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From designer chairs and desks to the perfect bulletin board and credenza, create your dream home office.
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DOWNSIZE ME | GIGA-LIVING IN NANO HOUSES

Text by M.P. Klier

Adrià Goula

1 of 8

For those who cringe when HGTV house hunters gripe that a McMansion's racquetball-court-size closet is too small to fit all their shoes and its two-and-a-half-car garage is cramped, the 42 dwellings detailed in Phyllis Richardson's Nano House: Innovations for Small Dwellings (Thames and Hudson, 2011) offer another way home.

Richardson—the author of the XS series on small buildings and the Archetcetera blog—shows us "structures that demonstrate a resounding appreciation for space, resources, and materials through their effective use on a small scale." In Nano House, "small scale" means an interior space of less than 807 square feet, though more than half of the designs are under 500 square feet.

FabLab House (635 square feet)
Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia and the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms

From certain angles the FabLab House is reminiscent of a covered wagon, but its shape is more accurately described as a "distorted paraboloid," which milks the most living space and solar-energy production from a lightweight design. The airy great room has living, dining (a table for eight!), sleeping, and office areas—and there's even a peep-through kitchen (shown above the potted plants in the left photo) and an upstairs sleeping loft.

The all-timber, highly clever building has a shaded outdoor area and natural ventilation, thanks to its perch atop three "legs," which hold the utilities. The FabLab House was built for the 2010 Solar Decathlon Europe—and not surprisingly, it won the People's Choice Award. You can order your own FabLab for about $60,000 (tax not included).

http://www.sierraclub.org/default.aspx

Setting Up A Temporary Kitchen

Part 6 Of Our Real Life Remodeling Journey

Demolition #2 involved the kitchen and that meant establishing a location for a temporary kitchen. 
The saying that the kitchen is the hub of the home is no lie and its significance as a central part of daily life is reinforced when you no longer have it.

If you lose your kitchen during a remodel, finding a space for a temporary one becomes job #1. In our case we had two choices: we could move the kitchen to the finished half of the basement or into the living room which was adjacent to the existing kitchen.

The basement offered some advantages in that we have an extra (albeit old) refrigerator down there already. The laundry sink is there too which makes it convenient for cleaning the dishes. The problem is that our basement is already pulling duty as the stand-in family room.

One of the important things for us in this whole process was to have a place where we could go to escape the chaos of the remodeling. Maintaining the sanctity of the basement as a family room where we could relax was paramount so we opted to use the living room as the temporary kitchen.

Removing The Old Kitchen First

After the demolition of the family room, the kitchen was next. The cabinets came down as did the walls and ceiling. Some of the cabinets got a new lease on life in the garage. Their removal from the kitchen wasn't too difficult although anything more than a single wall cabinet really required two people for a safe extraction from the wall.

Wall Cabinets & Peninsula Are Gone. . .

. . .Along With The Old Inoperable Range Hood

The Drywall Comes Off Too
Making Space

Before moving anything into the "new" kitchen we had to clear some space to accommodate the items to be relocated there. That meant moving some of the living room furniture to other places in the house.

The smaller chairs were reassigned to various bedrooms and the basement, as was the coffee table. We let the couch stay put because the the removal of the other furniture pieces afforded us enough space. We kept a narrow console table in place because it made a convenient location for the microwave and toaster oven.

Before embarking on this exercise we found it particularly helpful to stop and plan how this whole temporary kitchen setup was going to play out. We determined which items in the new space needed to be moved and where they would go. Likewise we thought about which items could stay and might be of use.

Moving Into The Temporary Kitchen

The next chore in setting up a temporary kitchen was packing up everything in the existing kitchen that we didn't absolutely need and finding some other place to store these items. You can read about that part of our effort in Part 3.

After that, we had to find an appropriate method, means and/or place to put the essentials in the new space. For example, we needed a spot for the food stuffs we use on a daily basis like cereals, breads, lunch items and the like. We also needed a spot for plates, bowls, cups, pots, pans and utensils.

