Credits
From Brad Edwards
Dear Dwell Editorial Staff,
My partner and I always wanted to move to a beach town in California but had to readjust our thinking due to the extraordinarily high real estate costs. The only way to accomplish our goal of living in an esthetically pleasing space within our budget was to go small. So we spent many weeks designing a compact, efficient, and open floorpan. We bought into a Co-Op mobile home park just a short distance from the beach in the town of Santa Cruz California.
We hired a builder to complete the basic build and we did the finishing work ourselves. My partner's background in woodworking and surfboard shaping came in handy. It was about a 2 year process from beginning to end as every detail mattered. From a design standpoint, we took into consideration the lot and the adjacent redwood/maple trees, with the goal of not having any fully enclosed spaces. Our main constraint was keeping it under 400 square feet (not including the loft) which is the maximum limit that is allowed while still having it considered a DMV Park Model Home.
With the high ceilings and clearstory windows we were able to bring in natural light as well as views of the surrounding vegetation. In the end we were able to create a 396 square foot home (plus a loft) that feels much larger and more inviting than a traditional trailer home. We spent additional time and energy with the fine details including a custom Black Walnut & cement river counter in the kitchen, the Swanstone step in shower, as well as the sliding barn bathroom door made out of reclaimed redwood from the old fence that we took down in the yard. For landscaping, we were aiming a Japanese garden inspired outdoor space. For added storage space we built a custom matching accessory shed with 10 foot high ceilings, metal siding and a redwood sliding barn door.
We had an inspector come over to look at our final project to make sure that there weren't any improvements or changes that we should make and he was so impressed that he suggested we contact Dwell to see if you would be interested in featuring our home in your magazine. That was a couple of years ago and we never got around to doing it. But it looks like our next chapter in life involves a move up to Bellingham Washington so we have made the difficult decision to put our tiny home on the market in the next month or two which means that this would be our last opportunity to share our home with others.
Feel free to contact me if you are interested. The pictures that I included are ones that I took myself and we will be having more professional ones taken soon that I can also share if you are interested.
Sincerely,
Brad Edwards and Kevin Kirn