Mountain Light is a smaller cottage style home. At 950 square feet, it was originally designed as an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) to our Mountain Sun home, and architecturally they are designed to complement one another. However, Mountain Light is an excellent stand-alone home for an individual or couple looking to build a small but fully functional house. Mountain Light is essentially a 768 square foot single level cottage, with a 180 square foot loft efficiently tucked up under the peak of its roof. It too has a large covered rear deck, which adds an extra 250 square feet of protected outdoor space.

The main level of Mountain Light is a study in efficient design. The entry to this cottage is directly adjacent to the laundry, making it double as a mudroom as well. Besides the functional location, the side-corner location of the home's entry allows adaptation to a wide variety of lot types: rear view, right or left facing views, sloping or flat lots, etc. The entry hall leads to the home's full bath, and to the bedroom.

The living, dining and kitchen areas are all open to one another. Internal spaces are divided only by use of exposed beams, rather than any view blocking internal walls. The gas fireplace is located so that it can be seen and enjoyed from all of these common areas. It is also designed to heat the whole house, with auxiliary in-wall heaters only in the bedroom and bath if needed. An internal glass door was used on the original home to close the main living area off from the accessory areas, in order to save energy. A large sliding glass door at the dining room, large windows in the corner of the living room, as well as corner windows in the kitchen make this compact home feel much larger than it really is.

Depending on your local building codes, and on how you choose to finish it, the upper level loft could be treated as habitable square footage or as a bonus or storage room. It can, of course, be built as unfinished storage space, or as a finished away room, guest bedroom, kid's play area or a small office space. Though there is a flat area of 7' ceiling height down the center of the loft, the sides of course, slope steeply downward below the roofline to about 3'6". Access to the loft as designed is via a custom made ship's ladder. By itself the ship's ladder is an interesting and intriguing architectural feature on the main level. It is designed to create a sense of curiosity and feeling of wanting to explore. However, if the loft were to be used only as storage space, a pull-down style attic ladder could be substituted.

Note: In many locations, small homes with this much heated, habitable space, are allowed as a secondary residence on an existing single family dwelling lot. Check with your local building department for your local requirements. Many building departments count finished heated area with ceilings greater than 5' as habitable space. In this case there is approximately 900 sf of area with 5' high or greater ceilings.

Click to lean more about the matching larger Mountain Sun home.