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Shalina Kell is a graphic designer and a maker—and now she can add "tiny home builder" to her resume. The single mom lives with her teenage daughter in a lovely, light-filled, 350-square-foot tiny home in Sacramento that she built and designed herself.

“We pulled apart one volume and staggered it along the buildable area of the property,” says architect Matthew Ahlberg of Portland firm Barrett Made. The home is clad in unfinished cedar, meant to weather over time.

This house has an exterior of black panels and clear-grain cedar tongue-and-groove siding, and a rooftop deck that lets its owners enjoy the outdoors.

From a different perspective, the home appears more transparent and open to the water.

In Austin, Texas, this 1,100-square-foot accessory dwelling unit, called The Chelsea, splits a lot with the main house. The ADU responds to the lot by dodging the heritage trees to the north while creating a very spacious front yard. There is a garage that blocks a dogtrot and the living area of the house from the setting sun; the larger windows are concentrated on the northern side of the lot for plenty of natural lighting while reducing the heat gain in the summer and encouraging passive cross-ventilation.

Built on a tight budget of $120,000, a retirement home in the mountains delivers unexpected contemporary design to a rural township.