Over the past two days of Tiny House Design-Build we've been busy on the build site with safety and tool orientation, insulating the wooden floor box of our trailer, and framing our first wall. In the studio we've explored design considerations ranging from siting, climate, and massing to codes, regulations, and what to look for (and ask for) when ordering a tiny house trailer.
Less Is More 2016 Wrap Up
It was great fun Kicking Off 2016 with Small Home Design by teaching Less Is More at Yestermorrow. Monday and Tuesday we went on field trips to small houses in the Mad River Valley and Montpelier. We got to see five little houses this year, ranging in size from about 120 square feet to 1700 square feet. All five of these houses were owner-built, which was neat because we had the opportunity to talk to the homeowners about their challenges and successes. I had been to each of these small homes before, but I learn something new each time I visit, so that was great!
On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday Dave and I presented slideshows to share building basics and design tricks for small spaces. We asked the students what else they wanted to learn and ended up doing a crash course in building science, a presentation on toilet options, considerations for construction and finish materials, and sharing net zero energy information. We also introduced design exercises and drafting techniques.
One of our activities was designing a tiny house together by taping it out on the floor. I was impressed by how many different considerations came up as the students deliberated the merits of putting the door in one location or another and selecting a roof style. They were excellent at weighing their options and thinking things through. It was fun to see students design exercises morph into their individual projects as their understanding and design skills evolved. (Photos forthcoming.)
On Thursday the students worked away the day designing their own small home projects, ranging in scale from a 200 SF tiny house on wheels to a 1800 ski house that can sleep 12. They presented their work on Friday to the class and our jurors, Paul Hanke and Kathy Meyer.
Other projects included:
- a small home with a movement studio for dance and aikido
- a little house inspired by medieval timber frame construction
- a Texan live-work space with a double roof for shading
- a small lakehouse to retire to
- a cabin in the woods with an impressive roof
- a round house with pop-outs
- a multi-generational home with a turret suite
It was fun to see students design exercises morph into their individual projects as their understanding and design skills evolved. And, of course, it was great to be back in Vermont and at Yestermorrow. This was my eleventh trip out there and it looks like I may have good reason to go back again this summer to help out with a Build Blitz. One of the students in the class is excited to build a tiny house on wheels and several other students are eager to help out. Stay tuned for more about that possibility!
Meanwhile, I’m scheming my next tiny house design workshop, which will be in Asheville, NC right after the Tiny House Conference. If you’re noodling through your tiny house design, mark your calendar for April 3-8th and Contact Me to be added to the list for more information!
Kicking Off 2016 with Small Home Design
Happy New Year!
They say that what you do on the first day of the year is indicative of what the year will bring. If that's true, 2016 is going to bring me fun adventures! I started out the new year by hoping on a plane on New Year's day, bound for Vermont. I'm teaching the Less is More class at Yestermorrow, which is a 1-week design intensive focused on small homes. (You can also learn about past Less is More classes.)
We kicked off tonight with introductions and a design exercise to get the creative juices flowing. It was fun to hear about all the tiny house dreams and schemes that our students have. It seems this week on the drafting boards we're going to be seeing tiny houses on wheels, small cabins in the woods, and a smallish vacation home for 12. It should be fascinating!
Tomorrow we'll start out with field trips and then we'll jump right back into the design process.
It's nice to be starting class having already adjusted to the timezone. But really I planned an extra day onto the front end of my trip for two other reasons. First, I was traveling through Chicago. In January. So, you know, contingency. The second is that I've made some good friends here and one of them was celebrating a birthday. We had a fabulous day of... well, mostly eating, really... but other good fun, too! Yay for homemade waffles, fresh oysters, winter wanders, and the ridiculousness that is bowling! I've long liked the idea of secular sabbath but the past couple years I've been rather lousy at unplugging! Saturday was good practice and I plan to continue that throughout the year.
Westermorrow Tiny House Design-Build
On Friday we wrapped up the first ever Westermorrow class – a Yestermorrow Design-Build School course taught on the West Coast. The Tiny House Design-Build class, which has been offered just once a year in VT, has filled up so quickly recently (this past year’s class filled up in just 30 minutes!) that Yestermorrow decided to offer it again here in Portland.
What an amazing experience for all of us! Patti and Lizabeth road-tripped across the country to be here. Dee Williams came down from Olympia to co-instruct with us! And our students came from California, Utah, Virginia, New York, and Illinois. We even had a student join us from South Africa and another from Montreal, Canada! In fact, the only student who was actually from Portland was our client, Merek.
