I like it. Open & modern with plenty of light. Hardly looks like a tiny space.

I'd love a full house tour of this one!

I'm literally speechless. I can't think of any comment worthy of this space. It is to die for.

This is an absolutely beautiful house. Congrats on designing it yourself!

Serene...but after being a boater and not being able to walk around the bed while making it, I'll pass on wide open unused spaces.

I love everything; the design is perfect.

Uncluttered, modern, clean lines, limited palette -- and not remotely office-like!

It is really a visual treat, I particularly like the wall of greenery in the living room and the branches in the bedroom.

I like how big the open design makes it feel. Carving a full, separate kitchen out of this space would have taken so much away from the living space. Do you have a foldable, store-able piece that provides extra counter space, or is what you see what you get?

I'm also curious about the bedroom - in the second picture, it looks like there might be a curtain that pulls across the dividing space. Am I seeing that right?

Beautiful space. I keep looking at the kitchen, but I don't see a stovetop or an oven...am I just missing it?

Love this house! Open, modern and well thought out design. The only thing I would change would be to add a door to the bedroom for privacy.

Wow, thanks for the great comments and questions everyone! It's so exciting to see our space on AT! I'll try to answer questions as they come in.

We've found that between the counter and the kitchen table, there's plenty of work surfaces for cooking.

We have a small (two burner) induction cooktop and a microwave/convection oven. These have been more than enough for us and it makes cleaning up quick and easy.

Making the bed with one side against a wall is certainly not an issue for us! It's funny - we get questions about that and I still can't figure out why it would be an issue.

Yes, there's a curtain on one long hospital-track that covers the lower row of windows on the back of the house that continues around to provide privacy in the sleeping-area. At night when we pull the curtains it feels like we're living in a Japanese lantern and in the morning the light coming through is just lovely.

Lovely house! I would like to see a more extensive house tour that addresses some of the questions raised about the design and how privacy is handled. It looks like there is a thin curtain that can be drawn across the front. As a Portlander myself, I love the eco-consciousness and stylishness. But I would feel more comfortable in a house like this if the yard were made more private with a fence - there are a lot of strangers wandering around dumpster-diving, scavenging and in some cases looking for things to re-appropriate, at least in my neighborhood in inner Portland (e.g., in our neighborhood, we have quite a high property theft rate and there are also very troubling assaults here as in any city).

Stunning. The green & all the wood is fantastic. Love this space. (Also, the branches in the bedroom are a super cool touch!).

Is that enormous yard yours? Lovely home!

Great space! What's on the walls in tub/shower area?

I LOVE the openess of it all, but don't you feel exposed at times? Where in PDX is this?? Looks like SE or NE. Is this a Pre Fab home?? Are those types of dwellings usually difficult to insure? I've been really interested in that type of property.

I live in Portland and am always confused by the local obsession with privacy, like Sasha2's comment above. I've lived in every close in neighborhood for ten years and have never fallen victim to theft, "troubling assaults" or dumpster divers...as if hippies eating rotten watermelon rinds is a problem for anyone but the hippies. I'm pretty sure people here are too self obsessed to care about viewing a sexless flash of paler or seeing a stranger smoke weed at their dining room table. Moreover, urban design studies typically indicate that a house or neighborhood with "more eyes" on the street (sans fences etc...) have a drastically lowered crime rate. So the privacy concerns might actually be counter intuitive.

Yep, that's double shower! We love it. The surface on the shower walls is called SkimStone. We'd never seen it used on a shower before (just countertops), but it's really easy to use. It goes on like joint compound and looks like polished concrete. I did two coats of SkimStone and then 10 coats of a concrete water sealer. Very inexpensive and easy!

No, this is not a prefab. We designed it ourselves!

We don't have any problems with privacy yet. We have curtains and we built a nice fence in the back, as noted before, and we've got some strategically planted bamboo in front of some windows.

Yes, the house is on an extra-large lot and since the house is so small we have a back yard that is the size of a normal city lot. It's pretty great!

I would be very curious where in PDX this is. The land size in relation to the structure is unusual. Is this on land owned by a family member perhaps? So it's really more of a guest house? It's just that if you actually owned that much property, the per square foot costs of new construction would make it more viable to build something that could be sold at some point. It is lovely....the bed against the wall would be a deal killer for me. Getting too old to clamber over and around when getting up at night to wee!

This is really nice. Small is the new big. It is so nice to see well done small spaces like this.

congratulations this is totally beautiful winner winner!!!

