View full sizeThe bunkhouse in Gearhart has six beds on one side, two on the other, to supply space for a blended family.Small-space bunkbeds for kids:
Tiny House Talk blog posed a question, "Do you think it would be comfortable to raise up to four kids in a 2-bedroom home if they're all under the ages of, let's say, 13?"
of multi-bed bedrooms, ranging from rustic to sophisticated.
It reminded me of a Homes & Gardens of the Northwest story from a few years back about a blended family's beachhouse retreat in Gearhart, which included a pretty cool eight-bed room for the kids. The bunkhouse took up half of the house's two-car garage. The shipshape design had built-in wooden bunk beds, each one outfitted with a nautical wall sconce (with its own switch). The beds had portholes between them to make conversation easy, and drawers tucked neatly beneath them.
"Cheap and cheery was our motto," homeowner Tory Paine said.
There's another detail I love, and not just for kids -- I wish I had this just inside my front door: Just inside the bunkhouse door, an inset slatted-wood doormat was designed to trap as much sand as possible. To clean, lift the hinged section and vacuum the concrete floor below.
If you're in the market for bunkbeds, Apartment Therapy's Marketplace has a roundup of 2011
Or if you're the DIY type -- and if you're very handy -- this
is stylishly minimalist, but if you build something like it, you'll need to go to great lengths, as these folks did, to make sure the beds are securely mounted.
A tiny minority:
only 5 percent of people polled consider a tiny house their dream home -- less than the 9 percent who want a castle or castle-type home. 11 percent want a stately, traditional mansion, but a full 50 percent said a green or energy-efficient home is their dream.
Vancouver, B.C., "microlofts":
At MNN.com, Matt Hickman takes a look at some "microlofts" in Vancouver, B.C., that at 226 to 291 square feet are thought to be the smallest self-contained rental units in all of Canada (though I'd guess that's hard to prove). The 30 apartments, in a renovated historic building in the Gastown district, come furnished with the basics -- a flat-screen TV and a dishwasher included, but not an oven. I guess you supply your own toaster-oven and/or microwave.
Tough times for architecture grads:
A new study by Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce found that the highest unemployment rate among recent college graduates is for those with undergraduate degrees in architecture, with 13.9 percent unemployed. That's even worse than those with degrees in the arts (11.1 percent) and humanities (9.4 percent). The
Or check out The New York Times' take on the study:
For a very different take, see Jennifer Kennedy's story,
at Arch Daily. Kennedy is the author of
Revealing Profiles of California Architects."
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