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Skinny Small House in LA with Recessed Kitchen and Solid Door Balcony


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This skinny small house in LA is brought to you by Kirsten Dirksen of Faircompanies.

This architect (Anonymous Architects) in LA wanted an affordable house so he found and purchased the smallest one he could find which was just 350-square-feet.

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Skinny Small House in LA

The only problem was that he wanted to be able to live and work from it so he was going to have to come up with some changes.

Skinny House in LA

Photos Courtesy of Faircompanies.com

From 350 Sq. Ft. to 960 Sq. Ft.

He did this by requesting special planning to double the height of the structure. These numbers do include a garage though so it is quite a small home as you’ll see.

One of LA’s Skinniest Houses

The design is simple: it’s a stack of boxes that reach the property line on all possible sides to maximize indoor space.

sideview-skinny-house-la

It’s a 780 sq. ft. lot with 960 sq. ft. of interior space including the garage. The interior includes features such as floating stairs, and a recessed kitchen.

front-skinny-house-la

Unique Living Room View

view interior kitchen

Recessed Kitchen Floor

recessed-floor

Self-Designed and Built Furniture Throughout

living-room

Unique See-through Staircase with Support

staircase

Solid Door Window/Balcony – GREAT Idea

solid-door-window-balcony

Shower with Skylight

Shower with Skylight

I highly encourage you to watch the entire video tour below:

LA’s Skinny Small House Video Tour

Learn more about this skinny house in LA at the Architects website right here and at Kirsten’s site right here.

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Alex

Alex is a contributor and editor for TinyHouseTalk.com and the always free Tiny House Newsletter. He has a passion for exploring and sharing tiny homes (from yurts and RVs to tiny cabins and cottages) and inspiring simple living stories. We invite you to send in your story and tiny home photos too so we can re-share and inspire others towards a simple life too. Thank you!
{ 17 comments… add one }
  • Cahow
    May 11, 2013, 9:29 am

    I’m.In.Love. <3

    As a self-described Country Mouse AND City Mouse, it's grand to see a tiny Urban house! Love, love, love every detail of this place: the cast Jade Plant light dimmer; the wee pine cone on the stairs; the use of dropping the kitchen a foot to give more sq.ft. to it from the bottom staircase approach; well, just everything! Nice touch with the Juliet balconies on both floors.

    Serene, sublime and simple. Well done, mate, well done!

    Interesting that at 960 sq.ft., the architect suggests the space is only big enough for ONE person to live well in this home, when some 150+ sq.ft. homes have TWO people living in them. Just goes to show you how we're all unique in how much personal space we require to thrive.

  • jon
    May 11, 2013, 1:06 pm

    Great tiny house. We have solar lights that have patent pending technology to light up a room or house(!) bright enough to read by, and no wiring to the grid, no carbon footprint once installed, and nice designs for your tiny home!
    Please contact [email protected] and see our website at http://www.yetisolar.com.

  • alice h
    May 11, 2013, 3:50 pm

    I like it. If it were mine I’d paint a lush jungle or forest mural all over the outside. Or maybe some kind of trompe l’oeil architectural details. I guess that’s not totally in sync with the modern design though.

    • Cahow
      May 12, 2013, 12:03 pm

      alice: I think the architect wants/needs his home to be on the Down Low, that’s why it’s painted the way it is. If you watch the video, at mark 2:04, it shows the gangway between the buildings and there’s graffiti tags all along the gangway. I’m confident that if the house had anything that drew attention to it, it would be more of a target for tagging.

      I don’t know Los Angeles real estate but I do know Urban Real Estate and this looks like a middle to lower income area. With the architect’s Aussie (?) accent, I “think” he mentioned the word “Himalayan” regarding the neighborhood but I googled it with no results. I know in Chicago, we have GreekTown, ChinaTown, Little Italy, Andersonville, etc. so it sounds legit to have a “Himalayan” area in L.A, probaby based on restaurants.

      I do like your idea of the trompe l’oeil painting. Also, if he really wanted to go Urban, have the sides of the building painted in Graffiti Style. Now THAT would be captivating!

      • alice h
        May 12, 2013, 2:57 pm

        That makes sense, but if he really wanted to be more unobtrusive he should probably have painted the place white, beige or one of the other paler colours all the other houses in the neighbourhood seem to be painted. The black is very attention grabbing in comparison. I actually like the black aesthetically, but the surface must get pretty hot in summer.

      • Osric
        October 7, 2014, 1:51 pm

        In the video he says “MLS”, which is the Multiple Listing Service for real estate. Not “Himalayas.” LOL.

  • carrie
    May 11, 2013, 5:03 pm

    Awesome house as I said above!!!! The designer needs a clean-up.

