For the DIY enthusiast, here are photos, elevation drawings, and door/window schedules for six Tumbleweed box bungalows, plus an extensive how-to set of instructions that can be applied to any backyard building project. What they are not is home-center garden sheds. Though conventionally built, these handsome little buildings have real doors, windows, and skylights with interesting and practical details throughout. Paint them and finish them to suit your tastes and needs.The term "Box Bungalow" is a trademark of Tumbleweek Tiny House Corp. It refers to their idea of packaging these backyard buildings on a flat skid, for weekend DIY assembly. They'll also sell a prefab building for delivery to your prepared site. They'll also sell complete sets of plans for any of the houses shown in this book.

    A tiny house is exactly what it sounds like, a house with many of the amenities you'd expect in a home tucked neatly into a super small space. Often these homes are built on trailers giving them the added benefit of mobility. But these designs could also be built on your choice of foundation.Each chapter focuses on one size footprint to show what can be done inside each size space - 14 in all, (8x12, 8x16, 8x20, 8x24, 8x28, 8x32, 12x12, 12x12 + Loft, 12x16, 12x16 + Loft, 12x20, 12x20 + Loft, 12x24, 12x24 + Loft).The book is mostly illustrations with a short introduction. A detailed legend shows you how to read the floor plans making each drawing a wealth of information on how to pack a lot of utility into a tiny space. If you're considering simplifying your life, extreme downsizing, arranging your tiny apartment more efficiently, building a cabin or inlaw unit, and/or building your own mortgage-free tiny home, this book can help give you a head start on making your goals a reality.

    Pub the Date: October 2011 Pages: 96 in Publisher: penguin the Profiles seventeen small buildings some used as permanent housing. Some as temporary accommodations. And some as workplaces including Thoreau's cabin and an ice fishing shanty and provides structural diagrams and plans

    Many of us have suffered the consequences of an inflated mortgage, an unmanageable construction project, or a house simply too large to keep clean. Will our dream home always be a celebration of excess, and a drain on our lives? Some wise people buck the trend. They build, remodel, redecorate, or just rethink their needs--prudently and calmly constructing a joyful, sane life around themselves. They think, sometimes literally, outside the box, and they live close, warm, and simple, applying spiritual and social solutions to their material desires. Pockets of people all over the continent are realizing the benefits of scaling down. They are designing a new dream, one that reunites extended families, makes space for friends, and emphasizes home life over home maintenance. Little House on a Small Planet is a guidebook to this movement, and an invitation to join. Author Shay Salomon offers fourteen basic principles for the design and habitation of efficient, high-density homes. These fourteen principles outline the invisible supports of a happy home, set within the context of a future, more caring society. With floor plans, photographs, advice, and anecdotes, Little House on a Small Planet asks and answers, "What fills a home when the excess is cut away, and how do we get there from here?"

    In cabin getaways of the imagination, the cares of the world recede, time slows down, and the day's pace is set by leisure and quiet activities.Compact Cabins presents 62 design interpretations of the getaway dream, with something to please every taste. Best of all, these small footprint designs are affordable and energy efficient without skimping on comfort and style. The cabins range in size from a cozy 100 square feet to a more spacious but still economical 1,000 square feet, and all include sleeping accommodations, kitchen and bath facilities, and a heat source. Complete chapters on low-maintenance building materials, utilities and appliances, and alternative energy sources supply readers with the options for living efficiently in small spaces.For every design, readers will find floor plans with detailed suggestions for designing the space for optimal use. These plans are flexible; many feature modular elements that can be mixed and matched to accommodate a particular owner's needs or hobbies. Features such as an outdoor fireplace, covered porch, or external storage locker might work nicely in several cabin designs. It's all about enhancing and maximizing small spaces to suit individual needs and preferences.Build small. In this time of uncertain energy costs, global warming, and tighter budgets, building small is a theme that resonates with second-home owners. Gerald Rowan shows readers how to achieve their cabin dreams on a small footprint.

    By reading the guide you'll understand the steps that will need to be taken and know where and how to start building your own tiny house.

    The real estate collapse, the economic downturn, burning out on 12-hour workdays – many people are rethinking their ideas about shelter – seeking an alternative to high rents, or a lifelong mortgage debt to a bank on an overpriced home. Homes on land, homes on wheels, homes on the road, homes on water, even homes in the trees. There are also studios, saunas, garden sheds, and greenhouses.There are 1,300 photos, showing a rich variety of small homemade shelters, and there are stories (and thoughts and inspirations) of the owner-builders who are on the forefront of this new trend in downsizing and self-sufficiency. You can buy a ready-made tiny home, build your own, get a kit or pre-fab, or live in a bus, houseboat, or other movable shelter. Some cities have special ordinances for building "in-law" or "granny flats" in the back yard. There are innovative solutions in cities, such as the "capsules" in Tokyo.If you're thinking of scaling back, you'll find plenty of inspiration shown by builders, designers, architects, dreamers, artists, road gypsies, and water dwellers who've achieved a measure of freedom and independence by taking shelter into their own hands.

    Becky Bee's manual is a friendly guide to making your own earth structure, with chapters on design, foundations, floors, windows and doors, finishes, and of course, making glorious cob."I believe that building with cob is a way to recreate community and experience the joy of working together while taking back the right to build our own homes and look after our Mother Earth."She loves doing something that makes sense in a world where lots of things don't.

    Focusing on dwelling spaces all under 1,000 square feet, TINY HOUSES (Rizzoli, April 2009) by Mimi Zeiger aims to challenge readers to take a look at their own homes and consider how much space they actively use. Ranging from tree houses to floating houses, TINY HOUSES features an international collection of over thirty modular and prefab homes, each one embodying “microgreen living”, defined as the creation of tiny homes where people challenge themselves to live “greener” lives. By using a thoughtful application of green living principles, renewable resources for construction, and clever ingenuity, these homes exemplify sustainable living at its best.

