I Turned this Tricky Abandoned Tiny House into an Elegant Two Bed Home

I really enjoy being challenged by tricky or awkward sites and seeing if I can turn a weirdly shaped non-residential building into something that I would actually really enjoy living in so this building was sent to me by a viewer of this Channel and it was recently on the market it's a two-story Stone Barn that was storing musical instruments but what's particularly challenging about it is that it's nine meters long by two and a half meters wide so I'm fascinated by how this building might have come into existence because in addition to its distinctive Dimensions it's either built against or is acting as a retaining wall to an enormous Bank of Earth behind it this means that it effectively operates at three levels the ground and upper floors internally and the external level to the back and side which I estimate to be about four to four and a half meters higher than the surrounding area the prop the advert didn't show a map of the property's cartilage but it did say that included with the property is approximately two meters of land to the side and rear of the property which would put it up on this higher land level up here and given that there's a little access route internally that's what's made me believe that it's the cartilage on this side other distinctive features of this property are its steep mono pitch roof and this curve to the wall at the end so the main axis is straight off the road which isn't ideal but there's no other way of getting into it that isn't through someone else's land then in terms of openings there's this shuttered door at first floor level on the street side what appears to be a glazed door of this neighboring property here a window on the first floor above and then a high level small door that leads out the back of the building and up onto the raised land behind it up some steps so internally all there is is a ladder stair at the back of the property to take you between the floors so from the outset the key features of this building that are going to drive the design are its lengths the need to incorporate both horizontal and vertical circulation into the already narrow spaces and the need for natural light to spread out as far as possible without the potential for adding Windows to any of these outer walls so the obvious solution to that last factor is to get light in through the roof and the way to get that light to spread down to the ground floor is to put the roof light over the stairs so putting the stairs in a central location then achieves a few things it brings light into the depth of the building and it acts as a break between the ends of the building and then these ends naturally start to accommodate different uses while taking on more regular proportions so that solves the issue of light and vertical circulation but this is still a very narrow building only just over two and a half meters wide and with it being so long achieving functional horizontal circulation is going to be fundamental to the usability of this space so as with any project with tight constraints what you want to be doing is looking at layering up the functionality of these available areas so these spaces at each end of the building have proportions that enable them to be inhabited comfortably as a room but when you're moving through these spaces to get from A to B you don't want to be weaving in and out of furniture and having to take weird circuitous roots what you want to be doing is designing the layout of your rooms to leave a corridor space to one side of the building so this will be your landing at the top and bottom of the stair and it will also be the route to access these end rooms but once you're inhabiting that room you won't be thinking of this as a corridor because you'll have arranged the layout of the room to naturally leave that area free now the way that I've approached the design of this building has been to hinge everything around the stair and the efficient layout of these rooms but if I simply treated these rooms as areas to be filled with any old furniture the chances are that that furniture might work or it might not and it might start to make the whole long space feel a bit fragmented and haphazard so instead I've treated the individual Furniture elements like the bed the sofa the dining room seating the kitchen as extensions of this staircase so they're fixed integrated elements that take on the character of being one entire piece of joinery the flows through the building and works holistically and this provides not only the exact layout requirements needed to make the circulation work but the opportunity to integrate lots of different little storage areas so here in the kitchen you enter and you can sit on this bench here while you take off your shoes and you can hang your coat in the cupboard opposite and then you can lift up the seat of the bench and put your shoes in here and the kitchen doubles as a circulation space over to the stairs and then under the stairs you find a utility area with a washing machine and space for some other things and that creates a little seating look for the dining table with some integrated shelving and again a bench seat that can be hiding more storage beneath it upstairs if you head into the bedroom you go through this partition element and find the bed tucked in to one side of the room with some drawers integrated beneath it and once you're in the room you can either close off this space with the pocket door concealed in the partition or you can pull out your hanging wardrobe space that's concealed behind the door this whole element fits into the profile of the building so it has plenty of space up above for storing suitcases or other items and it doubles as a bedside table where you can put your books and going through to the living room this sofa is also an integrated piece of furniture with drawers hidden beneath it and given that the opposite wall also acts as the side wall of the circulation route you could install a projector on this slanted roof to use as your TV so you're not having to put any extra Furniture over here now at the end of this building there's this lovely curved wall and given that the bathroom has to go somewhere I thought it would be nice to take that curve into the shower space on the ground floor and I've deliberately avoided using timber for this bathroom wall because I don't want this bathroom to be obvious creating a concealed door in what looks like an end wall that just has some paneling on it and keeping it white like the walls is a way of diminishing the impact that the bathroom's presence could have on this dining space next to it and it means that the dining space gets to benefit from this window and gets it closer to the kitchen and spaces above on the first floor this curved wall leads up to an existing window that provides access to the land behind now currently that window isn't a door size and needs to be accessed with a step ladder but if it turned out that there was enough space within the cartilage I think it would be great to try and use a bit of this outdoor area that's included with the building to get an extension to The Living Spaces so I would look at enlarging this opening to make it a door size then lowering the ground floor level outside here to install some more storage along with another little room and shower room around the end corner of this building and this could either be another bedroom or it could be a study but keeping in mind you probably couldn't put any Windows directly on the boundary you could instead look at getting a light in through a roof light that just sits along the pitch of the existing roof as well as via a substantial picture window overlooking the remainder of the land and if you wanted you could climb out through the little shutter to that window so you could access that little bit of land or you could go back down and out through this glazed door and up to the ground level above assuming of course the boundary extends that far and if it doesn't then maybe you'd want to adjust the layout of this room and make this a door instead out to the little garden Beyond so I hope this has given you lots of ideas for ways to work with an awkward narrow building and make what could be a unique little home if you enjoyed this please do share my videos and encourage others to subscribe so that I can keep making them and of course do let me know any other ideas you have in the comments for what else you'd like to see

Channel: Gemma Wheeler Architecture

Views: 1,412,388

Keywords: abandoned building, before and after, before and after renovation, home improvement, home renovation, house conversion, house remodel, house renovation, i bought a ghost town, i bought an abandoned tiny house, never too small, renovating an abandoned building, renovating an old house, tiny house, architecture, how to design like an architect, architect, abandoned cottage, tiny house design, architect redesigns, tiny house tour, simple living, living big in a tiny house 2023

Id: Iubtmeuq_Nc

Length: 9min 46sec (586 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 06 2023