If you’ve been reading Tiny House Design for a while you might remember one of the long term projects I have on a back mental burner is the Tiny Simple House. While simmering back there it’s been transforming from a modified shotgun house to a more flexible yet equally as simple housing solution. The Tiny Simple House will be a low cost and easy to build tiny house design that most amateur owner builders could tackle because of its scale and simplicity. It will also be flexible and customizable to meet a wide range of needs from those of an individual to a family.

In this latest iteration the house begins as a core 12x12x12 box with a gable roof. Inside this space would be a bathroom, kitchen, loft, stairs, and small living area. The owner-builder would then add shed and gable roofed units onto the house to meet the additional space needs. The house could range from a coupe hundred square feet to a several hundred square feet. Continue reading to see a few of the details and configurations. I’ll continue to work on this concept at a more rapid pace and when I’m finished I should be able to offer the complete concept documented in a book. In the mean time enjoy these previews and please let me know what you think. Thanks in advance!

Oh and here is the Google SketchUp file for those of you playing with SketchUp.

You might have noticed I’ve been experimenting with different drawing programs looking for the right tool to draw the illustrations for the house plan book I’m trying to finish up. I don’t have a bunch of money to spend on a bunch of Adobe products and I don’t have a lot of experience with real CAD programs so I’m definitely bargain shopping in the isles of open source, freeware, and low-cost deals.

Tonight I think I found it; it’s called DoodleCAD. I even like the funky name. I also mapped out the contents of the book tonight which I’ll share with you all in a couple days. In the mean time below are some drawings that I whipped up tonight using DoodleCAD. They are still a bit rough, for example there are no doors and windows yet, but this will give you an idea of what I’m planning for these house plans.

The skids are there to keep the house above the wheel on a common flatbed trailer. 12 inches is a bit much and a 4×12 beam as a skid is probably overkill so you may see some changes there.

The reason I think raising the floor above the trailer bed and wheels is so the house can be detached from the trailer. This trailer optional approach adds flexibility and makes the house a little easier to build. The disadvantage is that the height of the house is shorter than it could be if the house floor were closer to the trailer bed.

I’ll keep at it and post more drawings as I finish them up. Feedback is warmly welcomed!

I’ve been playing with more drawing software in an attempt to find the right combination of tools to draw the illustrations for the Tiny Simple House plan book. Below are 3D images made with Google SketchUp and a short video. The floor plan was created using software called VectorDesigner which is an inexpensive ($70 ish) program similar to Adobe Illustrator, but far simpler. I haven’t bought VectorDesigner yet; I’m still using it in it’s 14-day trial mode, but so far I really like it.

I’ve posted a few other drawings of this design concept so you may be familiar with the idea already. Basically it’s a simple low-cost house shell most owner-builders could tackle themselves. Instead of interior walls, floor-to-ceiling cabinets would be used to separate spaces. The floor plan above is intended to show how the raw space could be filled. How the owner really fills the space would be entirely up to their needs. Future changes to the interior could also be made as their requirements changed. Additional small buildings could also be built if more space was needed, for example when the kids get a little older.

I’ll try drawing the cabinets in 3D this nect week. The 2D drawings really don’t tell the cabinet story well enough. I’m starting to think that 2D drawings are great for construction drawings but 3D is best for telling the story and communicating the design.

Another main feature of the concept is that the entire house could be loaded on a trailer for transportation. The main idea here is that flexibility and portability can be a real asset in lean and prosperous times. Since tiny houses are small by definition it seemed only logical to design this tiny house so that it could be moved. Tiny houses are very different from most portable small homes, like travel trailers, in that they are built like houses. Someone could even place this house on a permanent foundation once they found a place they wanted to stay for a long time.

The house in this drawing is 8′ by 20′ but I plan to include 8′-wide and 12′-wide plans in the book. The length of the house would be determined by the owner-builder’s need and length of the trailer. I’ll also include several different plans for the built-in cabinets to make it easy for someone to customize the interior space to fit their needs. I’ll post updates here as I work out the details.

The video below is simply a screen capture as I manipulated the 3D drawing on my screen. If you haven’t tried Google SketchUp yet and you like playing with drawing tools on your computer give it a try. Be sure to watch the training videos first though.

I should really stop staying up so late, but I guess I just can’t help myself. Below is another 3D drawing using Google SketchUp. I’m getting a little better with it but I know the drawings are still a bit primitive compared to the pros, but I can definitely see how drawing in 3D can really help visualize an idea.