    Yet while heat from sunlight and ventilation from breezes is free for the taking, few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved.Now Dan Chiras, author of the popular book The Natural House, brings those principles up to date for a new generation of solar enthusiasts.The techniques required to heat and cool a building passively have been used for thousands of years. Early societies such as the Native American Anasazis and the ancient Greeks perfected designs that effectively exploited these natural processes. The Greeks considered anyone who didn't use passive solar to heat a home to be a barbarian!In the United States, passive solar architecture experienced a major resurgence of interest in the 1970s in response to crippling oil embargoes. With grand enthusiasm but with scant knowledge (and sometimes little common sense), architects and builders created a wide variety of solar homes. Some worked pretty well, but looked more like laboratories than houses. Others performed poorly, overheating in the summer because of excessive or misplaced windows and skylights, and growing chilly in the colder months because of insufficient thermal mass and insulation and poor siting.In The Solar House, Dan Chiras sets the record straight on the vast potential for passive heating and cooling. Acknowledging the good intentions of misguided solar designers in the past, he highlights certain egregious--and entirely avoidable--errors. More importantly, Chiras explains in methodical detail how today's home builders can succeed with solar designs.Now that energy efficiency measures including higher levels of insulation and multi-layered glazing have become standard, it is easier than ever before to create a comfortable and affordable passive solar house that will provide year-round comfort in any climate.Moreover, since modern building materials and airtight construction methods sometimes result in air-quality and even toxicity problems, Chiras explains state-of-the-art ventilation and filtering techniques that complement the ancient solar strategies of thermal mass and daylighting. Chiras also explains the new diagnostic aids available in printed worksheet or software formats, allowing readers to generate their own design schemes.

    Welcome to the straw bale house! Whether you build an entire house or something more modest-a home office or studio, a retreat cabin or guest cottage-plastered straw bale construction is an exceptionally durable and inexpensive option. What's more, it's fun, because the technique is easy to learn and easy to do yourself. And the resulting living spaces are unusually quiet and comfortable.The Straw Bale Housedescribes the many benefits of building with straw bales:super insulation, with R-values as high as R-50 good indoor air quality and noise reduction a speedy construction process construction costs as low as $10-per-square-foot use of natural and abundant renewable resources a better solution than burning agricultural waste straw, which creates tons of air pollutants

    That groundbreaking book proposed a new blueprint for the American home: a house that values quality over quantity, with an emphasis on comfort and beauty, a high level of detail, and a floor plan designed for today's informal lifestyle. Creating the Not So Big House is the blueprint in action. Focusing on key design strategies such as visual weight, layering, and framed openings, Sarah Susanka takes an up-close look at 25 houses designed according to Not So Big principles. The houses are from all over North America in a rich variety of styles -- from a tiny New York apartment to a southwestern adobe, a traditional Minnesota farmhouse, and a cottage community in the Pacific Northwest. Whether new or remodeled, these one-of-a-kind homes provide all the inspiration you need to create your own Not So Big House.

    Eighteen recently built and unusual houses, from ultramodern to Japanese rustic, are presented in depth. Particular emphasis is given to what the author calls the "big idea" for each house-the thing that does the most to make the home feel more spacious than it actually is. Big ideas include ingenious sources of natural light, well thought-out loft spaces, snug but functional kitchens, unobtrusive partitions, and unobstructed circulation paths.An introduction puts the houses in the context of lifestyle trends and highlights their shared characteristics. The Houses section details each project the intentions of the designers and occupants are explained. The result is a very human sensibility that runs through the book, a glimpse of the dreams and aspirations that these unique homes represent and that belies their apparent modesty. The second half of the book is devoted to illustrating the special features in the homes, from storage and kitchen designs to revolutionary skylights and partitions.Building small can be a sign of higher ambitions, and those who read this book will undoubtedly grow to appreciate that building a small home can be an amazingly positive and creative act, one which can enhance one's life in surprising ways. In The Very Small Home, Brown has given home owners, designers, and architects a fascinating new collection of ideas.

    Decorating ideas to achieve a cottage look that’s clean, simple, and light.New and remodeled homes that incorporate cottage style via architectural features and easy decorating choices.Secrets to creating harmony and simplicity with paint, furniture, fabrics, and accessories.Examples of projects in the country, the woods, suburbia, and oceanfront locations.Practical ideas and decorating techniques to create a comfortable getaway look.Effective color schemes that achieve a serene palette.

    Callahan, whose popular Good House Book helped environmentally-minded readers create an earth-friendly home, have returned with a photo-packed, amazingly complete, start-to-finish guide to "green" housebuilding.This absolutely groundbreaking manual doesn't just talk about eco-friendly building techniques, but actually shows every step! More than 1,200 close-up photographs, along with in-depth descriptions, follow the real construction of an alternative house from site selection to the addition of final-touch interior details. Co-authors Clarke Snell and Timothy Callahan (a professional builder and contractor) provide thorough discussions of the fundamental concepts of construction, substitutes for conventional approaches, and planning a home that's not only comfortable and beautiful, but environmentally responsible. Then, they roll up their sleeves and get to work assembling a guest house that incorporates four different alternative building methods: straw bale, cob, cordwood, and modified stick frame. The images show every move: how the site is cleared, the basic structure put together, the cob wall sculpted, the bales and cordwood stacked, a living roof created, and more. Most important, the manual conveys real-world challenges and processes, and offers dozens of sidebars with invaluable advice. It's head and shoulders above all others in the field.