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Really Small House Plans

I have alerts set up to tell me about new posts relating to house plans and home design in general. Lately I have been receiving many alerts relating to tiny house plans. It must be a sign of the times. Many of these tiny homes are so small that I really cannot see how anyone can live in them. They have taken the idea of restrained living to the extreme (for an example see new small house plan available today) . There seems to be a competition over who can create the tiniest home.

But recently I ran across a company called "Reclaimed Space" where I found a couple of their prototypes to be quite nice. Their niche seems to be creating very well crafted really small homes - but not necessarily tiny. These are sort of studio apartment sized homes. And they are really nice - trimmed out with recycled lumber, corrugated metal and other fine finishes. Now these are the kinds of tiny houses that I could actually see myself living in.

Check out the photos below. If you want to see more go to reclaimed space .

one of their modules en-route

eating / kitchen area

kitchen
bed area
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Rio 2016 Olympic Images


This post is not related to house plans or home design but I thought would be interesting for everyone. As you know Rio De Janeiro has been awarded the 2016 Olympic games. The Architectural firm of BCMF Arquietetos was responsible for envisioning the Olympic environment. I have included a few of the images they created. Some pretty cool stuff.




Chicago is a pretty nice town, but it is difficult to imagine a more dramatic backdrop for the Olympic games than Rio? I am looking forward to watching in 2016.

If you want to see more Rio Olympic images you can go to the official Rio 2016 web site

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in and out burger

: : uhm....I just love this .flickr photo. it's probably the bright contrasting colors. it's making me hungry. time for dinner.
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photo and card inspiration



: : pretty vintage rose cards from .nest pretty things. and a wall of inspiration from .simply photo. I'm also loving blues at the moment.
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swedish home


: : swedish home inspiration from newfound blog .desiretoinspire.
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home


: : some .flickr. home inspiration
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Vinyl siding done not so ugly!

Vinyl siding is hated by most Architects and by many quality home builders. It's bad rep is deserved for the most part - I'll list just a few reasons:
  • limited choice of colors - usually shades of beige
  • looks flimsy
  • seams are obvious
  • all those j-channels around windows and doors look terrible and not authentic
On the other hand vinyl is inexpensive. And nowadays everyone is trying to find a way to construct a house plan less expensively. So in the interest of being fair to vinyl siding I am posting a link to a Fine Homebuilding Article entitled "8 ways to make vinyl siding look it's best" (just click the link). If you use all 8 of the tips I would dare say you can have a vinyl siding done not so ugly!


My favorite tip is on how to eliminate the J-trim. The J-trim I think is one of those things that really makes vinyl stand out as vinyl. If you can eliminate or reduce it's use now you can have a siding installation that looks much more authentic.


By the way I have one more tip that's not listed in the article. Tip number 9 - Don't Use Beige. Next to J-trim, Beige is the biggest thing that makes vinyl look like vinyl. The CertainTeed website has a useful took called ColorView which can help you visualize various color combinations. I did the image below very quickly using that tool. I would suggest keeping the color scheme simple when using vinyl. Keep it all white or do a simple scheme of one body color with a contrasting trim color (such as below).

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