When tiny houses were just “houses”

[lilypad1126]

We started our relationship in a 2200 sq ft 3 bed/2 bath plus dining room/den house. It had a full, unfinished basement that we barely used, other than for laundry. Also, we had a small yard, but a big deck. We downsized due to moving for a job to a 2 bed/1.5 bath apt, that was maybe 900 sq ft, no dining room/den, small patio. We then moved to downtown Chicago into a 700 sq ft 1bed/1bath apt, but due to layout felt more spacious than the 2 bed apt we moved out of. We now are in a rural area in a 2 bed/2bath apt and I miss my Chicago apt everyday. Usability of space is so important. Even during COVID, i think our Chicago apt would have been fine with me working at home. Because the space was set up in such a way that we could "get away" from each other and not be right on top of each other.

I'll never go back to 3 bedrooms if I can help it. And certainly not with an added den and the weird open/loft type space we had at the top of the steps that we didn't need. And, that house had a master bedroom that was so big we could have fit all our living room furniture in there, along with our bedroom stuff, and still had space left over.

We might be moving this year, and I'm already dreaming of finding a place with more useable space/better layout. It's just my H and I, which makes it a little easier. But we're willing to be creative to find storage for what little stuff we do have to prioritize our other wants (location).

[Velar Fricative]

Jan 18, 2021 21:38:11 GMT -5 rupertpenny said:

Late to this thread, but I lived in a 580 sq ft 3bd/2ba apartment with three adults total and one @ kid ( 2 kids the last few months) for three whole years. I’m not going to say it was great or that I’d love to do it again, but it really makes me roll my eyes at anyone who “needs” extra space.

This is why I love watching House Hunters International. I love the smaller apartments! I’m fascinated seeing how functional small spaces can be and how many rooms can really fit in a space.

[twinmomma]

@@@

We currently have 3 kids and 2 adults living in a 4 bedroom/1.5 bath house that's just about 1,000 square feet. It's TIGHT for us, simply because with 4 bedrooms, there's barely any actual living space leftover in square footage that small. Our living room/kitchen is one open area and we eat at the counter/island because we have no dining room or space for an eat in kitchen.

We're currently looking for a "bigger" house, but honestly just want to hit like 1500-1800 square feet. A finished basement would make this house much more workable because there'd be another living space for us to go, but the house is too old for that to be feasible. I'd also love a second shower. That's basically the only major item on my new house wishlist - 2 showers. I care more about that than size honestly.

[ssmjlm]

fancynewbeesly, demo can be quite cathartic

I mean, if you like the house's bones and the location, I wouldn't hesitate to renovate for your needs/wants.

[fancynewbeesly]

Jan 19, 2021 9:34:25 GMT -5 ssmjlm said:

fancynewbeesly , demo can be quite cathartic

I mean, if you like the house's bones and the location, I wouldn't hesitate to renovate for your needs/wants.

Oh I completely think that is why my mom did it so often.

Mostly cost is keeping us from not. And I know once we start, we will find a ton of hidden problems too. Because again, the house is 40 years old. Even though it looks like it may be 15 years old. 

[winecat]

Jan 18, 2021 21:57:53 GMT -5 laurack said:

Jan 18, 2021 21:38:11 GMT -5 rupertpenny said:

Late to this thread, but I lived in a 580 sq ft 3bd/2ba apartment with three adults total and one @ kid ( 2 kids the last few months) for three whole years. I’m not going to say it was great or that I’d love to do it again, but it really makes me roll my eyes at anyone who “needs” extra space.

My sister back home (Ireland) recently bought a house for herself and her @2kids after a divorce, it’s around that size (600 square feet) but 3 bed 1 bath and when she told me I was wondering how three beds could fit but when I saw it, well they are small rooms but who cares- it’s for sleeping. The house is tiny but well laid out, she loves it.

On the other hand it seems a trend here in suburban America I’m seeing is a master bedroom as large as a decently sized entire apartment. It’s just such a poor use of space IMO when the room is ultimately used to sleep.

