Background
I’m familiar with living in small spaces from Hong Kong. My 550 sq ft apartment, although compact, had 2 bedrooms, combined living/dining room, a galley kitchen, and bathroom. The finish quality was high as the small area means it cost relatively little to use higher quality materials.
Here’s my former Hong Kong apartment:
Design Criteria
However a 200 sq ft garage is much smaller so I would have to come up with new ideas to fit in all the usual amenities: bathroom, cooktop, fridge, dishwasher, washing machine and so on.
One design requirement was no Murphy Bed: too much strapping and unstrapping the bedding, moving pillows, when stowing/unstowing.
I also wanted the ADU to be energy-efficient, so well insulated and air-tight, electric only/ no natural gas, and use rainwater for toilet flushing and laundry (I will discuss my rainwater system in another post), also solar roof and backup power.
First Design Attempt
My first design attempt was separate rooms – living, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom – squashed into the 200 sq ft area. I used the floorplanner.com free online tool to create these plans.
There were some limitations with this design: no way to fit a Queen bed, it would be Double at most. Also it was doubtful the clearances in the bathroom would meet city code. (For example there must be 1’3″ clearance on each side of the center line of the toilet.)
Jack Barnes: Architect
I had met Jack on an ADU open home tour the previous year so got in touch and he agreed to come up with a design and to work through the city approvals. As I’m in a historic district there were complications around modifying a historic contributing structure.
His breakthrough idea was to locate the kitchen and bathroom on a 2 ft high platform with 3 steps leading up from the living area to the kitchen. The queen-sized bed would stow away under the platform creating a living space during the day, converting to a bedroom at night.
Irvington Cottage 