Tumbleweed

It was not until after I thought I had al­ready finished designing my little dream home that I became familiar with the term “minimum-size standards.” Up to this point, I had somehow managed to re­main blissfully unaware of these codes; but, as the time for construction neared, my denial gave way to a grim reality. My proposed home was about one-third the size required to meet local limits. A drastic change of plans seemed unavoidable, but tripling the scale of a structure that had been designed to meet my specific needs so concisely seemed something like alter­ing a tailored suit to fit like a potato sack.

I resolved to side-step the well-intentioned codes by putting my house on wheels. The construction of travel trailers is, after all, governed by maximum — not minimum size restrictions, and since Tumbleweed already fit within these, I had only to add some space for wheel wells to make the plan work.

looked a bit like American Gothic meets the Winnebago Vectra. A steep, metal roof was supported by cedar-clad walls and turned cedar porch posts. The front gable was pierced by a lancet window. In the tradition of the formal plan, everything was symmetrical, with the door at exterior, front center. In­side, Knotty Pine walls and Douglas Fir flooring were contrasted by stainless steel hardware. There was a 7’ x 7’ great room, a closet-sized kitchen, an even smaller bathroom and a 3’ 9”-tall bedroom upstairs. A cast-iron heater presided like an altar at the center of the space downstairs. In fact, the whole house looked a bit like a tiny cathedral on two, 3,500-pound axles.

The key to designing my happy home really was designing a happy life, and the key to that lay not so much in deciding what I needed as in recognizing all the things I can do without. What was left over read like a list I might make before packing my bags for a long trip. While I cannot remember the last time I packed my TV, stereo, or even the proverbial kitchen sink for any journey, I wanted this to be a list of items necessary not only to my survival, but to my contented survival. I am sure any hard-core minimalist would be as appalled by the length of my inventory as any materialist would be by its brevity. But then, I imagine nobody’s list of necessities is ever going to quite match any­body else’s. Each will read like some kind of self-portrait. I like to think that a house built true to the needs of its inhabitant will do the same.

Подпись:Tumbleweed (facing page)

image6

Updated: 11 ноября, 2015 — 8:24 дп