My house is 960 sq ft and is also 3 bed/1 bath and it is award as fuck.  Most people say that 3 beds is too many for that square footage.  I don't know why I didn't think of looking at layouts from other countries for ideas to improve my house.  

[heyjude]

I have only lived in small houses. I can’t see myself ever wanting a big house. In the before times 1500 sqf was perfect for the 4 of us but I will admit that now that we are all working and schooling from home 24/7, dedicated office space for two working adults would be nice. We’ve made it work though. Someday we would love to convert our large shed into a guest house/office space but we consider this our forever home and have since we moved here over 4 years ago. It’s even a bit smaller than our old house but layout and storage and land space is better which makes 100% of the difference.

As for YHL I’ve followed them for forever and I think they bring on the skepticism of their viewers by their own choices. They are flighty. Everything is perfect until suddenly it’s totally inexplicably not. That’s just their MO. They will not be in this house for long because their business model requires them to move every few years. Even if the house was perfect they would still do this. The house is fine in terms of size but again the choices they have made make it more odd, such as converting the main living room into a master bedroom, which has led to them to shoehorning a constantly changing sitting area in the kitchen. Every week they have a new post or story with a tape measure showing everyone how much walking space they actually have. It’s this sort of constant attempting to convince the world of how perfect everything is (until it’s not) that leads to all the online chatter. But they seem to be good people and in a world where many influencers are silent about the trauma of the day, they are not. For that they get many gold stars.

[seeyalater52]

People. Pixy already posted a reminder in this thread to @ relevant content.

[pixy0stix]

noodleoo, on this board we @ child content. This is now the second thread I've had to fix your posts.

[foundmylazybum]

Jan 18, 2021 10:47:07 GMT -5 TR said:

Communal living sounds like my nightmare.

I've looked into communal living several times--and the article was talking about affordable living in smaller spaces, and maybe I'm looking in the wrong places--but it's always super expensive and exclusive which undermines the entire process. The homes might be smaller but they certainly weren't cheaper and you were buying into the communal living aspect so you were 100% paying for that--and it was considered a privilege to be able to rent out that silly guest room and to be able to farm your food that you then made into meals for the entire community.  No thanks. 

I've also seen it in various experimental forms like Arcosanti and it was complex. 

[reginaphalange72]

Jan 18, 2021 20:17:25 GMT -5 sakoro said:

Jan 18, 2021 10:40:29 GMT -5 jane6672 said:

Ooooh what accounts? I’d love to check them out.

There’s a ton of tiny house accounts on Instagram. I look at Tiny House Inspiration Many of the tiny houses on Instagram involve stairs or ladders to a sleeping loft, which wouldn’t be appropriate for aging in place. This Accessory Dwelling blog has some practical advice about permitting. Their work are all single storey.

Tagging jane6672 too.

Yay for tiny houses! There are a lot of great tiny house designs out there. My H and I are currently building a tiny house on wheels for ourselves (2 humans + 2 large dogs; @thebigtinyhouseproject) and it's shocking how spacious it feels. We will be buying a large piece of land and living on it in this house for several years while we build our forever home ourselves, so we wanted to have something to live in in the meantime that was comfortable and fully functional. That way we weren't feeling rushed to build our forever home and have that be a big source of stress. The main living space is 428 sq feet, with an additional ~100 sq feet in the sleeping loft. And in that space we've managed to fit a living room, full kitchen, dining area, two separate (fully walled) offices, a full bathroom (with a tub), two separate closet spaces (plus a coat closet), and the sleeping loft. In this specific design, we put the sleeping area in the loft because this isn't the house we will age in place in (that design is going into the forever home), but I made sure that there was flexibility in our layout that down the road we could remove the wall between our offices to make a first floor bedroom if it was needed. It takes a lot of research and creativity to maximize the use of every space, but it's also a fun challenge. There are a lot of great resources out there for tiny house design! And it's becoming more and more common to have main floor sleeping areas for age-in-place options since tiny houses are becoming more popular and people are starting to see how well they can work for people of all ages.

