Tiny Home Office And Other Uses for a Tiny House: Interior Designer and Her DIY Husband Interview, Part 2
Nigel Cooper, aerospace engineer, formerly Royal New Zealand Air Force, and current helicopter pilot and instructor, shared his approach to building additional spaces using tiny houses. My interviews with Nigel and his wife Julia Cooper, Director at HOK, covered interior design, tiny home living, and DIY tiny house add-ons.
Their experiences illustrate how to turn tiny home construction principles into:
- A tiny home office
- A tiny art studio
- A storage shed
- And a fire pit to add outdoor spaces to cabin living.
Tiny Home Office
Before COVID, a mere 7% of Americans who held jobs that could be done remotely did so. By contrast, a recent Pew Research study (March 2023) shows 35% working remotely, with another 41% on a hybrid – office some days, home others – schedule.
While 61% of jobs can’t be worked from home – think helicopter pilot – and many remote workers make do with a coffee table as a desk, Julia needed a fully professional space.
If you require a separate entrance for clients or a co-worker, or simply physical and mental separation from your personal life, her solution might fit your life, too.
Nigel built her a stand-alone tiny home for office space on their hilly lot in the midst of giant redwoods.
Need: Professional, Separate Space that Doubles as a Tiny Guest House
Me: Do you have guests who stay in either of your little places?
Nigel: Yeah, the office has a fold out sofa and we have a camping toilet. It’s kind of self contained, so most of the guests opt to just not bother. We leave the door open on the house, and they just come into the house, and even though we’re in the loft, it’s completely private up there.
Design: Double Pitch Roof with Hopper Windows
Nigel: The home office and the art studio are both super simple designs. Each one has twelve posts holding it in the ground, for the foundation. These twelve posts are concreted in and then the floor joists sit on top of those and, because of the humidity here with the fog and the moisture and all that, there’s a bunch of rat proof wire around the outside to stop the rats getting in.
Nigel: I wanted to put the little, hopper windows near the top, for ventilation. And that’s why it’s got the double pitch design. The windows open up, so in the summertime, Julia just leaves those open, they’re screened, and it allows a little bit of airflow up and out. They’re all double glazed.
Nigel: It has a big main beam in the middle. It’s providing the structure for the smaller beams.
Materials:
Nigel: It’s all insulated. So vapor barrier and insulation under the floor. And then the floor joists go across all the posts and then the floor goes on top of that and the wall goes up on top of that. So super simple construction, and it all had to be staged no bigger than a piece that I could lift by myself.
Nigel: The walls are all insulated, so is the ceiling, and then they’re both clad in cement weatherboard, so fireproof weatherboard. On the outside of the wall, you just have the OSB, which is the ironed-in strand board, then the vapor barrier, and then the weatherboards just go straight onto that.
Nigel: On the inside, there is sheetrock in the office and in the studio, it’s just particle board because Julia wants to be able to bang a bunch of nails in and hang canvas, so. So that just makes it easy.
Me: Tell me about the roofs, what did you construct those of and what materials?
Nigel: It’s just asphalt tile. It’s got the plywood, the tar paper, and then the tiles go on and they’re tight.
Building: Stood Walls Up One at a Time
Nigel: So each wall was built one at a time, lifted up, braced. And then I built all the walls on the floor. I built the platform and then built the walls and stood them up one at a time.
Nigel: The foundation for the office – I have a laser level, so I set the level and then sunk the posts in, up to that form. I mean, it’s nothing more than a guide at that point. The posts and the braces are all pressure treated lumber.
Challenges: Hillside and Creek
Me: How did you level the earth there?
Nigel: With a pick and a shovel. Yeah. Cause you can’t get machinery in here. So all the terracing is all me. It’s pretty steep.
Nigel had to carry all of the materials up a hill, on a little footbridge over the stream on their property. He mentioned that last year after the atmospheric rivers hit California, the creek raged with water. According to ClimateCentral.org, atmospheric rivers, “are ribbons of moisture carried by strong winds in the lower atmosphere.”
Outcome: Beautiful, Professional Tiny Home Office
Julia combines bike commutes into San Francisco with work-from-home days in her office. She relishes the quiet, the beauty of the space, and her ability to keep the door open on nice days.
Her desk expands into a dining table for rainy day dinner parties. And of course it’s also a tiny house guest house when friends stay over.
Tiny Art Studio
The strictures of tiny home living meant Julia, a serious artist, considered renting space in a commercial studio to paint. Instead, the couple compromised on an art studio tiny dwelling. Nigel designed built-in storage space for his tools.
Perhaps you share Julia’s need for dedicated studio space. Checklist items might include natural light, and space to store supplies, art in-process, and finished pieces. A separate environment protects your artistic process from family interruptions.
Musicians, potters, and yoga practitioners look to tiny studios. Client, collaborator, even student sessions benefit from a separate entrance and dedicated vibe.
Need: Artistic Space for Painting and Storage
As Director of Consulting for HOK, Julia’s professional video meetings proved to be incompatible with easels and paint stains.
Design: Shed Roof with Solid Core Insulation
Nigel designed the art studio to be similar to the home office, but with a single-pitched roof, and interior walls lined with particle board to make hanging paintings at different stages of completion easier.
