Those are neat little shelters. We are going to outer banks Nov. 10. My son and dil are going same time. It's about a 9 hr. drive from here so you must be a bit further south than we. Steve in Baltimore County.

We are north of you..actually even north of Philly. It's almost always about 7.5 hours unless we hit heavy traffic but a pretty direct route. One time we got caught in the Saturday traffic at Dover Downs when they were having the NASCAR races and I thought we'd never get through there. We crawled bumper to bumper for an hour.

Hmm, they would be perfect for the Gulf Coast. In fact, 50 years or so ago, small houses and tar paper shacks were mostly all what was seen along the beaches. At least on the northern Gulf Coast. My, how times have changed.

My son, the writer, has what he calls his "cabin," an octagonal wooden building of about 60 sq. ft. that he escapes to for uninterrupted work--no phone, no utilities, just a place to sleep and cook and a table to work on. When his wife and kids visit, they camp next to it because it is so unsuitable for more than one (maybe two adults but forget about kids). He also has, about 100 feet from their house, an old wheel house from a fishing boat for an "escape" that isn't quite so far from family. In mexico, where he and family go for the winter, he has recently had a tiny casa built, another 60 sq. ft. space, near their home in Alamos. He loves these little spaces (and he certainly has a lot of them) and finds them essential for getting any serious work done. I think he's on to something.

Those are just charming, Marda. Hubby has a cousin who is married to a gentleman of Norwegian descent. He built a tiny cabin authentic to his heritage out in their woods in Minnesota.

I looked at the floor plans for the larger bungelows on that site, and you know I bought a little bungelow in town several years ago. At 670 sq. feet, it isn't much larger than one of those. I'll tell you, when dd and I set out to renovate it........I was really appreciative of the size. The materials were gentle on the pocketbook and the rooms accessible for two women handymen. We say thanks a second time each month as the utility bills come in. I know people who pay more on a phone bill each month than it costs dd for the heat and light.

I think the charm of a smaller dwelling is that it is intimate and cozy. I don't know how people who live in McMansions find that feeling in rooms the size of a basketball court.

Now, I want one of those for the back of my property, on the hill. LOL. I better not press my luck with hubby. I suspect he'd draw the line there.

Hobbit sized - just perfect. I distinctly remember the children from the PBS "House series" make the statement post-production that they preferred living in close quarters and without all the technology. Fewer choices made for a happier psyche. At the end of the one series they showed the family in their huge McMansion. So much room that they very rarely interacted.

I love cozy spaces. A long time ago (in the early '70s) I lived in a very basic cottage in the woods. Sometimes the water pipes froze in the winter. My car was always parked a distance from the cottage (an eighth of a mile?). It was heaven, pure heaven.

I am concerned for some of the young people who have got it in their minds that BIG is better, BIG is desirable above all other considerations. My nephew and his wife have a very large home and corresponding mortgage that is what they call interest-only. Which basically means they are renting from the bank.

We are anxiously awaiting the day we can build our retirement abode, in fact at this moment I'm posting from near our mountaintop land in the Ouchita Mountains outside Hot Springs Arkansas.

I was thinking about you the other day and wondering when you are going to make the move. So Suzanne, what do you envision when you picture your perfect retirement home?

There was a feature in our Sunday paper a week or 2 ago....showed several very different tiny houses....and a refrence to this web site.
Apparently tiny is bigger than we thought.
And what do they call those little houses around San Antonio and New Braunfels? Where the German farmers stayed when they went into town on Saturday and wanted to be there for church on Sunday?
Linda C

Here is a link that might be useful: tiny houses

This morning's paper had an article of smaller homes of about 750 to 1000 sq feet being built on the Gulf Coast. To those of us, like me, that were raised in small house and raised three or four kids in a two bedroom house, it seems amazing that more of them aren't being built. A 2000sq ft house used to be considered BIG. If I lived alone, I would love to have just one big room.

However, I will admit that getting a king sized bed in one of those tiny bedrooms or closets large enough to hold a zillion pieces of clothing, is a big problem. I could easily give up a formal living room, and a seldom used dining room for better bedroom space and lower utility bills.

I guess tiny is in the eye of the beholder. LOL The Tumbleweeds start at 50,60 and 75 square feet. That's pretty little to me. I've seen kid's playhouses bigger than that.

The thing about the small houses designed today, is that they are built to be more open and use space more wisely than the small houses of the early to mid nineteen hundreds. No, rofl, I don't mean the fifty to sixty square footers, I mean the 400 to 1000 square footers. I would much, much prefer to live in a small well planned and built tiny home than a large, cheaply constructed box with an inflated price tag. Building smaller isn't only socially responsible by conserving initial and subsequent resources, but allows one to spend the $s toward better materials and energy wise construction. I don't care what the housing market is passing off as moderate income, I certainly couldn't afford a quarter of a million dollar home. I could see having the money to spring for one of those little 100 square foot hideaways to get away for privacy. Hobbit house is a good definition.

Marda, these are charming and very practical for such a small scale.

I'm in the process of working out a way to convert my garage into about a 600 s.ft space. I want it simple and beautifully designed to make use of the small space. I have a designer who is going to do this for me, she excels in small spaces and I've seen four of them. I plan to rent it out initially, but I expect that I will one day live in it one day so it's going to be built so that I will love it.

"How much do I need" is, I think, a question we might all ask ourselves on many levels in our lives. I have too much space and too many 'things'. I am not actually a "thing' person and could happily part with most stuff if I could have a comfortable couch, a comfortable bed, my computer and a desk + plus storage. A few pictures for the walls, a pot and pan or two and a dish or two. And my George Foreman grill :)

My grandmother lived in a house that was the size of a 2-car garage, because that was what it started out to be. They started building when the war (II) broke out and it was very difficult to get any building material. They had started on the garage, it became the house. I think it was a 24 by 24 square. One room was kitchen, dining and living. 2 bedrooms opened off it with the closet in between that was not divided, so you could go in one bedroom closet, crawl thru the clothes and come out in the other bedroom. Very cool to a kid. Grandma had the biggest bathroom ever: the whole basement. The john was in one corner, the shower was in the middle with no curtain. I loved that house. I could live quite samll.

Linda C, They were called Sunday houses. LOL, how's that for an "Oh DUH" moment?

Marda, I love those little houses. In fact the Dogtrot one (last one on the web site you posted)is a typical Texas frontier house. Staying in a house that size certainly gets you down to essentials, and I think that's a good thing.

There is compact, and then there is claustrophobic. A 50 sq foot house is 5'x10'- about the size of a small bathroom. I find tents uncomfortable for the same reason -I don't like running into a wall in 2 paces! A 60 sq ft house is smaller than my present cubby -- which is considered to be psychologically comfortable only for limited periods of time (about 4 hours).

I consider books essential- and my next house will be built with that in mind. Not a mcmansion, but big enough to read quiescently in one room while DH watches football in another.