tiny
work has been crazy lately, and kept me from doing a lot of the fun design stuff i would like to. but somehow i've powered through and become a little obsessed with a new program, google sketchup. the reason i originally even ventured into sketchup territory is because of my new obsession with tiny houses.
from wikipedia:
"In the United States the average size of new single family homes grew from 1,780 square feet in 1978 to 2,479 square feet in 2007, despite a decrease in the size of the average family. Reasons for this include increased material wealth and prestige. The small house movement is a return to houses less than 1,000 square feet, some as small as 80 square feet"
i've been watching a whole bunch of stuff on tiny houses lately and while they're super cool and i definitely want one, there's always something about it that just seems like it could be better. for instance, i hate the idea of a loft bed - i don't want to climb up and down a ladder to bed and possibly more important i don't want to not be able to stand up in my bedroom. that just seems like an unnecessary sacrifice.
so i decided to design my own. my genius idea (and don't steal it without giving me credit - or at least a tour and tips when you're done!) is to put all of my rooms on wheels. now this isn't a new idea - moving walls and such. but i'm moving the whole room. the aim is to use the same rolling racks that a lot of companies use for their merchandise and supplies in a stockroom. this would mean i would roll each room open, wasting no space for unneeded hallways.
i started with a pencil sketch. it was a good way to get my head around spacing and layout. but that wasn't quite good enough.
so i researched and found google sketchup. and it's amazing! from never using it to the image below took about 8 hours. that's a nice full days work if i do say so myself! i looked up all the sizes of things - appliances, bed etc - to make sure it would actually fit and it's a good small size. the overall dimensions are 25'9" x 9'8" which makes it only 250 square feet! i win ;)