    • Cahow
      May 12, 2013, 11:50 am

      A “clean up” of WHAT?! Just curious as the inside of the home is pretty tidy compared to other videos I’ve seen.

  • Erik Markus
    May 13, 2013, 2:09 am

    “Skinny” Is NOT tiny or even small.

    A 1950s ranch home, with 3 bedrooms, were the same sq. ftg.

    A house is not tiny or small simply because it is smaller than a mc mansion of 4000 s.f.

    We need to be watchful of the typical corruption that has happened in the last 20 years or so.
    This is where the outdated product, in this case mcmansions and the concept of bigness, realize their fate,
    then steal the names of the better product and slap it on their crap and try and off load it on an innocent public.

    Now we have 20′ long ford trucks claiming they are eco friendly.
    Toxic chemical products that either use the words green friendly or use packaging to infer that their crap is.
    Corporate animal farming operations selling happy sunny pictures of their toxic garbage.
    Next we’ll have eco-friendly gasoline, healthy cigarettes (oops, tried that one), and former repo mcmansions painted in shades of green claiming they are “earth-friendly”. yuck.
    No sale.

    I expect and will have meaningful change.
    I’ve taken the marketing classes to know what madison avenue does and am old enough to have seen the damages.

    I’m not accumulating tinyhouse and green friendly literature to eleviate guilt about an unhealthy suburban lifestyle I was lead to believe was “all that”.

    I built a tiny house I love.
    I’m building my solar electric system to get off-grid.
    I can’t wait to get electric transportation.

    But I will have fun exposing the marketing and other illegal behaviour of the likes of the koch brothers and their minions. hehe. No one is above question, especially those who think they are.

    A 1000 sf “skinny” house is not a tiny or small house.

    My conscious is clear, I have the real thing. I’m doing the right things. And everyone else can do the same. As we see in all the wonderful homes and examples shown on this site and others. Having a tiny home that is ACTUALLY eco-friendly, is not difficult to accomplish, even for a novice.

    Focus.

    • Cahow
      May 13, 2013, 8:02 am

      Jeannie DiMauro wrote: Before you ‘go off’ on the guy who writes these VERY INFORMATIVE AND HELPFUL pages for those of us who are interested in building tiny homes, you might want to try reading at least a page or two of his blogs, Facebook pages, and or any of his many online publications. And just a suggestion… try not being so snarky to people like Alex who are TRYING to help others by sharing their own experiences (and misfortunes!) so we don’t ALL have to re-invent the damned wheel. It takes a lot of personal time to write these guidelines… and to respond to all the questions and comments.

      Alex wrote: We shouldn’t be so quick to judge others. We all have unique needs/preferences. Take what you like, leave what you don’t. Please. 🙂

      • John M
        June 8, 2013, 12:07 pm

        Althought this is 960 sq. ft. that number takes into account the garage of 320 sq. ft! Thus @ 640 sq ft I’d say that that is a small home. I know roughly where that neighborhood is & the black paint IMHO would make that too hot a place during the summer months.

        One element that was pointed out was the lowered kitchen level. That made the conventional rise on the stair case lower and as such I thought that that was a clever design feature.

        Had the small back yard space been optimized and nicely finished (it wouldn’t cost a kings ransom to finish off) it would add to the total appeal off some great design elements! Overall very very nice.

  • Linda
    January 28, 2014, 9:12 pm

    In earthquake country, I’d want the SHORTEST house available.

    • Eric
      February 16, 2016, 1:25 pm

      Well that wouldn’t be any fun in a tremblor then would it? ; )

  • rudraswamy ct
    April 6, 2014, 11:16 am

    Hai – Its a great idea of doing in a small place utlizing a inch by inch in house and would like to build a 20 x 30 ft (600sqft) house. which sould be ground floor rented and first n second should be duplex, so please let us know how can you help you for doing the same. if possible!!!!!

    Bcoz i work for a plumbing company in india and very small budget.

    trully
    rudraswamy

  • October 7, 2014, 5:46 pm

    LOVED this house. It says that the 900 + sq ft included the garage so it’s actually around 600 something, right? That falls into a small home in my book. I love city living and this place just screams LA. I think it’s quite serene and natural feeling with the added crazy juxtaposition of that busy street. Super neat. I’d love to check it out. At just over 100k, that’s a doable price for many people trying to own in giant cities like LA. Cool guy, too.

    • Alex
      October 8, 2014, 5:37 am

      Thanks Michele! I’m glad you liked it.

  • Dwayne Grady
    October 15, 2017, 1:19 am

    Saw trees on the roof in the photo.
    Roof top Deck?
    Would be nice.

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