Small Spaces

The $85K off-grid tiny home on wheels Gonçalo Marrote designed in Mafra, Portugal, looks to views of rolling hills and wide-open sky.

A wall of clerestory windows brings afternoon light into the ceramics studio while large sliding glass doors can open it entirely to the garden. They were all custom-made by Blomberg, a company in Sacramento, and the project's biggest splurge.

After a wildfire ripped through Jeff Waldman and Molly Fiffer’s 10-acre retreat in the Santa Cruz Mountains in August of 2020, the couple was determined to build a new home. They were hesitant about investing too much money, though, as they knew that California was only getting drier and more prone to fires.

In the guest bedroom, a Murphy bed from Resource Furniture is surrounded by custom cabinetry by Black Square Builders.

In the two bedrooms and the living room, custom built-in pieces below the windows creatively conceal the HVAC units while adding storage.

The living room is furnished with Crosshatch Chairs by Eoos and a custom oak mirror designed by Dunham Robinson.

The former galley kitchen was effectively enlarged by wrapping new cabinetry around the corner to face the dining room. “You're taking something away from another space, but we did it in a very careful way,” says Robinson. “It was just this one simple extra bit of storage that visually opened the kitchen to the rest of the room.”

Dunham Robinson transformed a couple's new apartment with a warm entry sequence defined by an oak storage piece in the foyer.

“Where we let loose was on the window,” Matt says. “It’s an aluminium window frame, which is bushfire compliant and easy to install, but the way that we detailed it was about hiding the frame so that the eye is drawn into the space.”