Whether you’re buying a tiny house, working with a tiny house designer, or designing your own, knowing how to draw a floor plan will help you communicate your ideas and turn them into a real, workable design.
Getting Started
- Start the old-fashioned way. Most great ideas start out with a quick sketch on paper. But a drawing is most useful when it’s done to scale, allowing you to understand the size of elements and their relationships to each other.
- Graph paper makes it easy to draw to scale. Find graph paper with a not-too-dense grid, or print your own. Use a pencil, a pen, a magic marker, or whatever works for you.
Using the graph paper grid
- You’ll want each square of the grid to equal some easy fraction of a foot, like 3”, 4”, 6”, or 1′. Choose one of these (say 6”) and multiply it by the number of grid squares on your graph paper (say, 30×39). That gives 180×234”, or 15×19.5′ (divide inches by 12 to get feet). So, at that scale on that piece of paper, you have room to draw something up to 15′ wide and 19′-6” long. A 24” square table would be four grid squares long by four grid squares wide.
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I love teardrop campers so I had to show you this one.
It’s a complete video tour of a 2006 Camp-Inn 560 Ultra Teardrop Trailer.
Actually it’s one of the best teardrop video tours I’ve come across because the owner shows you everything in detail.
You can tell this camper is really well built.
Teardrops are great because they’re lightweight and easy to store.
You can usually tow them with normal cars or small SUVs.
2006 Camp-Inn 560 Ultra Teardrop Camper
This hand made micro camper has a queen size bed along with a couple of bunk beds.
There is plenty of storage inside to store your bags and other goodies, as you’ll see in the video below.
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Have you ever heard of the Providence Arcade in Rhode Island?
It’s America’s oldest indoor shopping mall which was built in 1828.
This mall has been a national landmark since 1976 and it was re-done in the 1980’s.
I was happy to find out that they’re adding 38 micro apartments to the mall!
The mall also has micro retail spaces available.
The owner, Evan Granoff, saw an opportunity to create affordable housing for people who want it.
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This tiny house design by Claude von Roesgen not only has a roof made out of solar panels…
But it also doubles as a pontoon (actually tri-toon) houseboat. The home has two configurations: (1) to be attached onto a utility trailer or (2) a pontoon boat which I’ll show you below. So can we legitimately call this an amphibious tiny house? Another interesting feature is the home’s built-in solar roof.
Don’t miss other amazing stories like this – join our FREE Tiny House Newsletter for more!
An Amphibious Tiny House? From Wheels to Pontoons… And It Has A Solar Roof!
Tiny House with a Solar Roof
They actually used the solar panels as roofing for the house. This is the first time I’ve seen it done this way and I really like it. See what I mean in the photos below:
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For many people the sound of a blizzard or lots of snow sounds bad.
Especially if their tiny house on a trailer is concerned… Right?
Today we’re featuring a group of people with a different perspective.
For them all of this snow is as great as being a Christian kid on Christmas morning.
The Outdoor Research Sidecountry skiers and snowboarders have been traveling with their 112-square-foot tiny house.
All in the search of the perfect ski area. I invite you to join Molly Baker, Zack Griffin, Neil Provo, Sam Giffin, and Andrew Walbon- along with their tiny home- in the photos and videos below:
Tiny Home in a Blizzard: Lots of Snow!
Watch below as the Outdoor Research team skis and as they try to keep the tiny house from being completely submerged in snow.
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Ryan Mitchell of The Tiny Life has been building his own tiny house.
Besides blogging about living tiny and the construction of his tiny home..
And hosting a tiny house chat with Macy Miller of MiniMotives..
He’s been collecting research on tiny houses. Remember that survey I posted?
Ryan is having a visual representation of the information created.
If you want to help support the project just see below to learn how.
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Guest Post by Tonita
Some people like to entertain or host holiday parties. Tiny house owners might shy away from any thought of it due to not having an adequate amount of space where people can be seated somewhat comfortably.
Dinner parties can be fun in a tiny house, that is of course if your guests are not claustrophobic, and you don’t serve Mexican food in such a small space.
Here are some tips to create a festive holiday party in your tiny home.
You might also want to check out my Pink Christmas in a Tiny House post.
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Over at the Tiny Life, new contributor Marie made a great post about what she calls “Procrastiprepping.” This is the idea that you can stall your work by convincing yourself that you are doing work preparing for the actual work.
“While waiting for the trailer, then the welding on the trailer, Alan was purchasing used tools (compressor, nail guns, sawsall, etc) from Craigslist and Amazon while I made materials lists, estimated board-feet of lumber and plywood, and scanned the internet for FSC-approved flooring. I call this our Procrastiprepping Phase. Sure, buying an expensive trailer and ordering equally expensive windows is a financial commitment, but nothing says Point Of No Return like screwing down that first bit of floor joist.”
Marie is absolutely right. There is nothing like getting started. It is really easy to get caught in the trap of learning how to do something rather than actually doing it. You can tell yourself you’re trying to be prepared as possible but just because you understand how to do something doesn’t mean you’ve done it. When people ask me how to get started building a tiny house I always say that the first thing they need to do is put down the books and pick up the hammer and nail down that first board. This is metaphorical, you understand. Most of the time nailing down a board isn’t the first step anyway.
Notice how the drill matches my shirt. Photo by Laura M. LaVoie
So, how do you find your own motivation. Read more to see my thoughts on the subject.
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Joe Everson of Tennessee Tiny Homes is doing a road tour right now.
The dates, times and locations are listed below.
You’ll get to tour a real tiny house on a trailer.
From Tennessee, to North Carolina, to Georgia, and back to Tennessee.
Here’s your chance to experience a tiny house for free.
Photo Credit Chris
Upcoming stops where you can see Joe and his latest tiny house:
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