THE OPTIONS

When it comes to homes, I was basically in the dark on what my options were. I'd imagine many people are with me on that judging by the suburban sprawl. As I began searching, I started reading about straw homes, tire homes, in-ground homes, mud homes, cargo container homes, tiny homes... etc... Each has different benefits and unique advantages by location. I settled on in-ground homes and tiny houses. I did a lot of research on the in-ground homes and the different ways to power them; taking a lot of wonderful tips from Our Cool House in particular, before I discovered tiny houses.

For a long time, I've wanted to hop in an RV and just drive around the country, so in looking through RVs one time; specifically Air Streams, I cam across Jay Schaefer's Tiny Houses. It made a lot of sense to me as a single guy to use something like this. It big enough for someone like me that isn't home much; but when I am, I just basically sit in front of the TV playing video games. And since they can be built on wheels, if I get a job in a different location, I can simply move my entire house... no need for trailers, moving fees or packing. I just hitch up my house and go.

In all reality, college kids could use these while going to school, travel with them to wherever it is they are going after college and if they buy a house with someone, they can just plop the tiny house in the back yard as an office or extra bedroom. It would actually cut school costs a lot and provide people with a lot more privacy.

Tiny Houses are very efficient because you're basically only heating or cooling a room. Not to mention, due to their size, you can incorporate extremely high quality materials that you may not be able to afford in the larger home to increase efficiency. Also, many of the amenities you may want to incorporate like refrigerators, water heaters, microwave are all produced in streamlined energy efficient RV models that will shrink your overall energy use... which translates to money.

Now, Jay Schaefer isn't the only guy that makes tiny houses, and after looking at interior pics of a lot of the different types, lay outs and designs, I decided the only way to do this was to go from scratch. I saw Julie Matrin's tiny homes were 10' x 20's, so I decided to just design inside that size restriction and see what happened. I've evolved through several layouts learning how to utilize space and keep things open. I'm beginning to think that 120 sq ft may be too large... But there's really only one way to find that out for sure and that's to do it and see how much of the space I use. Better to have too much than not enough.