We set up in St. John’s, a neighborhood in North Portland, so that we were able to build at Green Anchors (where I built my own tiny house, The Lucky Penny). We had our studio space at The Colony. And half our class stayed at Caravan – The Tiny House Hotel where they were able to try on tiny living for two weeks while building and designing. Several of them said this was a great experience and two of the seven decided that maaaybe they don’t want to live in a tiny house after all. (They both ended up designing wee houses around 600 square feet - still small enough that they’d qualify as Accessory Dwellings here in Portland, OR and a fraction the size of the average home built in America today!)
We started out our studio time with field trips and presentations covering everything from plumbing and electrical systems to regulations and interior design strategies for small spaces. In the field we started out with safety and tool orientation and then built sawhorses to practice measuring twice and cutting once. By the second week our students were shifting between the build site and the studio to move the house as far along as possible while also creating awesome tiny house designs.
There were definitely some differences between teaching the class in VT and OR. It was strange to not be on a residential campus where sleeping, eating, designing, and drafting are all just yards from each other. But it was also fun being in a more urban setting. I missed being on the scrumptious Yestermorrow meal plan, but it was fun exploring St. John’s eateries (the food carts, Proper Eats, Signal Station Pizza, Super Burrito Express, Big Kahuna’s BBQ, the baowry, etc.) And the second week, once people were comfortable with the area, I switched back to Simply Home’s Community Dinners, which are one of my favorite things!
On the build site we constructed the shell of Merek and his partner Erin’s tiny house on wheels. Their little house has a ½ and ½ roof, meaning that part of the roof is shallower and part is steeper. This allows them to have plenty of headroom in the loft and a more interesting roofline. We nailed the framing together (apparently the Doug Fir we have over here is much harder than the spruce used on the East Coast – we bent a lot of nails as we practiced!) Over here on the West Coast it seems most tiny houses are glued and screwed together instead, so we weren’t aware of this difference! We got the walls framed, sheathed, and raised and the ridge beam, roof rafters, and the first course of plywood on the steeper pitched roof before we had to turn our attention to Presentation Day.
I LOVE Presentation Day! It’s always so inspirational to see what our students create with two weeks of tiny house design and build experience (and for 7 of our students this time the experience of living in tiny houses, too!) We had awesome designs this time around, including several tiny houses on wheels (with a huge variety of layouts and roof shapes and multi-purpose furniture) and a handful of clever ground-bound houses (including an off-grid cabin with creative sleeping for the whole extended family and a small home with space for motorcycles in the living room!)
It was an honor to co-teach with some of my tiny house heros: Dee Williams, Lizabeth Moniz, and Patti Garbeck. I’m appreciative of all the folks who helped make this happen, from Mark, Dan, Luke, and Katie at Yestermorrow, to Matt, Mark, and Kevin at Green Anchors and Rita and Dana at The Colony. I'm thankful that Merek and Erin entrusted us with the beginning of their little home. And I’m especially full of gratitude for our incredible group of 14 students for inspiring me all over again! I can’t wait to follow along on their tiny house journeys! Stay tuned!
Tiny House Design-Build Class Hits the News
In late July I co-taught the Tiny House Design-Build Class at Yestermorrow in Vermont with Lizabeth Moniz and Patti Garbeck. Over the course of 2 weeks our 14 students developed designs of their own and worked together to build the shell of a small shed house on skids. During one of our morning in the second week Alexei Rubenstein of Channel 3 News stopped by to see what we were up to. And our class made the news last week. Check out the Tiny House Class video clip from Channel 3 to see what Alexei saw when he visited! WCAX.COM Local Vermont News, Weather and Sports-
Tiny House Design-Build Wrap Up
Yesterday we wrapped up our Summer 2015 Tiny House Design-Build class at Yestermorrow. After A Week of Tiny House Design-Build our students had their noggins full of considerations and their drafting tables full of bubble diagrams, inspiration boards, and sketches. The tiny house shell we constructed had its two long walls framed and sheathed and we were ready to put up the end walls.
This past week everything seemed to accelerate. In the field, we framed and sheathed the end walls, put up the rafters, sheathed the roof, installed the storage loft joists and decking, and installed the interior walls and the bed platform. (This tiny house is available for sale! If you’re interested in learning more, please contact Mark at Yestermorrrow.)
