I take it back, I don't like the new format all that much. TOO much like House Hunters. Tonight it was, "Oh it's so tiny!" "But the bathroom is so small". WTH? I thought you were looking for a Tiny House.

On the other hand, I see next week's episode will be about building a tiny house in a couple's pear orchard. How about that? Just what I was talking about for myself, only my orchard used to be an apple orchard and there are only three really old apple trees left in various stages of decline.

I'd like to see that show, but don't have cable.

You could anchor one down to withstand nearly any wind. They do it with airplanes at airports. Big anchors screwed into the ground, and cables. They could be underneath, covered with a skirt.

I think tiny houses are expensive for what you get. Part of it is that a tiny house needs all of the same stuff as a regular house- bathrooms and kitchens in particular are expensive. By their very nature, a tiny house is a custom house, with a lot of thought being put into efficient use of the space. That's expensive if you hire it out to an architect. Lastly, they are trendy, and you know what that means!

I think someone with the skills could build a very nice tiny house for $20K or so.

My son at one time had a business installing tie-downs for manufactured/mobile homes in hurricane prone FL. I suppose same would work to anchor tiny homes.

Schoolhouse, in many places, you cannot add additional accommodations which would affect population density. We had no problem rebuilding our garage on existing foundation, but they did not want it to have a resident. NOT a rental space, in other words. So we did not add sewer and water to it when we rebuilt it about 4=5 years ago.

Perhaps the small structure in someone's orchard is considered an "out building" much like a tool shed or a garage. It would be okay for some power and water run to it, but perhaps they'd become picky about the sewer.

I hope you get your orchard fairy cottage. I love those little houses. Cannot wait for you and Mama Goose to get cracking on such projects.

I highly recommend a book by Debra Prinzing about SHEDS. I bought it new several years ago now, but it is still the best source of examples. Do some research online, because the British have a contest and also they call their gypsy wagons "CARAVANS." Beautiful examples can be seen, and some remind me of the conestoga wagons of American pioneers.

There seem to be three different tiny-house series running on various cable networks right now. Are any of them repeat episodes of one of the others?

The only one I have seen is the Tiny House Hunters episode in which a family of six from Santa Clarita, Calif., wanted to move from 2500 sq. ft. there to 600 sq. ft. in Corning, New York.

This was startling to me because I live near Corning. I thought that the real-estate agent (whom I do not know) was hilarious.

I'm starting to watch these shows because I'm considering retirement or semi-retirement and relocating to another part of the country. I completely understood the Santa Clarita family's desire to have a house that they could buy for cash. I have the same idea and would probably be looking for a place about the size of the one that they bought in Corning -- but a cat and I would be living it alone.

moccasin, good points. And I'm sure there are numerous codes one has to meet even if you use the structure as a living space only now and then. Here is a photo I cut out of the newspaper long ago, a full size house that would look fabulous as a Tiny Cottage, in miniature if you will. Now I realize it would surely cost $100,000! Only I would modify some of it of course, down to one large room, kitchen at one end, small living area in the center, a bed nook against a back wall, and my all-time dream - built onto the left side of the house, a round, glass walled (all windows), breakfast room. It would face the gardens.

As much as I'd hate to have wires strung from the road, over the top of the privet arch and to the house, I'd rather have some electric for lights and for a small stove top, possible mini fridge, and yes I think maybe a small TV. Even tho it would make for great ambiance, oil lamps and candles are ok in a power outage but dangerous all the same. Tiny bathroom? Not sure about it. The septic tank and leach field are not far away, but oh the cost of linking to that - if at all legal - would be $$$$ I bet.

Well, it is a dream after all. Winning the lottery would help.

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How charming! It reminds me of a Sugar Plum Cottage, a Tudor feeling to it. And it would make a great room with inglenooks off the main space, which could be curtained for privacy, the panels of fabric hiding behind screens at the corners possibly, with shelving or storage at least inside the screen areas.

