“Where’s
the bed?” That’s what most people ask upon entering Paul and Caroline’s 400 sq. ft., backyard cottage. (Spolier: It’s a queen-sized Murphy, tucked
neatly away in a poplar wood cabinet constructed by Paul).
the living and bedroom
But
you’d be forgiven for first noticing the spoons and forks—purchased from
Goodwill and serving as drawer pulls and cabinet handles. Or the hanging cheese
grater light cover in the kitchen. Then there’s the small shrine to the
musician Prince (to say Caroline is a huge fan is an understatement).
silverware from Goodwill is creatively re-purposed
the light filled kitchen features a tree top view
No matter where your eyes alight, it’s clear that this home is unique to its owners. And it all started with a pingpong table.
the garage is all set for a Purple Rain screening in observance of parking day,
In
2014, after several years living in their Fremont house, Paul decided to tear
down the garage in the backyard and create a space for his pingpong table. During
that renovation process, he and Caroline got the idea to add a second floor to use
it as their living space. Paul, a skilled builder, would design and build the
structure. Caroline liked the idea of a change after several years in their current
house on the property.
With
all of the skill and purpose between the couple, why did Paul and Caroline hire microhouse?
Paul
puts it simply: “Bureaucracy.” Despite
his ability to create the plans and build the home from top to bottom—doing all
the framing, electrical and plumbing himself—he was hesitant to deal with the City
of Seattle permitting process. Enter Bruce Parker of microhouse. “Bruce is so
helpful because he's good at [dealing with the bureaucracy],” says Caroline.
“It makes for a good team.”
Having
lived in their backyard cottage for two years, is there anything Paul and
Caroline would change about it? “I might not
make the roof as steep,” says Paul, who designed it with Caroline to be
consistent with neighboring homes. Now, he says, flat roofs have popped up all
around them.
paper mache was used as the floor covering for the living room
“I don't have
room to put big ladders and scaffolding up around here,” he says, worried for
the day he’ll have to do roof maintenance or repairs. “I would have thought
about roof access a little bit more.”
recycled tiles were used for the shower surround
The bath countertop is a laminate of scrap wood
For Caroline’s
part, she’d go with a quieter heating system. While the convection heating
works well, the loud fan bothers her. Paul comments that it’s too late to
change it, then reconsiders.
“Well, it's
not too late. I can replace that with a radiant panel.” He pauses. “But then
I'd need a bigger wall space.”Caroline laughs at this prospect. And Paul
seems to agree with her sentiment. “When you're in a small
space, everything affects something else,” he says. But what the
couple loves about their home far outweighs any regrets.
For Paul, his favorite thing about the cottage is the light. “When you wake up, the
morning light glows. It doesn't actually shine through our windows onto us, it
just glows.” Caroline
agrees that the light is their home’s best feature. A close second is the
color. While her natural inclination was to paint the cottage purple, a
neighbor had expressed negativity about it. So she waited for new inspiration. It
came during a trip to her native San Francisco. “I
was walking through the Alamo Square neighborhood and I looked up at the blue
sky. I thought. Wow. This is it. So I went down to the Sherman Williams and
looked at their color palette.” She points out the window to the exterior color.
“This is it!” (It’s officially “Quench Blue,” but Paul refers to
it as “the pool.”)
the stair railing was welded by a neighbor
In
a more subtle ode to Prince, a purple bistro table and chairs sit outside the
home, where Caroline enjoys her morning coffee and solitude. And a
Prince-themed Little Free Library on the parking strip greets friends and neighbors. For
Caroline, it’s these details—like the spoons and forks and the hanging cheese
grater—that make the cottage home. And well worth the trade-off for a smaller
living space.
Her
advice to anyone thinking about moving into a backyard cottage is simple. “You
have to downsize. It’s doable, but you have to think twice about ‘stuff.’ I got
rid of a lot of books, and I’m still figuring out where to store my clothes.”
Paul,
as the builder, has two contradictory pieces of advice to would-be cottage
dwellers. “One: it's all certainly possible. I mean, if one guy can build this,
it can be done. You don't need PhD to do it. But you need to do it. People think, ‘Oh I'll get in an
hour or two every weekend’. It's like, you're never going to have a house.
That's not going to happen. So along with the, ‘Anybody could do it’ advice, it
takes a lot more time and effort than you think. So you either get after it or
stop dreaming. One of the two.”