In the design studio, students synthesized their design ideas into drawings and models. Three special guests, Mac Rood, Kathy Myer and Chris Cook, all architects, joined me for desk critiques in the evenings to serve as sounding boards for the volley of ideas and questions. It’s always remarkable to me to see how everyone’s designs evolve over two weeks as they wrangle their hopes and needs into spaces that could facilitate the lifestyles they desire. We even snuck in another field trip to the fabulous and well-thought-out home of Ethan Waldman of The Tiny House.
As I noted last time I taught Less Is More, Presentation Day is always a bit like Xmas morning for me. There’s so much anticipation and so much delight in seeing our students designs revealed! I’m especially a sucker for the elegant details everyone comes up with!
This time around we had a variety of tiny houses on wheels with clever ideas such as:
- A closet tucked under a raised bed with drawers that interact with the stairs
- A workbench for projects the length of an end wall
- A mosaicked shower under a sleeping loft with a peek-a-boo view
- Rotating quarter-moon disks to increase counter space in a kitchen
- Rock climbing holds to access a loft
- A swooping countertop with a corner sink
- A fabulous customized desk
- A movable wall that transforms a space into three different rooms
We also had a set of ground-bound structures, including:
- A speakeasy-inspired summerhouse
- A long rectangular house that plays with windows to bring outside in
- A fire-tower inspired octagonal book and puzzle library
- A backyard yoga hut
- A family farm house with a courtyard
- A cozy addition to a fifth generation lake house
I look forward to seeing some of these designs become reality over the next couple years!
Next up for me: spending the weekend with some VT friends (and maybe lending a hand with a tiny SIPs house), a couple days in GA to discuss tiny house feasibility in Atlanta, and then a flight to CO so I can speak about tiny house community with Lee Pera of Boneyard Studios at the Tiny House Jamboree. There are nearly 10,000 people pre-registered! See you there!
A Week of Tiny House Design-Build
Yesterday evening we sent our Tiny House Design-Build students off for a much-needed 26 hour break. Since they arrived a week ago on Sunday evening, we’ve had a packed schedule with lots of hands-on learning. Today they're going for runs, swimming in the local swimming holes, watching a movie, napping, and otherwise enjoying a lazy Sunday in Vermont.
On Wednesday I celebrated another revolution around the sun by exploring tiny houses with my students and fellow instructors and eating lots of desserts (maple creemees, anyone?) We had the chance to go on six field trips to see a 12 x 20 owner-built tiny house, a small live-work space designed and constructed by Yestermorrow’s Semester Program, a wee 2-bedroom featured on Tiny House Nation, a treehouse overlooking a pond, a sculptural house with a barrel vaulted sleeping space, and little efficient guesthouse by the brook. That’s right up there on my top favorite ways to spend my birthday! (Though my Big Birthday Bash at the Tiny House Hotel was pretty good, too!)
In the studio, we’ve done presentations on a variety of topics ranging from considerations for site, climate, and finding parking to options for systems, foundations, and interior design. Our students brought a variety of design ideas including several tiny houses on wheels (THOWs), a portable sauna, a tree house, a one-bedroom flat retrofit, a tiny house truck, and a backyard library with sleeping nook. During our time in the studio they’ve been finalizing their programming, exploring layout through bubble diagramming, practicing their drafting skills, and building models. They have so many clever ideas I can’t wait to see what they come up with during our studio time in the next week!
In the field we’ve been constructing an 11x16 tiny house on skids so we’ve had lots of practice with measuring, cutting, nailing, leveling, remeasuring, plumbing, shimming, bracing, etc. The house has a shed roof, a sleeping platform, and two storage lofts in addition to the kitchen and hang out space. We’ll continue constructing the shell next week and we’ll take it as far as we can in the time we have. The tiny house will be available for sale, so if you or anyone you know is interested, please contact Yestermorrow!
Cabinets & Built-Ins Class at Yestermorrow
Whew! What a busy couple weeks it's been! A week ago I wrapped up my role as Project Engineer & Sustainability Coordinator for the Breathe Building and presented our owner, Chris Calarco, with a stack of Operations & Maintenance Manuals. The heap of materials was so huge I offered it up via hand truck. It's been a true pleasure working with Chris' team and I look forward to visiting the building when I return to the west coast in a few weeks! Until then, I wish them all the best wrapping up final details so Yoga Union, Prema Health, and Fern Kitchen can get settled in and open for business.
Then I kicked off My Summer Adventures with My Annual Pilgrimage to the Oregon Country Fair. It was splendid to have quality time with my fairy godfamily in Corvallis, OR and to share this experience with two of my landies, Karin and Isha. Saturday night we drove back up to Portland and my landies dropped me off at the airport for a red eye flight to Vermont.
