Lofty aspirations

Dear Readers,

I have recently become fascinated by tiny homes, in part because our son is looking at taking his first step into the property market by buying a rural block on which one can only have temporary accommodation, like a caravan or a mobile home.  I must have clicked on something on Facebook, because I now frequently get images of the latest models without even searching.  

The Sydney Tiny Home Expo was held at the Hawkesbury Showgrounds in Clarendon a few weeks ago, and hubby used that as an excuse for another excursion to a new part of Sydney, at least new for us.  It was a rare rainy day, but I still went alone for the ride, although not to traipse around the exhibition.  If the homes are really mobile, they can come to me!  Hubby, however, went into every exhibit, and not just to get out of the rain.  

After a while, though, he thought that each one was pretty much like the last one, especially since the requirement that they should normally not exceed certain dimensions to be transported as trailers seriously constrained the layout, until he saw a few that included lofts or consisted of two trailers joined together with an offset.

That's more like it, size-wise.

It is interesting to see how (most) essential facilities are squeezed into the tiny footprint of a tiny home, although I do not think that we could quickly adapt.  Where would we put our eight IKEA Billy book-cases for instance?

Some essentials are outside.

Several sales representatives said that the majority of the current customers are buying them to serve as granny flats or for Airbnb rentals in residential areas, rather than as accommodation on isolated country blocks as shown in very flattering ways in most of the brochures.  

That part of the Hawkesbury area was completely new to us.  There is a lot of new housing, even a third Sydney IKEA, then suddenly horsey countryside.  The Expo was at the Showgrounds, after all.  Next to the Showgrounds is the Richmond RAAF Base, which has been in the news lately due to the use of forever chemicals in fire-fighting foams.  Suffice it to say that we drank only alcohol when we ate at the Clarendon Pub at lunchtime.

That lofts are popular in tiny homes reminded me of the loft bedrooms that my first hubby built in our rental apartments in New York and Gothenburg.  Despite the ladder used for access, they did win us valuable living space, and when you are young, you can cope.  When present hubby and I were building our house in France, a friend told us "You need to build three houses to get it right."  I guess that that applies to lofts as well, since first hubby learned to include additional space around the bed for a small table and serving shelf in the third attempt in Gothenburg, to avoid having to climb down and up too many times.

Loft #1, New York, 1970. Only for the young and agile!

 

Loft #2, New York, 1971. Better not sleep walk!

Writing this has worn me out.  I think I'll take a nap, thankfully not in a loft.