During a presentation at Yestermorrow about tiny house design the speaker Lina Menard, shared a concept she called “keep the kettle on the stove”. Basically, keep things where they are functional and useful.

Logan and Tammy’s tiny house has a wet bath. In a video tour of the house, they mentioned it was easier to shower at the gym because setting up the bathroom for a shower was a pain. I don’t think these were their exact words but I can’t find the original clip so I’m improvising.

Even if I’m misremembering Logan and Tammys words, these two concepts influenced the design for Little Lou-everything is easily accessible and functional without having to be converted. A murphy bed is a good example of what I was trying to avoid – it folds up into the wall to save space which is great but you need to fold it up everyday to have access to that space. That seemed like a daily chore that would be a pain. It’s pretty great to be able to roll out of bed and leave it it unmade while enjoying your morning coffee. Which is why I went for a lofted bedroom.

For me, it’s better to simplify and declutter than to design custom storage to hold lots of stuff. With just a few cabinets, most of the stuff in the house is on display at
all times. Therefore a lot of thought goes into every item that comes into the house. I typically try* to abide by a zero waste philosophy which means I try* to buy second hand whenever possible. When buying new, I look to buy things that are well made, durable, functional and beautiful.

 Throughout the year before move in, downsizing was a high priority. Friends would leave my apartment with an armful of stuff after every visit. I sold, gave away or donated a lot of stuff keeping only the bare minimum and the sentimental. Most of the stuff filling my apartment was thrifted, picked up at the curb or inherited from previous roommates. None of it was particularly valuable or sentimental. It may not be in the spirit of zero waste but if I regretted getting rid of something it was easily replaceable.

*when it comes to zero waste, it’s all about little changes over time to make a big difference. While still far from zero waste, I work hard towards to goal on a daily basis.

Hopefully you were able to tune into Tiny House, Big Living on HGTV and catch the episode about Little Lou! If you did, thank you! You probably noticed my not so subtle talk about poop. Sometimes the filter between my brain and my mouth is non existent. Thank God I’m not shy.

These poop comments seemed to generate a lot of buzz. A colleague sent an email with the subject “You said ‘poop’ on TV!”. A friend posted on Facebook “Best line I’ve heard on hgtv “I’ve trained myself not to poop in the morning” YES.” and a couple of strangers even tweeted about it.

Because of my job, I’m more comfortable talking about waste than the average person. It’s also one of the most frequent questions people ask about the tiny house. So I’m pretty blunt about it. I use a composting toilet, which is really a nicer way of saying a 5 gallon bucket with a toilet seat, that I’ve got to dump when it’s full. I’ve been dumping into a green cone food digester which works really great for nitrogen rich materials (food) but its slow to break down carbon rich materials (sawdust from the toilet). In an effort to not overwhelm my systems and because dumping the full bucket isn’t the most pleasant, I try to do my business elsewhere.

It’s not extreme, I’m not making myself sick, it’s not really a big deal.

  
Perhaps this isn’t the most eloquent title for a blog post, but it pretty much sums up how excited I am. I really wasn’t sure what kind of stairs I wanted for my tiny house. I felt like  my only options were straight ladders or storage stairs. If we did straight stairs, the dismount would have been awkward-a quick step to the side to avoid the cabinets near the ladder base. Storage stairs would have been cool, but I didn’t feel like I needed to extra storage (I have a bunch of space in the loft above my bathroom). Plus, we didn’t have time to build elaborate stairs.

HGTV was planning to come in mid December to film the final day of building and the big reveal. We decided to just build a temporary ladder until we figured out the perfect solution. But then I found the perfect solution about a week before we were scheduled to finish. With one week left and a ton of work to do, I seriously debated even mentioning the idea to Seth. I knew if he saw the photo he would be determined to make it happen.

Well I finally showed it to him and he was determined to make it happen. I need you all to know just how amazing Seth is – he looked at a couple of plans for similar steps but mostly built this staircase without directions. He stayed up until 1 am working on it so we could have it installed for the final reveal. This staircase is an awesome demonstration of his hard work and talent. I’ll be forever impressed.

Funny story – we never had time to paint the staircase. There are two coats of primer, which was applied by some of the HGTV crew (we were behind schedule). The paint and glue were still wet when we installed the stairs so we couldn’t climb up them for a few days after installation. Also, Seth was able to bend the plywood because it accidentally got wet in the rain. We thought it was going to have to be trashed but the moisture actually worked in our favor.