So I'm Home Again at Yestermorrow and this time I get to stay for three whole weeks! The past four days I've been taking a Cabinets & Built-Ins class. Our instructor, Justin Kramer, is a fabulous teacher and he's done a great job providing a huge skill set in manageable doses, answering approximately a bazillion questions, sharing lots of tricks and tips, and letting us make and learn from little mistakes (while helping us avoid the big ones). We've been building a cabinet which will be used in Yestermorrow's South Studio.
On the first day we got a thorough woodshop orientation, familiarized ourselves with the plans for the cabinet, and built the "carcasses" for our cabinet out of 3/4" cherry plywood, using pocket screws. The second day the team I was on milled down bass wood for the face frames and attached them to the carcass with biscuits while the other team routed out the backs of the cabinets and installed the plywood backs. I'd never milled wood before so this was a great experience! Yesterday we prepared the wood for our pine drawer boxes and built the cherry doors for the cabinet, using dominoes to secure the frames and inserting cherry plywood panels. Today we practiced joinery techniques on our drawer boxes, using three different methods (fingerjoints, dovetails, and pocket screws) and installed our doors on their hinges. We also created a plinth for the cabinet to sit on, built shelves which sit on pins, and started building the web frame for our drawers. Tomorrow we'll continue with the drawers and finalize our cabinet. It's been a great project and I'm more excited than ever to get back to the woodshop at Simply Home Community!
Next week I'll be teaching the Summer 2015 Tiny House Design-Build course. Stay tuned for updates. Meanwhile, if you'd like to read up on what it's like, you can read the day-by-day account of the 2013 Tiny House Design-Build class.
Less Is More Presentation Day
Presentation Day at Yestermorrow is always a bit like Xmas morning for me. Dave and I posted our list on Wednesday evening, asking our students to incorporate context/site, floor plans, elevations, and sections and/or models into their Friday presentations. And we were up late with them on Thursday night. So it’s a little like sending a letter to Santa and then trying to stay up to catch him. (Several of our Less Is More students were still up at the eleventh hour when I called it a night!) But inevitably, some of the design magic happens after we’re fast asleep, visions of elegant details dancing in our heads. We never know exactly what we’ll find on the presentation board when the designs are pinned up of the following day, so it’s a wonderful surprise!
This morning our presentations began at nine and everyone presented his or her work and then receive feedback from their classmates and our reviewers. Paul Hanke and Kathy Meyer are both architects and seasoned Yestermorrow instructors, so they brought a fresh set of eyes and great insights.
It was a delight to see the designs our students developed over the course of the week, including:
- Bert’s mobile house and studio
- Carol’s historic barn to cottage conversion
- Dani’s southern farmstead with indoor-outdoor rooms
- Emily’s complex of yurt dwellings
- Eric’s tiny house on a trailer with a unique roofline
- Genevieve’s little house on the go
- Jason’s timber-framed cabin
- Luke & Katie’s renovation to create a cozy community
- Matt’s caboose-inspired home, art studio, and apothecary
- Max’s sailboat-inspired off-grid tiny home
- Rick’s vardo as showman’s wagon
What an honor it is to teach at Yestermorrow and enjoy the company and creativity of such inspiring students!
I’m looking forward to my next week-long small home design course, which I’ll be co-teaching with John Labovitz in Portland, OR in November. Contact me if you’d like to be added to the notification list for more information!
Hello Again, Less Is More!
I'm back in snowy Vermont for more Yestermorrow goodness. I spent my weekend in the Design-Building a Successful Design-Build Business class, taught by Adam Cohen. He was a wealth of information and wisdom and I learned just as much from my classmates who were quick with questions and ideas.
Last night we started up another round of Less Is More: Designing the Small or Tiny House. I'm honored to be teaching with Dave Cain who is a creative designer, a bicycle adventurer, and an all-around great guy!
Last night we kicked-off class with introductions, complete with inspirational imagery and then we launched into our first design project. The photos in the gallery are the result of that exercise. We have an action-packed week lined up, including tiny house tours, programming, intro to drafting, presentations, and lots of (but never enough) studio time. Final presentations will be all day on Friday and I'm already eager to see what this creative bunch will come up with!
Follow along this week on our adventures! Meanwhile, you can read about last year's class here: Welcome to Less Is More, Less Time, More Drafting, and Less Is More Presentations.