Some really good (and design-diverse) youtube channels:

• Living Big in a Tiny House
• Tiny House Giant Journey
  
• Exploring Alternatives (not just tiny houses, but they are in there too (here's an example of one they just did with a main floor bedroom)
• Tiny Home Tours
• Tiny House Expedition
  
  

ETA: I got so excited about the tiny house stuff that I forgot the other half! The building a communal space on your property is exactly our plan as well!  We will be buying a large piece of land where we can have our forever home (an off-grid homestead because we are big old hippies  ) and then a tiny house community where we will both have ones that we build for people to rent, and also provide places for people to park their own tiny houses that they own. In that community, we will have a community greenhouse and garden, a building with a kitchen, bathroom, laundry, social/party area, and one or two guest rooms for if the residents have guests and don't have a good place for them to stay, and then a big outdoor area with a firepit, movie space, etc.

[noodleoo]

Jan 19, 2021 11:57:30 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

noodleoo , on this board we @ child content. This is now the second thread I've had to fix your posts.

Sorry pixy. I deleted my posts.

[foundmylazybum]

Jan 18, 2021 20:32:05 GMT -5 SusanBAnthony said:

Jan 18, 2021 20:28:54 GMT -5 rubytue said:

I wasn’t using it to justify myself. I was using to to assuage some guilt. But the move would also reduce my 50 mile one way commute by about half. 

I can justify with a bazillion other things, that may or may not be valid in your eyes. The biggest thing being needing to get a bedroom downstairs because of my health. 

I'm not referring to anyone in particular, more Americans in general.  Individually we all have reasons, and often I think we are at the mercy of the local market, ie, small houses don't even exist.  But as the same time if we don't individually refuse to purchase stupid big houses, nothing changes.  in order words, its complicated.  

I haven't done a complete environmental analysis of my home in particular but to answer your question, yes, I think about it all the time b/c I live in an area that is experiencing HUGE home building growth and in my specific area they are bulldozing up wildlife lands and black gold farm lands in my backyard. A big part of the developmental plan has a lack of smaller and 'affordable' housing although some of the housing going in has apartments. The area that is being built up is home to everything from owls, hawks, elk to trout in a small stream--and the soil is very special volcanic soil that was rich in nutrients and great for grazing and farming. Ironically, they are calling the housing area a "farm" which it totally isn't..it's a farm graveyard. The homes are very big and range in price from 400K to 1 mill. I think in terms of their individual "environmental impact" honestly they are a mix of both. The homes of today are extremely energy efficient on tons of levels. I owned a mid-century modern home in Scottsdale and it had a lot of energy problems and getting it up to the standards of today was as expensive and energy expensive as just buying a new home. But the materials, environmental destruction etc...it's a lot. 

No one is really talking about this in here, but where I lived in the South, the "shot gun" houses were ubiquitous. There were a lot of them but they were OLD (some close to 100 years old) and they were very rapidly disappearing. They were in theory a great option for small, affordable housing for people--but so many of them needed total rebuilds and by the time they got them, the cost was out of reach! The issue becomes, creating homes that are affordable but also create a profit. 

[sakoro]

Jan 19, 2021 11:59:22 GMT -5 reginaphalange72 said:

Jan 18, 2021 20:17:25 GMT -5 sakoro said:

There’s a ton of tiny house accounts on Instagram. I look at Tiny House Inspiration Many of the tiny houses on Instagram involve stairs or ladders to a sleeping loft, which wouldn’t be appropriate for aging in place. This Accessory Dwelling blog has some practical advice about permitting. Their work are all single storey.

Tagging jane6672 too.

Yay for tiny houses! There are a lot of great tiny house designs out there. My H and I are currently building a tiny house on wheels for ourselves (2 humans + 2 large dogs; @thebigtinyhouseproject)....... The building a communal space on your property is exactly our plan as well!  We will be buying a large piece of land where we can have our forever home (an off-grid homestead because we are big old hippies  ) and then a tiny house community where we will both have ones that we build for people to rent, and also provide places for people to park their own tiny houses that they own. In that community, we will have a community greenhouse and garden, a building with a kitchen, bathroom, laundry, social/party area, and one or two guest rooms for if the residents have guests and don't have a good place for them to stay, and then a big outdoor area with a firepit, movie space, etc.