For the past three months I’ve been working on a design concept for a book I hope to self-publish using Lulu.com called the Tiny Simple House. The book would be a guide for building a tiny house and include all the plans you’d need to built it yourself. I imagine that there is an increasing number of people looking for a simple and inexpensive way to provide shelter for themselves.

When I first posted the idea here I imagined a modified shotgun house made up of different sized boxes, 8′ by 8′, 12′ by 12′ and 16′ x 16′. But as I worked on the plans I quickly realized the idea was not so simple and quickly became not so tiny. The idea that the house would have to sit on a foundation also started to bug me because that seems like the biggest impediment for most owner-builders because it involves building permits and buying land. I realized that the tiny simple house had to be portable, low-cost, and super simple to build.

I went back to my mental drawing board and realized that a traditional shotgun house that could be moved on a trailer would actually meet all my requirements. It’s a bit ironic that going back to a simple row house, albeit a portable one, was really the most local solution.

Pictured here is an 8′ wide house that is 32′ long. The actual interior square footage would be around 220 square feet. There are some details missing like windows, which the final design would have. Instead of interior walls cabinets would provide room dividers as well as storage. All the plumbing would be in the same area of the house making it easier to build. The structure is simply a floor, four walls, and a simple pitched roof.

I also imagine including a larger version of the same house in the book, at 12′ wide and 40′ long. The smaller house could theoretically be pulled by a full size pickup without a special permit in most states. The larger house would most likely need a special permit and larger truck but would still be portable much like a mobile home.

This is clearly not a new idea. The smaller house would be like a really long Tumbleweed-like house and the larger house would be more like a homemade park model RV. I think the main difference is that this could be less expensive and would still meet most people’s needs.

What do you think? Is there value in this approach? Did you like the original concept better?

Here’s a little video that provides a better look at the 3D drawing. Don’t worry, the final design would have windows

A shotgun house is a nickname for a long narrow house with sequential rooms and no hallway. The nickname comes from the idea that if you stood at the front door and fired a shotgun the buck would fly out the back door without hitting the house. These houses were commonly built in cities before cars made suburbia popular. They also took advantage of lower property taxes because many cities based the tax rate on the lot width so when your house is only 12 feet wide you saved a lot of money. Another advantage was that as families grew more rooms could be easily added.

These tiny houses emerged in the south, specifically New Orleans, but you still see them today all over America from Key West to Chicago to California. In some cities these shotgun shacks are being replaced by urban renewal projects and in other cities they are being preserved.

In terms of practical design they seem ideal to me. Narrow houses are easy to put together even for inexperienced owner-builders. Simple roofs can be framed with smaller dimension lumber and a simple pitched roof requires no gables which are more difficult to frame. If more space is needed more rooms can be added out back without disrupting life in the front of the house.

(Photo credit Wikipedia Commons)

The only disadvantages I can see are the lack of a hallway which would facilitate multiple bedrooms and more privacy and that a long skinny house tends to use more building material than square house of the same square footage.

I personally think the advantages of a shotgun house out weight the disadvantages especially for inexperienced owner-builders. But barring a narrow lot I think I might design on a little differently.

I think I would give myself a few different sized boxes to use like an 8×8, 12×12, and 16×16. This would add a little more visual interest to the house while giving you a little more flexibility on the interior. The 8×8 and 12×12 rooms are small enough for one or two people to build and the roof span is small enough to use smaller sized lumber. The 16×16 begins to get into a territory that would require extra help and larger lumber but still within the reach of an owner-builder. But I’d definitely keep all the roof pitches the same to avoid any complex gable framing.

There are many different arrangements and the roof remains simple to frame as long as the rooms stay in a row like a shotgun house. The roof could be a shed or flat roof too. In fact many old shotgun houses had flat or nearly flat roofs.

What go me thinking about all this and looking back at shotgun houses were the surveys Kent (tinyhouseblog.com) and I ran over the past few weeks. There were definitely some clear trends but many people expressed a need for flexibility and the shotgun house approach seemed like the logical and time tested solution.

So what do you think? Can you imagine a modified and modern shotgun house meeting your needs?

If you think the idea is sound I’ll move forward with my plan to draw up the design and publish it in a little 8.5″ x 11″ book. I think I’ll use Lulu.com and make it available as an ebook and in print. It would contain all framing plans and options for different foundations and roofs.

My intention would be to publish a design system that most anyone could build themselves for little money. With the economy in such bad shape it just seems like the right thing for me to spend my time working on… other than my tiny free house of course. The book would be titled Tiny Simple House and if I get going now it could be ready before the end of the year.