Project Progress
Since my last post, I have made a fair amount of progress on my tiny home in-depth project. I have met with my mentor twice in the past two weeks and we had some very interesting and fun discussions. A few days before we met, my mentor and I had a brief discussion about the client interview process. Before our next meeting I interviewed myself as if I were an interior designer interviewing a client for a project. I conducted the self-interview as if I were going into postsecondary education and was going to live in the tiny home. When you interview a client you need to know who they are and what they are going to use the space for. In this case, I would obviously live in the tiny home, but my two major uses of the tiny home would be to study and relax. The use of a home, and what is important for people to have in their homes depends on the person. Some people are more outgoing and would rather go out to eat. They may not prioritize having a nice big kitchen. Whereas I am more of a homebody and I like to cook. I would rather have a bigger kitchen where I can cook as well as a comfortable living room and bedroom I can spend the majority of my time.
Another important part of the interview process is to find out what is important for your client to have in their home, their needs and wants. My main need for the tiny home, like I touched on earlier is to have a comfy home that I could spend most of my time. It is also important for me to have a fully functional kitchen with burners and an oven, instead of only having a small cooktop that plugs into an electrical outlet. The reason I want to include a fully functional kitchen with nice appliances is because when I would live in a tiny home, I do not picture myself ordering food from restaurants every day. Cooking my own meals would give me a break from my schoolwork and would be a fantastic creative outlet for me. Having a nice kitchen will inspire me to cook more often which is important to me.
During my meeting with my mentor, we discussed my self-interview and watched a couple of YouTube videos that I have found so far during my tiny home research. I told my mentor what I wrote down on my self-interview document, then she prompted me with more ideas that I never thought to write down. One of them being to have the same materials throughout the tiny home to make it flow and seem bigger. This idea came about when she asked me if there was a part of my bedroom that I did not like. For me it was that the furniture in my room is inconsistent. My dresser is a different type of wood than my bedside table, my bedside table is a different wood than my desk, my desk is a different wood than the wood on my headboard, and my headboard is a different material than my white floating shelf. Without my mentor, I would have never put much thought into having the same materials flow throughout the tiny home.
After that discussion, I asked my mentor if I could show her some YouTube videos that I found when I began my tiny home research. While my mentor and I were watching tiny home videos, I was looking for design styles I liked, some creative ways to save space, and overall inspiration for my tiny home. The video that my mentor and I liked the most was this Skoolie Tour on a YouTube channel called The Lost Bells. They had so many creative ways to save space and we got a fairly good insight into what living in a tiny home is really like. It was really fun to watch videos about tiny homes because it reminded me of when I used to watch them a lot when I was younger. After we watched a couple videos and fell down the YouTube rabbit hole, we talked about what we would do during our next meeting. At our next meeting, my mentor taught me some more about what a scope of services is. She helped me make a list of what was important for me to have in each room of the tiny home.
How to Have a Beautiful Mind
During the past two weeks of working on my in-depth project, I have been focusing on two chapters of How to Have a Beautiful Mind. These chapters were called How to Listen and Questions. As you can probably tell from the titles, they were about listening and asking questions. The chapter about listening focused on truly listening to get the most out of a conversation. In the chapter about questions, the main point was to ask certain types of questions to dive deeper into a topic that is being discussed. I asked some of the many different types of questions that were mentioned in the book. By asking those questions I got a better understanding of what we were talking about, therefore helping me go more in-depth on this topic of tiny home design.
While my mentor and I were talking about the scope of services, we began talking about the flooring of the tiny home. I had no prior knowledge about flooring, all I knew was that you could get hardwood, carpet, and tiles for your floor. I was not aware that were so many different types of flooring and even more variety with each type. The types of flooring my mentor and I talked about were engineered hardwood, hardwood, laminate, carpet, and vinyl. During our discussion, we talked about having one type of flooring that would be consistent throughout the whole tiny home. One of the first questions that I asked my mentor was “Why would we use only one type of flooring throughout the tiny house?” What I learned from this question was that by having one type of flooring run throughout the tiny home, it would make the space flow and seem bigger.
After that discussion, my mentor and I began to talk about the different flooring options there are and what would be the best option for the tiny home. If we were going to have one type of flooring run throughout the entire tiny home, it was a no brainer for me to rule out carpet. Then we discussed the pros and cons of the different types of hardwood. Afterwards we narrowed it down to two types of flooring, vinyl and laminate. I asked my mentor many multiple choice questions that the questioning chapter of How to Have a Beautiful Mind mentioned. The multiple choice questions I asked were about vinyl and laminate. Some of them were, “Which of the two types of flooring is more expensive?” “Which is more durable?” “Which is easier to replace?” Asking these questions helped me decide that I am going to use vinyl in my personalized tiny home design. Since I decided on vinyl, I wanted to know a bit more about it. I asked my mentor, “Is vinyl a plastic?” I learned a lot more about vinyl and it sparked a discussion on some of the other benefits of vinyl. It was very cool to learn that vinyl would be easy to clean, low maintenance, and I would not need to worry too much about water damage.
My mentor thought that using vinyl in the tiny home would be the best option. I asked her why she felt that way and there were many reasons. By using vinyl, you can get reasonably priced and reliable flooring. My mentor told me when she is working with clients, that she values their money and wants to get her clients good quality materials that will add value to their lives, be long lasting, and durable. I wanted to know more about my mentor’s experience with vinyl, whether it was in other projects or in her own home. She said that her experience with vinyl has been really good because it is easy to clean, low maintenance, is less prone to damage than other types of flooring, and you can also make it the vinyl look like a variety of different materials. You can make vinyl look like tile, hardwood, and even one solid sheet of vinyl. Though she said to keep in mind where you will be putting the vinyl and what it will be used for. An example that she gave me was in her mom’s kitchen, she used a white vinyl that looked like tiles. Since there is a lot of traffic in the kitchen and it is one of the most commonly used places in her mom’s house, that the vinyl has gotten a bit darker.
At the end of our meeting, I asked my mentor why it was important to learn so much about flooring. She told me that it was important to be aware of the different types of flooring to make an educated decision on the flooring and its particular application. What I learned during this meeting were the pros and cons of the different types of flooring and why it is important to have consistent flooring in a small space. It was also cool because I got to learn more about my values and what is important to me for this tiny home.
Link to an article my mentor sent me to read more about laminate and hardwood: Laminate vs Hardwood Flooring (floorcritics.com)
Obstacles and Modifications
One of the biggest challenges I have faced so far during this project, is finding time to meet with my mentor. When I find the time to sit down and work on in-depth with her, we get a lot done, but getting to that point where we can sit down and work is sometimes challenging for me. Struggling with this has thrown a wrench in my plans time and time again. I have been falling behind on my original plans and schedule, which is fine right now because I gave myself some buffer time in my original schedule, but it is time that I get back on track. To solve this problem, I will talk to my mentor and see if we can set a specific time that we meet every week. By doing this, I will have a set time to work on my in-depth and I will stop putting it off.
My mentor has been a wonderful resource and has supported me so much throughout this project so far. She is there to answer all of my questions and I have learned so much from her. I am so glad I have such an amazing mentor that I am excited to meet with every time. I can barely wait until our next meeting!