FELTTIPJR,
You are confused by the questions by privacy and put my words "troubling assaults" in brackets and referred to them as products of obsessions, so let me dispel your confusion about Portland and give you an idea what is behind my comments. In my neighborhood, we have assaults and quite a lot of property crime and thefts. I'll give you some examples of the experiences of my immediate neighbors and myself. My immediate next door neighbor in my multi-unit building was raped in broad daylight walking her dog nearby. And no this is not something I "made up" - she testified at her rapist's trial, so he really exists. After the trial, she moved away from lovely Portland because she couldn't get over her PTSD and never again felt comfortable walking around by herself; her rapist was not a hippy "eating rotten watermelon rinds." He was a schizophrenic homeless guy who was living on the streets and had stopped taking her meds. Another neighbor was recently robbed as he was leaving the house by two men armed with knives. Our house has been robbed (someone walked in and stole my husband's wallet while we were upstairs. Our next door neighbor moved here (to a safer neighborhood) from not far away after her house was robbed twice - the second time she was robbed, a moving van pulled up also in broad day light, and removed nearly all of her possessions (everything from musical instruments to climbing gear and racing bikes). She put her house on the market as soon as the second theft happened, as the police said it was likely her own neighbors robbing her, as they waited until she had gone away for the weekend and then rented a Uhaul. Does this give you some idea of why privacy might be a concern for people in Portland?

Great job--I think it's counterintuitive in the states to build small spaces on big properties, rather than getting "more house for your money." But it's really great to see!

Sorry, I was clearly typing too fast. My first sentence should read: "You are confused by the questions I asked about privacy...."
My apologies! Sasha

That's a bit of a broad brush on Portland. Every community experiences crime. Some neighborhoods are worse than others, but I wouldn't extrapolate your personal experience to the entire city.

Really cute place. My older dog would love being able to stay on the bed ALL day and watch our every move without having to get up and follow us around from room to room :)

Wow those are beautiful windows! Also love the branches on the wall. Very whimsical. How did you affix these to the wall? Great job.

The branches!

*drools*

This is a really nice space. I love that y'all chose a small home, and preserved a lot of outdoor space - I used to live in a guest house, and essentially used the (huge) lot as my living room. It was a great way to live. I also love the wall of windows, and all of the greenery that you've brought inside.

OBLEAK1,
I couldn't agree more with generalizing to the entire city and in fact I did not do so. I said above in my first post: "in our neighborhood, we have quite a high property theft rate and there are also very troubling assaults here as in any city." So no, I wasn't generalizing from my personal experience. I was in my second post replying to the poster who suggested that my questions about privacy were in effect "obsessions." If anyone was generalizing from personal experience, it was that poster, who dismissed my concerns by stating that he has lived here and never experienced any theft or assault. He may be privileged to have avoided crime in a city that has a crime rate nearly double the national average. If you look at the rate of violent crime for 2010 (the most recent year for which such data are readily available), Portland ranks just behind LA and New York city; if you look at the rate of violent rape, Portland ranks just behind Detroit and Baltimore, and is marginally ahead of New Orleans; if you look at the rate of property crime, Portland is just a few cities behind Detroit. So actually Portland's rates of various crime put this city in a category with a number of cities that are more widely recognized as having serious crime problems. I would say that people who move here often wrongly assume that there is no violence or crime here in Portland.

This is incredibly well designed, so beautiful. Congratulations! I love the wood stove and that wall of windows. Love all the books and the plants and the floor is gorgeous. What is it made out of? And I love that there is no TV prominently displayed. Do you have one hidden somewhere? My favorite is the built in bookshelf above the desk up to the ceiling. Sigh.
Did you build that planter yourself or did you buy that somewhere? I saw one somewhere else the other day and have been intrigued with them ever since.
I would need sliding frosted glass doors for the bedroom to keep cooking smells and heat out of it. We used to have our bed that close to our wood stove and I was always way too hot in the winter. Said bed was also in a corner like that and I could never get my fitted sheet as tight as I wanted it. Now, we have a bigger bedroom and I prefer being able to access the bed from 3 sides but not being able to do so wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me. Read - I would still move into your place ;-)

Wow! I love it. That's what I'd love to do someday - build a small home and design every inch of it.

Thanks for noting what the bathtub surround was made of - I was curious! Also, I love your hospital track curtain and your woodstove and your green kitchen backsplash and... well, just about everything!

