Name: BT
Location: Western North Carolina
Size: The semi-custom manufactured white-pine log cabin's interior measures 11.5' x 34' to stay within legal size for travel trailers (max 400 sq. ft.)

Favorite resource:

My favorite resource is my wife, then myself as designer, carpenter, laborer.

What inspired you?

After living aboard our 37' ocean-cruising sailboat in the Pacific for seven years, we were determined to keep "living- small." The lack of space was welcomed - it's cozy, like the referigerator box we played in as kids. It makes a small footprint on the land, leaving more of the land bucolic. It took fewer resources to build. It means low heating & cooling bills. It's a more simplified, responsibe way of living on an increasingly crowded planet.

3-7-cabin (1).jpg

...Though it weighs 16 tons, it's in the same legal catagory as an
Airstream your uncle would tow to the beach with his Oldsmobile, thus
avoiding some building/zoning code hassles. It was towed to its site
and set up like a mobile home, though there's no reason these things
couldn't be helicopter-lifted atop a city skyscraper or to a remote
mountain- or lake-side. Quality is mixed: It was built in the South.
I had to redo much of it.

3-7-cabin (2).jpg

Design Tip:

Build one long high bookshelf around the walls above
doors & windows to keep more wall space free. We can stand in our shoes on most of our furniture, so getting books down is no trouble.

3-7-cabin (3).jpg

EXTRA:

-Top left: living room with corner of kitchen counter at bottom of
photo. "Coffee table" is an old ship's carpenter's sea chest in which
off-season clothes are stored. Large wooden bowl atop chest was carved & used by my mountain-man great-grandfather. A fifteen-light front door is to the left of the couch which opens into a wide single-guest-bed.

~Top right: Rest of livingroom. Antique boatbuilder's working
half-models and friends' bird & whale carvings on wall over oak
chest/cabinet. Almost all windows look out on the Blue Ridge
Mountains. Old oak dining table for four is by large window opposite
the half-models.

~Bottom Left: Boat galley kitchen with 4-burner stove/oven, double
sink; pottery & baskets kept atop cabinets.

~Bottom right: Bedroom w/ queen-size bed. Out of view is a large
cedar wardrobe for a closet (Tip: built-ins can't be moved for
rearranging rooms but wardrobes can) and two chests-of-drawers. View
out large window (out of sight to right) is of a large mowed field;
small window over bed looks into a large bamboo grove.

Another tip from Helouise's illegitimate brother here: In small spaces, install hooks to hold open doors back against walls. In tight quarters, you will bump into a door that's swung even an inch out of its usual position. And another thing: Angle a few pieces of furniture to avoid a boxcar feeling.