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I look forward to following your journey!!! Thanks for sharing. I’m always shocked at how big these tiny homes can feel if they are designed well.

[pixy0stix]

Jan 19, 2021 12:07:31 GMT -5 noodleoo said:

Jan 19, 2021 11:57:30 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

noodleoo , on this board we @ child content. This is now the second thread I've had to fix your posts.

Sorry pixy. I deleted my posts.

You didn't have to delete, just remember to tag them, please.

[agnes]

I still sorta wish we would have gotten one of these little houses in 2016. because they were freakin' cute! but we got out bid and they all needed some sort of non-cosmetic work.

2bd 1 bath 668 sq ft built in 1929


www.redfin.com/CA/Fullerton/228-N-Lincoln-Ave-92831/home/3187338

1 bd 1 bath 511 sq ft built 1905


www.redfin.com/CA/Long-Beach/3935-E-8th-St-90804/home/7599571

2 bd 1 bath 660 sq ft built 1920


www.redfin.com/CA/Long-Beach/1430-Temple-Ave-90804/home/7604818

The only reason these sfh are so small is because they're old.  

[cville]

Jan 19, 2021 9:07:29 GMT -5 Velar Fricative said:

Jan 18, 2021 21:38:11 GMT -5 rupertpenny said:

Late to this thread, but I lived in a 580 sq ft 3bd/2ba apartment with three adults total and one @ kid ( 2 kids the last few months) for three whole years. I’m not going to say it was great or that I’d love to do it again, but it really makes me roll my eyes at anyone who “needs” extra space.

This is why I love watching House Hunters International. I love the smaller apartments! I’m fascinated seeing how functional small spaces can be and how many rooms can really fit in a space.

I like playing "spot the IKEA items" on HHI.

[sakoro]

Jan 19, 2021 11:58:20 GMT -5 foundmylazybum said:

Jan 18, 2021 10:47:07 GMT -5 TR said:

Communal living sounds like my nightmare.

I've looked into communal living several times--and the article was talking about affordable living in smaller spaces, and maybe I'm looking in the wrong places--but it's always super expensive and exclusive which undermines the entire process. The homes might be smaller but they certainly weren't cheaper and you were buying into the communal living aspect so you were 100% paying for that--and it was considered a privilege to be able to rent out that silly guest room and to be able to farm your food that you then made into meals for the entire community.  No thanks. 

I've also seen it in various experimental forms like Arcosanti and it was complex. 

I’be also looked at existing communities from time to time and found that the costs to be a little lower but with very long waitlists. It appears that you buy a share in the community rather than owning a particular building (sort of like co-op versus condo). You start off in the least desirable housing and can work your way up into the premium housing as buildings become available. I imagine there is a lot of politics like any complex human system.

I know a couple who are very committed conservative Jews who met on a Kibbutz in Israel when they were in their 20s. They have a group of other Jewish couples who have been trying to establish a cooperative living community in the SF East Bay for a number of years but they can’t seem to get it off the ground. There’s a lot of reasons for this but the major stumbling block is property/ titles/ inheritance laws in the US aren’t very friendly to this type of arrangement. Since property is one major way people accumulate wealth in this country, they want to ensure they can leave it to their heirs or tap into the equity if they need expensive assisted living in the future.

These communities could be helpful for many people given the expense of housing plus how common it is to be single @childfree or living in arrangements other than nuclear family.

[heartmama]

We just sold out 950 square foot 2 bed/1bath house in 2020. It was fine realistically, but @@ it was time for a 3rd bedroom and space for WFH. It was so hard to find a decent 1500 sq foot house, everything was either 1000 sq feet or 2000+. I would definitely agree that layout matters, we looked at a few split levels and they definitely felt smaller most of the time. We ended up with 1800 square foot ranch, definitely has that great mid-century layout (built in 1968) and I literally can't imagine ever needing anything larger.

