The Wonderlust Journal » SmallSpace

Pre-Fab for Old Folks >> MEDcottage

Eliza Coleman — Thu, 13 May 2010 12:00:00 +0000

I am fascinated by small-space dwellings and creative housing solutions (like cool new pre-fab designs after Katrina), so I loved this article in the Washington Post that I came across in researching potential ideas for a project we’re working on.

The issue of aging parents in our country is such a sensitive one, and so far I don’t think we’ve figured out a solution that really suits both parents and the caretaking kids. This idea thinks outside-the-box, compared to current solutions, by putting a self-contained “nursing home,” ironically, inside of a box. Could this be the answer for many people?

Here is the intro:

“The Rev. Kenneth Dupin, who leads a small Methodist church here, has a vision: As America grows older, its aging adults could avoid a jarring move to the nursing home by living in small, specially equipped, temporary shelters close to relatives. So he invented the MEDcottage, a portable high-tech dwelling that could be trucked to a family’s back yard and used to shelter a loved one in need of special care.”

My own grandfather lived with us from age 96-99, and my mom’s grandfather lived in a house on their property when she was growing up, which I think is so special, but it seems the most doable solution in our country for aging parents, given monetary restrictions and lifestyles, is nursing homes, which is often not what the parents themselves would prefer.

This seems like a great solution that could fit culturally for Americans– both the parents and caretaking kids have their own space, but they are in close proximity. Plus, this concept has provisions for the safety associated with a nursing home due to its clever added features like the medicine reminder and ankle-height camera monitors that feed into the caretaker’s house. Even if it’s not this exact design, this model could hold promise for further development of this idea.

Virginia has approved a new zoning law to allow for these structures– hope the rest of the country will follow suit!

Small Space Kitchens

Eliza Coleman — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:44:00 +0000

For Stirlgirl…

A while back, Stirling said her new kitchen in Charlotte is tiny and she needed some suggestions. So here, a round-up of small kitchen ideas. Other than these first three images, these aren’t necessarily pretty images, but they give good practical ideas that you could execute more attractively.

Above– this adorable small kitchen makes good use of the Ikea grundtal kitchen accessories– the stainless steel wall-mounted racks and hooks.

Another key to this kitchen, which stores almost everything in plain sight, is the unified color scheme. The green/white/stainless combo looks clean and sleek here, whereas if there were all different metals and color dishes, it would look cluttered.

So as you build your kitchen, aim to keep all your dishes and cookware in the same palette.

Hanging hooks under shelves is a great way to store mugs, as in the above photo.

Next, five ideas from Apartment Therapy‘s the Kitchn blog on extending counter space.

First, undermounted cutting boards. These actually used to be very common in 1920s homes and they’re a great idea!

Click through for a bunch more ideas…

Fold-up counterspace on an empty wall can be mounted with hinges.

Moving microwaves and other small appliances up to shelves frees up counterspace (and looks less cluttered. I have a personal pet peeve for appliances on the counter!).

Another good use of the grundtal hooks, as well as a clever fold-up wall-mounted dish drying rack in case you don’t have a dishwasher.

Putting a large cutting board over the sink can also free up counter space.

In Julia Child’s kitchen (preserved above in a museum, and also recreated in Julie & Julia), she hung her pots on hooks mounted on pegboard.

Here’s a cute reproduction of this idea..

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These shelves are actually in a kitchen, but it made me think that if you have a big bookcase right near the kitchen, you could style the bookshelves with a mix of cookbooks and your prettier kitchen items, like ceramic bowls or cast iron or enamel cookware.

This image, also from apartment therapy, suggests hanging utensils on the side of the refrigerator. If your refrigerator was right next to your stove, this could be both handy and more unobtrusive than hanging them on the wall over the stove.

This images isn’t so pretty, but shows another good idea for undermounting– you can put in a rack to undermount wine glasses (or any glasses with stems).

Also not so pretty, but a good idea– a super high shelf could be installed to hold less-often used items, whether food items or dishware. My mom has always kept pretty cake plates and serving dishes up on top of our cabinetry.

Another article from the kitchn lists more tips, many of the same already pointed out here, but you can read the whole thing here.

Pimp My Ride

Eliza Coleman — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Aren’t these prefab tiny houses amazing? Apparently there is a tiny house movement afoot.

I think if you pimped these out and decorated them, they could be so cool!

In fact, we like it so much that we want to start over on our current hotel project, which is a property that will have about fifteen cottages on it, ditch all the plans, and just use these! Though maybe the luxury hotel-traveller wouldn’t find them as amusing as we do.

You can buy the plans for a couple hundred dollars and build it yourelf for $15-20k, or buy it ready made for about $50k.

Click through for more interior shots…

Can you park these legally in NYC anywhere?? If you could, the side-by-side price per square foot comparison with other real estate would be amazing.

For reference, by comparison, Ron’s studio was about twice the square footage of these. Most of these are 100-150sf.

Tumbleweed Tiny House Co here.

See lots more tiny house stuff here.

DomestiTransformer

Eliza Coleman — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:54:00 +0000

Maybe it’s from living in New York, but I have a near obsession with clever ways to live in small spaces, and I think there are tips to be found everywhere from boats to urban Asian dwellings like this one…

With quite a different style and approach to The Zach (store everything in plain sight and style it so it looks good), this guy in Hong Kong uses movable walls to create up to TWENTY-FOUR different rooms within his 330 square foot apartment.

Though not really my style, this is so incredibly clever. Above, pushing the bed up against the wall for daytime.

He manages to get a full-sized bathtub into this space, but he doesn’t fail to make use of the empty space above– there is a fold-down bed for guests that covers the tub.

Watch the video tour here in which he demonstrates how all the walls move– you can skip the intro about Hong Kong and start at 1:15. Make sure to catch the kitchen behind the TV and the screening room at the end.

Though most of this is too high-tech to apply in your own home, there are still some good (and age-old) ideas for small spaces, like mirrored and reflective surfaces to increase the light and make things feel more open.