Nigel: I put a big bench seat in the far end. My Ryobi tool boxes sit underneath the bench. That’s my tool storage. Behind the door is a wall mounted rack for charging all my batteries and hanging cordless tools and stuff.
Materials: WPC, Solid Core Insulation
The wood flooring – WPC – has a foam underlay and laminate top – like luxury vinyl planks, but constructed of recycled wood pulp instead of stone.
Nigel: What I did differently than for the home office, because I didn’t have much roof to play with on this one, is I used a solid core insulation in the roof.
According to EPS Building, Solid Core panels are, “Structural Insulated Panels that join high performance rigid foam insulation to Oriented Strand Board (OSB) or plywood.”
Outcome: Successful Painting Environment Plus Integrated Tool Storage
Nigel and Julia both use the studio – she for painting, he for tool storage. They’ve also considered it a type of laboratory for materials they might use in the future on other building projects.
Tiny House Outdoor Space Fire Pit
Need: Warmth in the Evenings and Social Outdoor Space
Tiny living ideally incorporates outdoor space as a spill-over to small square-footages. Julia and Nigel understand how fortunate they are, owning a bit of land and living in a temperate climate. That said, Marin’s ocean fog makes evenings feel chillier than the thermometer reads, so space heaters and the fire pit help enormously.
Design: Circular Cement Ring Filled with Rocks
Nigel: I built a mold for the fire pit to build the concrete ring. It’s hollow in the middle of the concrete. Concrete goes in between the two circular forms.
Materials: Form, Cement, Rocks, Bark
Me: So you just poured that yourself?
Nigel: Yeah, absolutely. 16 bags of cement carried up by hand. That’s the foundation, and it’s got the gas, outlet, and it’s also got a water drain in it.
Nigel poured the concrete, and took the forms off after the cement cured. Then he built a false floor, added small rocks and put a gas ring in there, near the top. Lastly, he included flame resistant bark.
Safety note: if concrete heats up too fast or gets too hot, it might spall. Spalling means concrete that cracks or even explodes due to hidden water bubbles popping. To guard against this, you might choose a fire bowl nestled in the middle rocks. Or look into fire brick to line the concrete or a surface of flexible stainless steel wrapped inside the ring.
Another alternative? Buy a smokeless fire pit.
Outcome: Nigel and Julia Sit Near the Fire Pit Most Days
Storage Shed
One major issue with tiny living lies in lack of storage, even after downsizing. If you own your property, you can build a storage shed rather than paying monthly rental fees for a commercial storage unit.
Need: Outdoorsy, Sporty People Come with Gear
Me: Julia mentioned that you have a place where you put bikes and sporting equipment?
Nigel: Yes – that’s 8’ x 12’, the same size as the painting studio and it’s way down, at the street.
When we first moved in that was the first project because what we realized is we had no storage and Julia was riding her bike to work. Literally the first weekend we lived here I built that little shed.
Design: Traditional Shed, Door, Insulated, Power
Nigel: It’s fully enclosed and insulated. It’s got four little windows in there. There’s power in there. There’s a bunch of storage shelves. For bikes and camping gear. That was the very first project, and that was just purely because we had no storage.
Outcome: Both use it daily.
Interior Design Hacks
The combination of Nigel’s engineering prowess and Julia’s interior design sense contributes to a functional, appealing cluster of tiny spaces.
Bathroom: Open Shelves, Heated Towel Rack, Wall Hooks
Me: Tell me about the bathroom space.
Julia: It has a single vanity with cabinets underneath. The toilet’s across from there. And it came with two open shelves, made the same way (as other parts of the house) from the tree that was felled. So they’re beautiful, you know, kind of a live edge, which is the organic edge wood shelves.
Julia: We were able to put some nice baskets on top of that with extra towels and things in there. It’s pretty compact and we got a couple of fun little hooks to put on the wall for just hanging clothes.
Julia: The bathroom is small, but it’s really cute. We put in a towel warmer because it’s kind of a wet area. And that was a good way to get the towels dry, but it also kind of heated the room at the same time.
Organization: Slim Storage
Oh, you know, I just love Simple Human products. They’ve got a nice slim line, a big enough trash can that it looks okay being out and the pull out recycling is really helpful.
And we’re able to use another one of their products outside for the dog food that we had to, critter proof, put it that way, you know, raccoon proof – that’s just bungee cords and zip tie type of things – to keep the raccoons out.
It’s a Cool Little House
Nigel: I want to say it would be nice to get to the point where I could actually, you know, have a day and just enjoy it. And I do. I have a, it’s not up right now, but in the summer months, I have a hammock that goes up between two redwood trees.
And, you know, it’s pretty fun. Just hanging out there. I have a little platform next to it that I can put a beer on and catch up on stuff.
It’s a cool little house. It really is.
See Interview Part 1, and Other Posts from Jennifer Cooper
- Interview Part 1 Interior Designer Lets us Peek into Tiny Home
- How to Field Tiny House Questions
- 5 Ways to Live With Intention
- 8 Relationship Tips: How to Live in a Tiny House Together
- Raising a Family in a Tiny House
- Preparing to Move Into a Tiny House