The Living Room As Our New Kitchen

Items that we found helpful in establishing our ad hoc kitchen included a small, cheap pantry that originally housed a bunch of cookbooks and spices. We used that as our main pantry where most of the non-perishable food got stored. It's not big, roughly 2 feet wide by 4 feet tall, but it did the job without taking up a lot of room.

We also borrowed a few other items from around the house to use in place of things that were originally stored in the kitchen cabinets. We used two plastic bins that held unused toys and an old stand-up stereo cabinet to house our dishes and other essentials. If you don't have items like these around the house that you can press into service, you can purchase some cheap bins or shelving units to tide you over.

One other alternative that we employed as well was cardboard boxes. We found the ones from the liquor store to be pretty handy since they usually come with dividers to protect the liquor bottles. We used them to store glassware and things like cooking oil and vinegar bottles.

If you're planning on going through a similar type of remodel and need to relocate the kitchen, pare down as much as you can. Unless you live in a gymnasium, your temporary kitchen will get cluttered pretty quickly if you try and retain everything that was in your old kitchen.

A Place For Appliances & The Table

The third big piece in this effort was finding a place for the appliances. In our case, that meant the microwave, toaster oven and fridge. The refrigerator had wheels so it wasn't a big deal to move it into the living room.

We put our toaster oven and microwave on the console cabinet, tucked up against the wall. The spot was convenient and at a nice height too. If there's any way to locate these particular of appliances at countertop height, do so. It's a lot easier to use a microwave oven when you don't have to stoop down to floor level.

Mission Control: Microwave, Toaster Oven, Pantry & Utensils

Our old kitchen was disassembled in stages which meant we still had access to our electric cooktop and kitchen sink for a period of time which was a huge help. If possible I recommend negotiating with your contractor to work around these items until it's absolutely necessary to tear them out.

Our backup plan in the event this wasn't possible was to purchase a portable electric cooktop. They come in single and double-burner varieties and aren't that expensive. You can find them for $50 to $100. It's a small price to pay if you're losing your kitchen for a couple of months and compared to the cost of a full kitchen remodel, it's a drop in the bucket. Just be sure to follow the manufacturer's directions about locating it in the proper place to avoid a fire hazard.

The last thing to move into the temporary kitchen was the kitchen table. We made sure we removed enough furniture in the living room so that we'd have enough space for the table and chairs.

A Little Cramped But Usable

Based on our experience the foundation for a successful temporary kitchen involves several key elements:

• A place to relocate the stand-in kitchen with adequate space to accommodate your needs
• Good planning ahead of time to determine where things will go, what's essential and what's not
• A pairing-down to just the items that are really needed (it's not like you're going to be baking cookies and entertaining guests during this time period)
• Provisioning with sufficient appliances to keep life bearable (a microwave, toaster oven, maybe a portable electric cooktop)
• Last but certainly not least, a bit of tolerance, for both the people you live with and the conditions you're living under

That last point is important because surviving any major disruption, particularly to your kitchen, changes all of your daily habits. You have to get used to knowing where the cereal is or where the forks and plates are. There's usually less physical room so you're in close quarters and will stumble over each other from time to time. That can put some stress on a family. But going into this with the knowledge that it's temporary combined with some good planning on the front end should hold you in good stead while you ride out your remodel in your temporary kitchen.
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Chill Out: 10 Cool Ways to Beat the Heat Outdoors

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Demolition

Part 5 Of Our Real Life Remodeling Journey

Demo Day (& Getting Sentimental)

The day of demolition arrived and the family was up early, following the regular routine. The family room, its demise now hours away, sat in semi-darkness with all of it's lighting gone, save for the one overhead spotlight above the fireplace.

I have to admit that as I sat there and looked at the room, stripped of everything except the carpet and windows, the sentimental thoughts once again began to flow. In the seventeen years we've lived in this house that room has seen a lot of action. Probably most cherished are the memories of family movie nights every Friday with the boys.

