Garage Converted Into AMAZING Tiny Home with Modern Design - Laneway House Tour

so this two-story laneway house parking incorporated on the ground floor the second floor is a compact but very efficient single bedroom unit in toronto they're called laneway suites so a laneway suite is basically a secondary home detached from the main house on a lot that above the public laneway it shares services with the main house it's non-severable and it's really intended to provide housing flexibility both in terms of rental options multi-generational living laneway suites are really unique tool to create density and animate under utilize space in laneways and leverage the land that we have for more people this video is sponsored by skillshare we love their creative online classes and we're excited to give you more information plus a link to a free trial at the end of the video the building was a garage basically like many other buildings in this neighborhood sort of detached garage on the laneway concrete block on all four sides the intent really was to put a second story edition on the existing structure the second story is completely isolated above the garage has a dedicated entrance so the ground floor is about 400 square feet the second floor is approaching 500 slightly less usable factoring in wall thicknesses in the stair but it's overall very compact efficient space on both stories yeah so we enter through the stair obviously and then through the kitchen tucked away the concept is really sort of conceptualizing it as almost a hotel style single person or dual person kitchen space full-size dishwasher always needed obviously the sink sort of an insert cooktop four burner still all electric induction and then a dual purpose microwave oven so it's also a convection oven and of course a compact counter depth 24 inch wide fridge we really wanted to do both enclosed and open storage there's nothing worse than a huge bank of large cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling so really giving that openness and always looking to get as much daylight as possible with the backsplash and getting a little bit more privacy obstructing views toward the laneway the key thing here is that you can easily cramp storage into every nook and cranny but we also want to be conscious of airiness and daylight and making it a space that you can enjoy and not just cram stuff into usually the first space to go in a compact unit is the dining area a lot of our builds will have peninsulas or islands eat-ins sometimes they forego formal sitting space entirely but here is really important to us to get that dedicated eating area so we sort of integrated this breakfast nook with full height glass carrying across that penny round backsplash all the way across and which you can see in other accents throughout the space so it works really well it's um i mean you're not sacrificing on functionality uh by sacrificing on square footage and a really big thing with a lot of these small builds are the aspect ratio of the spaces just as critical as the actual square footage so really getting that the ideal sort of space for uh distance to the television and obviously these very basic things was important that are often overlooked in small condos and things like that i mean little thing like putting furniture into a floor plan it makes a big difference making sure that it's actually functional then you're actually using the space around that furniture as circulation instead of dedicating circulation in the floor plate full size couch that was uh that was actually commissioned by the homeowner and then custom coffee table and a built-in television another great example of sort of using as much as much space as we can to our advantage i'm tucking this away trying not to make it a feature of the space but also acknowledging the fact that people watch tv working around a protected tree on the outside we sort of created an alcove with the builder to accommodate the tree trunk that would basically literally recess out of the building envelope and then we sort of looked at that as an opportunity to create some built-in shelving to rationalize that on the interior and obviously to create some storage space and an eye-catching feature from the actual living room so that's really where this came in whenever you're building a laneway suite in a lot of cases you only have two walls of windows you can have windows on two blank walls facing lot lines of the neighbors so skylights are a really big tool in our belt in order to get natural daylight deep into the floor plate so we'll often strategically locate these above living rooms bathrooms stairwells and so without that and a lot of these builds they would appear dark so we sort of use that to allow for daylight but also accommodate privacy something that was really unique about this project was having the liberty to do a few other sort of design moves so we worked really closely with the builder at build who really well executed this birch ply clotting so bringing that right down the stair to the front door wrapping that up the ceiling and allowing that to become a feature that balances the rest of the space otherwise it would appear very sanitary white cabinets white backsplashes etc bringing that birch ply has a feature into the bedroom i feel that that really makes the space sort of bringing that across the ceiling into the headboard a custom built queen size bed again done by at build coordinated with the homeowner and little things go a long way in a space like this sort of coordinating lighting on either side and incorporating storage for linen and such right above that stair and then going one step further with the built-in closets we find that built-in closets are really handy in these small spaces even just ikea pax units they don't have to be crazy custom millwork it's sort of being creative with things that are available off the shelf is a really easy way to optimize budget but also optimize storage obviously and limit how much wall space we're actually occupying really the premise here is the compact space doesn't mean you sacrifice on bedroom space it just means that you get a little bit more creative with how you use it just like a full-size dishwasher the laundry is critical in every unit so we have a compact stacked washer dryer sort of doubles as storage space and it's really it's a matter of convenience that we always like to incorporate the bathroom located right off the bedroom we use pocket doors throughout the unit often times to save on room for sort of over swings and things like that and then in the bathroom itself we kind of did some unique things pushing the toilet toward the outside wall having a full height frosted window centralizing the vanity and doing a walk-in shower everybody says that bathrooms and kitchens sell a house in my opinion bathrooms and kitchens make a home so it's really about identifying those key priorities and playing to them [Music] when you're approaching a project budget it's incredibly important to look at it holistically so generally speaking laneway suites of an average size are being built between 300 and 400 per square foot construction costs and that's in canadian dollars that would be plus tax plus contingency and plus soft costs soft costs are things like surveys permits design fees engineering basically every dollar spent in order to start construction laneway suites are one prong in a multi-pronged effort to provide more density in our cities so basically putting more people in less area with more amenities without jeopardizing the character of our urban fabric so really it's a way to address the the gap in density where you have a 40-story condo housing 3000 people and you have a 40 square kilometer neighborhood housing that same amount of people so it's um it's not the silver bullet to the housing crisis but it's one solution in a very complex effort to solve it if you want to find out more about lanescape we'll put a link to their website in the description below we also want to thank skillshare for sponsoring this video skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring and creative classes for anyone who loves learning we're completely self-taught when it comes to filming and interviewing people for the channel and we're always trying to improve our skills we've taken a bunch of their classes over the years and the latest one was called powerful storytelling today strategies for crafting great content by soledad o'brien it was full of great tips on how to interview people so that you can capture and share their stories in an engaging way skillshare also has classes on everything from music and video production to freelancing creative writing and a lot more many of the classes are under 60 minutes so it's not intimidating to get started and you can learn new skills pretty quickly so if you have a specific skill you're trying to learn i definitely recommend giving skillshare a try the first 1000 of our viewers to sign up through our link in the description will get a one month free trial of skillshare so you can start exploring your creativity today thanks so much for watching please share this video if you liked it and we'll see you in the next video

Channel: Exploring Alternatives

Views: 129,247

Keywords: laneway, lane, way, suite, house, home, garage, apartment, garden, accessory, dwelling, unit, coach, carriage, Exploring, Alternatives, tour, Lanescape, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, cost, price, budget, interior, retrofit, addition, converted, conversion, rental, multi, generational, housing, affordable, densify, cities, urban, living, lifestyle, city, what is, design, modern, space, tips, floorplan, open, concept, population, crisis, small, tiny, studio, one, bedroom, plywood, walls, cladding, windows, light, natural, privacy, purpose, new, awesome, best, 2022

Id: vHNYB0RhL80

Length: 9min 40sec (580 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 11 2022