Small Wonders
Lettko catches up on work from her deck, walks down the pier to wash her laundry at the harbor club and walks a little farther down the sidewalk to buy groceries. And she has experiences that she never had on shore, such as enjoying regular visits from sea lions Oscar and Celia, seeing cormorants diving for fish and watching a school of stingrays in the water at night by flashlight. When it comes to city life, she says, “I don’t miss too much.”
Houzz at a Glance Who lives here: Jordan Menzel, cofounder of CrowdHall, an online company that helps users host interactive town halls, and his 1-year-old daughter, Penelope Location: Downtown Salt Lake City, Utah Size: About 160 square feet (15 square meters) The restoration process was slow, because Menzel ended up changing just about everything. “The happiest moment was, hands down, the first night I slept in it. Not only had I just spent a long, cold winter working on it late at night, but I had also been floating from one living space to the next. While doing the remodel, I was also in the middle of some large life changes, and finishing the Airstream was so much more than just a project. It was a symbolic gesture to myself that I still had the capacity to take on a wild idea and bring it to life. Falling asleep in this hilariously odd creation sort of put to rest all my personal struggles and allowed me to have a renewed sense of who I am and what I wanted: a simple, happy life.” https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/29672729/list/my-houzz-new-life-and-style-for-a-1976-airstream
There was an existing concrete slab and a detached carport with a two-room workshop where the suite would fit perfectly. McGill-Perez sat down with a piece of graph paper, a ruler and a pencil and went to work on a redesign, turning the existing footprint into the kitchen, laundry room and bathroom and building out for additional living space. After she finalized the floor plans and hired general contractor Jose Camarillo, construction began; it took three months to complete.Exterior paint: Thunderous, Sherwin-Williams; planters: Oscar, CB2https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/14060095
All the lights in the container can be activated from the main control panel on the side of the kitchen unit. “As soon as you walk in the front door, you can set the lighting throughout the house,” McMurdo says. https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/74002591/list/my-houzz-converted-shipping-container-floats-his-boat
As for the units themselves, they’re small — studios average under 300 square feet, multiperson suites 625. But they’re bright and inviting. “We try to do the basics really well,” Kennedy says. “That includes tall ceilings, lots of light.” Forget Ikea: The units come with furniture selected to work in the small spaces, like beds that convert into tables. Says Kennedy, “We test everything out in a prototype — chairs, shelves, sinks, toilet paper holders.” The units also employ a lot of design sleight of hand. “We use mirrored sidelights on either side of the windows,” Kennedy says. “They make you think you’re in a room with a bay window even if you’re not. And our furniture and fixtures never quite touch the floor. Closets and beds are up 4 inches. That makes you think the space is bigger than it actually is.” Katherine Will, shown here in her 232-square-foot studio unit, is a business student at nearby Babson College. For the most part, she enjoys living in the Panoramic apartment, which she shares with another student at Babson. “We are on the 11th floor and have a nice view of the sunrise each morning,” Will says. “Right around the corner on our floor is the laundry room, whic...
Doyle and his team removed the home's original low ceiling and inserted a plywood cube, each side with its own function. The kitchen takes up one side, access to the shower room is around the corner, a sleeping loft sits on the top, and this side holds storage and a small utility space. "It became apparent very quickly during the design process that every last inch of space needed a specific purpose and dedicated use," says Doyle. https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/5881978/list/houzz-tour-overhauled-interiors-in-a-tiny-fishermans-cottage
It's not unusual for homeowners to have a room, or even a small outbuilding, dedicated to a hobby or interest. But Pennsylvania architect Peter Archer and his clients, a Chester County couple with grown children, took that idea way beyond the norm. The husband is a serious collector of J.R.R. Tolkien books, manuscripts and artifacts, and wanted to create a small cottage to house and protect his collection — a cottage that would bring to life the hobbit dwellings in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. "He had been collecting since the early 1970s and had simply run out of space in the house. A good bit of his collection was in boxes stored around the house," Archer says. https://www.houzz.com/ideabooks/1775605/list/houzz-tour-hobbit-house-in-pennsylvania-countryside
Q