They've grown up in this room, first learning to crawl, then walk, then ultimately play basketball in this room (don't ask where the parents were...). But they're getting bigger now and the couch doesn't seat all five of us like it used to when they were a lot smaller. Then again at their current ages it's not like they'd necessarily want to sit with us now, even if we did have a sofa big enough to accommodate us all.

Perhaps it makes me feel better to think that this room won't really go away. It'll change and evolve into a room with more space, ready for new memories. (But I can guarantee there won't be any more basketball.)

Teardown & Cleanup

Demolition started with the removal of the windows and the doors. The windows weren't worth salvaging because they were basically worn out. The french patio doors were still in good condition so those were removed and put aside for donation to a local reuse center. 

After that it was time for the heavy machinery. The first victim was the old patio concrete slab. It sat in the location of the future mudroom. A Bobcat skid steer made short work of the slab, breaking it in multiple pieces to be recycled at some concrete reclamation center somewhere.

Once the patio was gone it was time for the main event. With a small but able backhoe equipped with a thumb-like projection opposite the bucket, the operator proceeded to gnaw away at the family room.

The structure was no match for this onslaught of iron and hydraulics as the machine chewed chunks of wood, insulation and metal. This is when you step back and question whether you're actually insane for allowing someone to do this to your home (remember -- it was still attached to the rest of the house). Imagery of a T-Rex chomping on some hapless Duckbill (aka, the family room) quickly came to mind. Once again the old emotions tugged at me as I watched this place that had kept us warm and sheltered was cleared to make room for our growing family.

Last to fall was the ceiling-height brick fireplace, standing amidst the surrounding carnage that looked like the aftermath of the London Blitz.

What probably took a few days to build was down in a matter of 20 minutes.

Any hope I had of salvaging the rest of those fireplace bricks was quickly lost as the backhoe created a scrambled-egg mash out of the structure. After pulling the materials free it quickly picked up the debris, crunched it in its jaws and regurgitated it into the nearby dumpster.

I've never personally witnessed the destruction of a tornado or hurricane but after the room was torn down I felt like I had.

The debris field rivaled that of the Titanic's and it was amazing to see how much 'stuff' actually comprised the structure of what we once called our family room.

Then with nimble dexterity, the backhoe operator scraped and plucked whatever was in reach and efficiently packed it away in the dumpster. With a few other workers quickly raking and picking up scraps that were too small for the backhoe to grasp, the area quickly became neat and clean with only the foundation remaining.

It was hard to believe that earlier that morning there had been a room standing there. Amazing what the right tools can accomplish!Say Goodbye To Your Lawn

If you plan a remodel where there's going to be some excavation, plan on losing your lawn. All the twisting and turning that these machines make to negotiate around your house make mincemeat of the grass in no time flat.

Here are a few recommendations to consider to protect some of your landscape assets. Most contractors and municipalities should require them but if they don't, you can ask for them up front.

Silt Fences - these ugly but handy devices prevent what was your lawn and the surrounding dirt piles from becoming a mudslide and ending up in your neighbor's yard. Without the root structure of the turf holding the soil in place any rain will tend to wash the soil away. The silt fence helps keep the dirt contained.

Large trees are irreplaceable when you consider the time it takes for them to mature to a size that provides generous shade and aesthetic value. My own municipality required these fences as well as an inspection by the city arborist as a stipulation for obtaining the building permit.Tree Fences - These uglier, but useful fences protect your trees' root zone from compaction and destruction from the heavy equipment that will tromp across your property.

If your city doesn't require this, you may want to consult the services of an arborist and tell them what you plan on doing. They can help you layout the forbidden zones on your property so that your trees will survive the building process.

Driveway Watch - Some of those behemoths on wheels that'll be servicing your remodel can crack a driveway, particularly on the edges where asphalt is the weakest. Dumpster, concrete and roofing material delivery trucks are some of the major culprits. Some occurrences may be unavoidable depending on work site access but it doesn't have to be a given. Talk it over with the contractor and/or the driver of the vehicle. There may be work-arounds that are possible to avoid subjecting your driveway to oversize loads.

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