Shedlife's Weblog

Bathroom/Laundry plans

shedlife — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 11:06:24 +0000

So we’ve alloted 4m x 3m for the combined bathroom/laundry room and here’s some of our initial ideas on how we’re going to use this space…

1m x 1m (approx) for the shower – we saw a super coolio shower at an expo that continuously recirculates/reheats 4litres of its own water collected in a resevoir in its base after you toggle a switch when you’ve finished shampooing, soaping & rinsing etc.

2m counter with basin and our existing front-loading washing machine tucked under in the other corner.

Composting toilet – again we found a super coolio model at the same expo.

1 “double-sided” storage cupboard/mini room divider that will sit between the toilet and the shower-approx 1m (l) x 0.5m (d) x 1.5m (h)

1 large storage cupboard/hide-all-approx 2m (l) x 0.5 (d) x 2m (h)

Here’s some really rough sketches:

Mahjong Floor Cushions

mrsshedlife — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:13:34 +0000

I think it will be fun to have oversized floor cushions for sitting on around the mahjong coffee table.

I recently bought a book, Material World: Home Decor Projects for the Fabric Obsessed (Domestic Arts for Crafty Girls) (Paperback), that has a project for a ‘tomato floor cushion’ that looked like it could be funky.

The shape kinda looked like this (but much better in the book, of course):

It might also be a fun idea to instead have thick floor pads that look like mahjong tiles… decisions!

Room divider bookcase

mrsshedlife — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 06:26:44 +0000

How to seperate the bedroom from the home office and increase privacy plus provide more storage for our mountains of books? My idea at the moment is to build bookcase/room dividers inspired by Shoji Screens with a bottom section for drawers.

Inspiration:

Each row in the bookcase section will be 300mm (12″) open cubes, maybe with the (un)bleached calico stetched to cover the “back” with tacks/staples hidden with extra trim. The bottom 2 rows will be used for drawers/baskets for extra storage (to hide junk).

Now its just a matter of deciding how many cubes in (how big to make) each ‘bookcase’ and costing these alittle bit more carefully.

Mahjong coffee table

mrsshedlife — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 07:50:51 +0000

So the idea is to build a coffee table that will store/display mahjong tiles in a recess cut into the table top and can be used to play some fast and furious games on. The cutout will usually be covered with glass. A shallow drawer in one side will hold racks, betting sticks and directional dice.

I think the easiest (but possibly not the most attractive) way to build the top would be to have a 1 square of mdf/plywood as the ‘base’ and then a 2nd square with a smaller square cutout of the middle which would then be laid over and attached to the ‘base’. A ledge could be routered out for a pane of bevelled glass to sit upon- to keep the tiles nicely contained and dust-free.

Basic Floor Plan

shedlife — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 01:24:38 +0000

The challenge: Turning a slightly out of proportion metal box into a comfortable living space. Creating an open plan space with kitchen, bathroom/laundry, 1 bedroom, living/dining/chillout zone, home office and as much storage built in as possible.

The metal box: 12m (l) x 6m (w) x 5.3m (h) – running north-south.

The solution:

Grey Water Ideas

shedlife — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 23:36:30 +0000

The grey water system that we want has to be simple and cheap to implement.

The plan at the moment involves a storage tank, 1 pump, gravity and a series of recycled bath tubs:

1) Grey water from the ‘house’ gravity feeds through a filter/trap into a storage tank.
2) A submersible (or float) pump kicks in and pushes the grey water to the first tub.
3) The water flows through the 1st tub’s layers of gravel, sand and charcoal into the next bathtub.
4) The water continues flowing down each stepped tub level into the last bathtub.
5) The now filtered water collects in the last bathtub and waits to be used in the garden.

Adinkra Symbols

mrsshedlife — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 22:46:42 +0000

Last night I bought a ‘book’ called “ADINKRA West African Symbols” (Mimi Robinson, www.chroniclebooks.com, 1998) which contains 31 wooden backed rubber stamps and a booklet describing the history, dress & robes and techinique of Adinkra and the meanings of the 31 stamps. The booklet suggests using the stamps to decorate letters, envelopes, greeting cards & ribbons but I think I’ll have to take it further than that.

I hit my favourite search engine and found more images of some of the stamps and more symbols that I really like…

ASASE YE DURU – “the earth has weight” – divinity of Mother Earth

ANANSE NTONTAN – “spider’s web” – wisdom, creativity

BI NKA BI – “no one should bite the other” – peace, harmony

FUNTUNFUNEFU DENKYEMFUNEFU – “siamese crocodiles” – democracy, unity in diversity

the end of Part I

shedlife — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 11:06:00 +0000

Where to start… with the messed up idea to begin the process of moving out of a reasonably reasonable 3 bedroom house (on our 25 acre farm) into a living space that we will design and build ourselves to suit our growingly hippy ideals and lifestyle.

After weeks of working through options that would fit with our lack of savings and aversion to red-tape we realised we could convert our existing big shed (12m x 6m x 5.3) and create a space that fits us, our horde of puppies and our soon to be started oasis containing an orchard, huge vegie patch, bees and chickens.

Now we are finalising the designs (floor plans, garden, built-in furniture), researching materials and starting to work on turning this big metal box into an energy efficient haven in the greenest way practible.