The all glass breakfast area, does it face east? Very nice! My new back wall of mostly windows faces east...only right now the light comes in at the winter angle low in the sky.

I know that composting toilets are not acceptable in many locales, but they are great ideas for difficult areas.

Indeed, your dreamy cottage is a good one for gardeners. Like a child's playhouse. Or the Seven Dwarfs abode!

Here is my inspiration, the breakfast room from Stan Hywet Hall in Akron,O. I fell in love with it (and the manor) many years ago.

However, I think I would put full length glass windows on all three sides and have a set of glass french doors where that serving table is, so I could walk out towards the garden. And have a very small banquette along one side with a window seat instead of putting a table in the middle of the space since there won't be much room. My breakfast room would face South.

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I know it would be very costly, but then again a person can be surprised at what they might find as far as building materials like old windows and doors to re-purpose. I've had a habit of buying items and putting them aside for years and suddenly have a use for them.

And I was thinking no loft area. Maybe let the ceiling(s) go up to the roof. I heard this idea on last night's program, it creates an illusion of more space. The little dormers with windows would be for aesthetics only. Well, I suppose there would have to be a ceiling of some sort to cap off the exposed trusses,ect.

For storage, you'd have to be clever, but then you wouldn't need very many items if you aren't living full time there. One really good cupboard in the kitchen area like a small Hoosier or even one like in the Stan Hywet bkfst. room pic, on the right. Not so grand of course. It would hold dishes and have room for a skillet and a versatile cooking pan in the shelves underneath. Plus other essentials. ha. Now I'm getting carried away.

This is kind of a late comment, but wow, is this show totally and completely bogus. Someone just sent me a link to the episode about looking for beach cottages in FL. The first one I know nothing about (the one they actually bought, supposedly), but the other "two" properties they looked at are actually two parts of the same property (cottage 3 was the detached garage of cottage 2 originally) and it has never, never been on the market since the current owners bought it a few years before the episode was filmed. Still not listed now, over a year later. And you couldn't separate the two if you wanted to sell them separately because historic district and no separate entrance to cottage 3.

They completely made the whole thing up, including pretending that they had to get in the car and drive when both those are only 15 feet apart. All they would have had to do was to turn the camera around when they were on the deck to see where they had been "yesterday".

I was just in those cottages in Jan. on a local tour and the owners expressed no interest whatever in selling. It's a great situation for them, actually. They wanted to get married but not live together, so they each have their own space together. The NYT did a story about their situation a couple of years ago, which I guess is where the show producers got the idea of contacting them.

So please don't use this series as a basis for making any kind of decisions about anything, unless you see a clever design idea to steal or something like that. It's all as fake as it can be.

Writer'sBlock, nothing like first hand observations!

And I hope Schoolhouse returns with the current interest in her original thread. One reason most of the Tiny Houses are on WHEELS is to avoid the building code for permanent housing. I am hoping we can persuade my cousin, who owns farmland near the church in the rural county where I was born, to lease us a tiny spot close by for an inconspicuous structure that could pass as a temporary abode. Since the area is in Hurricane Alley in north Alabama, I feel we should find some way to tether it to the ground, sure enough.

It would be a nice place to stay while I try to research genealogy and write about my childhood there. In our case, since we are so old, I'd want to put into the lease that my cousin could have the "improvements" when I pass. Incentive to do this thing, I'm hoping. And I know just the spot I'd like, hidden in the woods where a bluff had a small waterfall and a tiny stream with a small pool of clear water below. Always a cool area, we'd run down the hill from the church, dressed in our Easter shoes and come back muddy. Me and all my cousins playing while the grownups talked and walked, and the graveyard dressed for the occasion in white river sand and crape paper homemade flowers beside the headstones. It was a simple life.

Gosh, that sounds idyllic, Moccasin.

As for the tv show, I always knew the real estate shows were bogus in that they always did solicit people who had already bought a house to pretend to be looking, but I never knew that the other houses they "consider" hadn't even been for sale at all.