Thanks for the great comments everyone! I'll try to keep up. :)

The branches are attached to the wall with dental floss and tiny screws.

The floors are strand woven bamboo, made using the waste product from solid bamboo products. It's an extremely water-resistant and durable material (great for our big dogs), and we like the look, but a word of caution for anyone considering this option: the planks are so hard that we couldn't find a single floor nailer that would go through them (we tried five different pneumatic nailers). We had to hand-drill and hand set every nail!

We don't have a TV. We watch movies on our computers.

We tried to incorporate the needs of our dogs as well as us in our design. One is suffering from arthritis, so the absence of stairs is good for her. The other is very energetic and he loves doing laps and chasing balls in the back yard.

Oh, and this might help with the bed-placement debate: that's a king size bed - you could easily replace it with a queen/double and be able to walk all the way around it. :)

I love that couch! Where did you get it from?

@ Sasha2
and @ those who criticized her.

I have lived in many cities in the U.S. — from Washington, DC (yes, the District, not a suburb) to Washington State (in-town Olympia, to be exact). I was, and still am, a proponent of city living and used to have a similar viewpoint to FeltTipJr about being open to the experience of living closely. I would have agreed with the statement "I'm pretty sure people here are too self obsessed to care about viewing a sexless flash of paler or seeing a stranger smoke weed at their dining room table." Right up to the day of my home invasion, where I was raped and robbed on a lovely Sunday summer afternoon in broad daylight.

While I lived in an urban area, it was a neighborhood of restored Victorian mansions in a pretty high income bracket. I didn't have any dumpster-diving going on outside the door. But when police came back after the initial assault to re-examine the crime scene, I got a big lecture about ... no, not locks ... window-coverings. Mind you, I had window coverings in my bedroom and bath; I am a modest person. But apparently a woman doing dishes at her kitchen sink is enough to drive some men into a frenzy, especially when their brains are addled with drugs.

Sorry to hijack the thread about this lovely home ... it is a wonder of space planning ... but I totally agree with Sasha2 that attention must be paid to safety, everywhere of course, but especially in urban areas where people with issues tend to think everything they could want is theirs for the taking.

This house epitomizes what this contest is all about. Awesome home, inded!

beautiful simple space. really wonderful. I would love to know what the wood burning fireplace is? brand or where it is from? I too am looking for one that fits in my teeny tiny space. thanks

Thanks everyone for your kind words of encouragement!

The wall planters are Wooly Pockets. We have three of the three-pocket units on the big wall by the couch and two single pockets in the office area. We built a rain-screen type structure to keep them off the sheetrock and to give us something more solid to hang them on, since the hangers in the Wooly Pockets didn't line up with the studs.

The fireplace is a Rais Gabo with the turntable option. This allows us to decide if we want to see the fire from the kitchen, the living room or the bedroom. It's pretty fun when we're ready to go to bed to just turn the fireplace and take the fire with us. :)

@BIGFISHBOWL
WOW about the floors. I admire you for installing them like that. Enjoy your beautiful house.
I'm off to figure out where to install Wooly Pockets in my house now ;-) Thanks for the tips on those!

Oh, and there was a question about the couch. We bought it used on craigslist, but I think it was originally from Dania. Thanks!

This home is pure genius. The plant wall and the branches would not have worked elsewhere but here they seem to marry your home's interior to the outdoor space - clever. There must be something quite satisfying about being able to sit in one spot and see almost all the fruits of your labor. Well done.

A cute and really well-planned little home - it's clear how you have designed this with the environment and use-phase in mind. Love the little plant wall! The house/yard ratio is also awesome - even though I don't know if I'd make the same choices I love it when people do something so counterintuitive. I think it's courageous, and the end result seems so practical - lots of great outdoor entertaining space in good weather, lovely view, and lots of room for the natural environment and local plants to take up residence. The apartment seems open and spacious despite the size.

And @JUKESGRRL - I'm so sorry that law enforcement engaged in that sexist victim-blaming rubbish. The last thing you needed after such a trauma. Hope that you're ok since!

I traveled thousands of miles to check this one out--it was worth it--it felt open and airy--the southern exposure is a joy and the roof design is impressive. Two large dogs and two adults live very comfortably in this house of the future!

Windows! Man do I ever love your windows. I would probably have planted a bunch of trees around your fencing though - More private and gives you something nicer to look at than your neighbour's house!

Favorite of my favorites! Love the branches in the sleeping alcove.