[foundmylazybum]

sakoro interesting! I think they are really fascinating on a lot of levels and I love hearing different perspectives on communal living situations bc I think I definitely have my beliefs about them..but I find them interesting and want to learn about them. I could see myself doing it..maybe bc we are @childfree? 🤷‍♀️

[sakoro]

Jan 19, 2021 13:42:44 GMT -5 foundmylazybum said:

sakoro interesting! I think they are really fascinating on a lot of levels and I love hearing different perspectives on communal living situations bc I think I definitely have my beliefs about them..but I find them interesting and want to learn about them. I could see myself doing it..maybe bc we are @childfree? 🤷‍♀️

In many ways communal living is counter-cultural to our country's ideas about individualism and the nuclear family. I'm not surprised people's kneejerk reaction is "hell no". But given the number of people who can't afford to get on the property ladder and for whom the existing housing stock isn't appropriate (as a single woman, I don't need a 3 bedroom SFH but I would like space for a garden), a desire to age in place amongst friends rather than be alone or isolated, environmental efficiencies from sharing resources like tools, gym equipment, or laundry facilities, it could make sense for more people.

I think many single people are reconsidering their living arrangements after spending lots of alone-time during COVID. My current ST plan is to buy a condo near my parents' house in their neighborhood. For LT, I want to look into purchasing land and building several tiny houses for a select group of friends/ family.

[brooklyn]

Yeah, I’d love communal living, as long as it was with people I liked and meshed well with. Especially during covid, I miss having a support network. I need a roommate who loves cooking and dealing with @ stuff occasionally so I get a break. I’ll happily do the cleaning!

I loved living in dorms and having my friends steps away, while still having my own private room to retreat to.

[mouse]

I had a coworker a few years ago who lived in a communal living situation. Frankly, it sounded cult-like. I mean, in some ways it sounded nice because they were folks around the same age and interested in the same issues (environment, equality, service to others). But they also things like yearly reviews where everyone in the community was supposed to vent everything you needed to work on and from the sound of it, it’s brutal. Reading between the lines you also have limited financial privacy as well. But this is a pretty long-lived intentional community as they go.

I’d like to get some friends together and go the Golden Girls route (but hopefully as couples), when it’s that time.

[PatBenatar]

We have a 1200 Sq ft house for 4 of us and it's not bad except for having 1 bathroom and our kitchen is small so there is no way to have people over for dinner. If the layout was slightly different I don't think it would be bad. We are looking at upgrading - my husband keeps throwing out numbers like 2200 sq ft and I'm like that is going to feel huge and that's so much to clean! I'm thinking 1800/1900 max. And then potentially downgrading to a condo or something once we are older.

I also grew up in a 1000 sq ft house so I'm used to it. There are a lot of smaller affordable houses in my area that people don't want because they are small.

[Susie]

Jan 18, 2021 21:57:53 GMT -5 laurack said:

it seems a trend here in suburban America I’m seeing is a master bedroom as large as a decently sized entire apartment. It’s just such a poor use of space IMO when the room is ultimately used to sleep.

and these absolutely palatial master bathrooms!  That gets me even more than the bedrooms.  We're house hunting, and at least with the big master bedrooms, we were discussing how one of us could probably fit a desk in there, while we're doing this whole dual WFH thing and we need separate spaces so conference calls don't disrupt each other.  But the bathrooms... in new construction homes they're as big as some of our current bedrooms!  Why?  For what!?  It is so insane.

[VillainV]

This thread has really reminded me how much I enjoy the show Home Town on HGTV. It’s the couple that live in Laurel, MS and redo a lot of old houses there. Many of them are small (1500 sq ft or less), and the cost of the property + reno is usually less than $150K. They do a lot of budget finishes like sheet vinyl floor and laminate counters, and often are doing houses to get more people on the property ladder who wouldn’t otherwise be able to own a home.

