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My childhood cabin, revisited
Apr. 30th, 2010 03:42 pmDid a weird little project this week. I was reading A Little House of My Own: 47 Designs for 47 Tiny Houses, when one of the rough little wooden sheds reminded me wayyyyy too much of the tiny cabin I grew up in. I thought, for the millionth time and with the usual anger, about how one opened the door to see the garbage and the laundry; how there was no place to gracefully put down the things a person brings in from the car; how clutter spread out from every corner and almost everything was made of bare wood or bare concrete (uncleanable -- talk about a bad idea, when you own and work in a machine shop). And I looked at the other tiny houses and thought there were 375 square feet there! It must have been possible to live more gracefully in that.
Next thing I knew, I was researching different ways to model the old cabin, which I lived in with my parents until I was 12 (after that we added a 16' x 16' addition, half of which was considered part of the house). I knew it might upset me on some level, and sure enough, I did have a few nightmares about that place and my parents this week. But ( I persevered and here's the floorplan. )
Then I took on the challenge: I would not change the cabin's footprint, or move the door or the window (well, not much) and I would keep the plumbing all at the left end of the cabin -- I would even keep the keyboard -- and I would STILL do better. ( Here's my new floorplan. )
It's not clear why I did this exercise. I thought it might be good for me to not demonize the place just for its square footage, to imagine a small-scale but dignified childhood life there. And maybe it was. I could do better yet by allowing myself to loft certain areas (there would have been vertical space to do so) or allowing more windows, etc. However, now I'm pretty into www.floorplan.com, and while I've never needed a ton of space, I'm not interested in moving to anyplace under 600 square feet, either. So I want to spend the time modeling my current place, instead.
Next thing I knew, I was researching different ways to model the old cabin, which I lived in with my parents until I was 12 (after that we added a 16' x 16' addition, half of which was considered part of the house). I knew it might upset me on some level, and sure enough, I did have a few nightmares about that place and my parents this week. But ( I persevered and here's the floorplan. )
Then I took on the challenge: I would not change the cabin's footprint, or move the door or the window (well, not much) and I would keep the plumbing all at the left end of the cabin -- I would even keep the keyboard -- and I would STILL do better. ( Here's my new floorplan. )
It's not clear why I did this exercise. I thought it might be good for me to not demonize the place just for its square footage, to imagine a small-scale but dignified childhood life there. And maybe it was. I could do better yet by allowing myself to loft certain areas (there would have been vertical space to do so) or allowing more windows, etc. However, now I'm pretty into www.floorplan.com, and while I've never needed a ton of space, I'm not interested in moving to anyplace under 600 square feet, either. So I want to spend the time modeling my current place, instead.
