A tiny, tiny house.

I love architecture. Old, new, strange, fun, sleek or rustic you name it, I love it. So when the opportunity came up to build a tiny house on our deck I thought "why not?". Before I knew it my husband and I were finalizing plans for a 12' x12' all inclusive home we nick-named the "shed".  This tiny home will have a kitchen, shower, toilet, closet for clothes, living room and upstairs bed/loft. And, once again, we are using mostly recycled materials we have sourced at the ReBuilding Center, the ReStore and Craigslist. Building this tiny, tiny house (as my daughter calls it) is quick and easy compared to the the whole house remodel we did on the floating home. We are going from zero to completed home with three to four months. More photos to follow as we get closer to the finish line.

Who said flowers and bed frame don't go together?

A floating home allow much opportunity for gardening. While I love the fact that I never have to mow a lawn, I do miss my flowers. I had a wide open space at the back of my house to do some container gardening, but I wanted to get as many flowers in the small space as possible. Solution: go vertical. I could add flowers and vines to create quite a bit of color. I looked into all the commercial trellis's you see at the major gardening centers... they are expensive and they would eventually be covered up by vines and flowers. Also, they aren't in keeping with our home theme which is to reuse old materials wherever possible. So I started thinking about using other items that would let a vine climb up a wall. Why did I need to spend a couple of hundred dollars on something when I could run down to the ReBuilding Center and pick up something like a old fence or part of a bannister and use that? So off my husband and I went to see what we could find. We ended up with an old bed frame for $5.00! Perfect! We painted it the color of the deck, put an old wooden box at the bottom and filled it with flowers and vines. The result is what you see here. The vines have already started to climb and the frame is working perfectly. The box cost $12.00 at an estate sale. I love it and my neighbors don't have anything that looks the same. What do you think?

Exterior before and after of our floating home.

It's been a while since I have been able to post...I have a toddler. Enough said. Between that, my design business and my Etsy store I am busy! Oh, and let's not forget the renovation of my floating home. How could I forget that? We are finally done with the exterior sans plants and decor (the fun part right?).

If you haven't noticed from previous posts, my home used to be a "boat garage". It's confusing to me that Portlanders think they need to pull their boat in from the rain. Boats are made for water...and it rains in Portland all the time, so you can't really avoid it. But there are tons of these "boat garages" on the water. Ours was clad in aluminum sheathing from the 1940's. Plus it had barn doors on the back which had to be removed. HUGE barn doors. Once that was complete we were able to frame in the barn door area and lay wood sheathing, wrap it in Tyvek and apply the exterior siding and battens. We added some grey paint, a couple of decks and viola! We have what you see now.