[agnes]

Jan 19, 2021 17:30:17 GMT -5 VillainV said:

This thread has really reminded me how much I enjoy the show Home Town on HGTV. It’s the couple that live in Laurel, MS and redo a lot of old houses there. Many of them are small (1500 sq ft or less), and the cost of the property + reno is usually less than $150K. They do a lot of budget finishes like sheet vinyl floor and laminate counters, and often are doing houses to get more people on the property ladder who wouldn’t otherwise be able to own a home.

I like that they also will try to keep with the character of the home and don't take things out just because.  

[mouse]

I think we have around 1400 sq ft. Our appraisal when we bought put it at 1600, but when we looked they seemed to include the back deck as living space(?). I love our neighborhood- it’s close to a ton of stuff and fairly unpretentious- people raise chickens, we tore out the lawn and put in raised veggie beds and the neighbors told us how cool they look. No sidewalks, but close to a large trail and the light rail station. It’s a mixed community, there’s apartments, SFH built anywhere from 1880-2019, tall & skinny infill, pocket parks, a HUD complex, an excellent cafe and a lady with a lifesize plaster mule in her yard she decorates for the holidays. I love my neighborhood a ridiculous amount.

@@we have a “bus stop gang” of kids who in normal times all go to the same school. Nice afternoons, we’d head to the park together. Now that the kids are older they ride bikes together (masked).

@@as my daughter hit her late teens and early adulthood, the house felt pretty cramped with 4. Especially during COVID. But we knew it was for just a few years and things are much easier now.

The house was built in 1929 and has seen its share of questionable renovations. The layout isn’t the best. There’s wasted space where you can tell that someone decided to go the cheap/easy route rather than what would actually make sense. It’s stuff like they expanded the attic into living space (good), but put the staircase way too the side so the master bedroom is ridiculously large and the bedroom next to it is teeny. Moving a staircase is too big an undertaking to make sense, but it makes me mad every time I think about it. Just. Why?

Mr M wants to move somewhere with a bigger house and lot and that would somehow feel more grownup because it’s not our “starter” home. He also uses the argument that we could build more efficiently and that overall it wouldn’t be worse environmentally (pretty sure he’s wrong). I can kind of see the economic argument - interest rates are low enough that hitching ourselves to a better real estate train might pay off. But it feels like a lot comes with that that I just don’t want.

[isabel]

Jan 18, 2021 21:57:53 GMT -5 laurack said:

Jan 18, 2021 21:38:11 GMT -5 rupertpenny said:

Late to this thread, but I lived in a 580 sq ft 3bd/2ba apartment with three adults total and one @ kid ( 2 kids the last few months) for three whole years. I’m not going to say it was great or that I’d love to do it again, but it really makes me roll my eyes at anyone who “needs” extra space.

My sister back home (Ireland) recently bought a house for herself and her @2kids after a divorce, it’s around that size (600 square feet) but 3 bed 1 bath and when she told me I was wondering how three beds could fit but when I saw it, well they are small rooms but who cares- it’s for sleeping. The house is tiny but well laid out, she loves it.

On the other hand it seems a trend here in suburban America I’m seeing is a master bedroom as large as a decently sized entire apartment. It’s just such a poor use of space IMO when the room is ultimately used to sleep.

Our second house (the “too big” in our Goldilocks story of home purchases) had a main suite with a bedroom that was easily 250sf with a giant bathroom and a 100sf closet. We never did anything with half the room because I refused to buy furniture to fill the space. It was absurd.

[btay]

My boyfriend and I currently live in a 650 sq ft house. If we had known Covid would be a thing we would not have bought it. We both work from home full time. It's dreadful. I had to set up an office in the dining room, so we can no longer actually eat at our dining room table. We can both hear every word of each other's meetings, and he has to plan his coffee around my meeting schedule because or Keurig is loud. My dream is to be able to finish either the basement or attic so I can at least get an actual office, and maybe a half bath. We absolutely love our neighborhood though so we will probably never move.