houses

The Decorated Shed

Anne — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:28:24 +0000

Here’s some really nicely designed buildings that could be used for a variety of purposes, from garden shed to art studio to office space to regular full-time living space. The Decorated Shed, out of the UK, has some very unique designs with clean lines and lots of windows.

After watching a couple of their videos it’s evident how much skill and craftsmanship they put into these structures.

Palladio’s Escape Cottage

Anne — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 19:29:34 +0000

Is this cute, or what? One of my readers let me know about this interesting little pre-fab cabin designed by Ricky Newcomer. He calls it Palladio’s Escape Cottage. It’s 412 square feet within a very architecturally interesting design. They offer both a planning e-book if you want to try it yourself, and the build-it-for-you option. The only downside I see here is that they say it requires a crane truck to assemble the building parts on-site. That probably wouldn’t be a big deal if you live close to a building supply store where you can rent one, but if you want to put this structure way out in the woods you may have a tough time getting a crane in.

Cudos on a very unique design! I love it!

Very Small Houses– For Kids

Anne — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 02:24:11 +0000

A Wood Manor playhouse.

Thought you’d be interested in a peak at some serious playhouses for kids! This would make a pretty cool Christmas/holiday present!! Kits, pre-builts, and plans are all available at Wood Manor Playhouses for Kids.

Another Take on the Pallet House

Anne — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:41:11 +0000

I recently ran across this article from Building.co.uk, Meet the House Made of Pallets. The article isn’t too strong on content on how to actually build a house like this, but for those with some building experience just looking at the pictures can give you a wealth of information.

My main question about using pallets for building is the integrity of the “joints”. How do you securely attach one pallet to the next to make a strong enough wall? I would think just screwing them together wouldn’t do; bolting them together would be a lot better, at least. Maybe the builder/architect is relying on a plywood or OSB skin to carry most of the stress.

It’s another way to look at building a serviceable little house for the short term if you have an ample supply of quality pallets. Actually, pallets might be a great way to build a little shed and experiment with this building method before actually putting time and money into a “house”. Even a temporary pallet house made of free pallets is going to require money for certain elements of the build (like wiring, plumbing, insulation, house wrap, etc.)

Take a look and see what you think! What’s your opinion of using pallets for building?

Tiny Free House Plans

Anne — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 19:01:00 +0000

Michael Janzen has been putting in a lot of time working on his tiny free house plans. His design is intended to be put on a trailer, much like a Tumbleweed home, but you could build it on a permanent or semi-permanent foundation. The roof lines are very innovative with a standard gable design on the ends and a shed style roof in the middle. This allows for some great window space for some nice solar gain, although with the amount of windows in the plan as it is would probably lead to too much heating for the smallness of space inside. I’d probably go with half that window area for the south side and add a generous overhang to shade the windows in the middle of the day.

Michael Janzen's tiny free solar house plans.

And he did it all with the free version of Google Sketchup! There is a paid professional version, but Mike says the free version is just fine for the purposes of rendering drawings for a simple house like this.