Home & Real Estate Sunset’s Celebration V Ì Õi`ÊvÀ Ê«>}iÊÎÈ®
and answer visitors’ questions. “For visitors, the quality of the ideas will be very different,” Dunec said, noting that the takeaways from this year’s Celebration Weekend will be more applicable to visitors’ own backyard spaces. The gardens will open to a larger backyard spread and this year’s “tiny house,” a wheeled box measuring just 20-by-8 feet and designed to echo the idea of maximizing small spaces. The house, manufactured by Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, which offers ready-made homes or build-it-yourself workshops and construction plans for DIY types, was originally designed as a kind of alternative to the traditional RV. But, Gaffney said, the company quickly found that buyers had different plans for the miniature homes. “The person buying this wants to add a backyard house or cottage,” she said, noting the difficult permit process behind building livable backyard space. Add to that the 10,000-pound weight of the house that requires a Ford F250 to pull. And so rises the phenomenon of the tiny house, the small hero of this year’s Celebration Weekend. Since the tiny house’s wheels are nearly impossible to remove, Sunset’s designers will build a deck
Justin Jones, a builder with Ground Cover Landscaping, installs landscaping around the deck of the 20-by-8-foot tiny house, cloaking its wheels with a deck. The house was made by Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. that will work aesthetically to hide them and also improve the connection between indoor and outdoor space. Gaffney noted that the fluidity between yard and home mirrors the Sunset ethos of “taking the party outside.” The magazine’s home editors will decorate the inside, showing visitors how they can liven up the tiny space with paint, linens and small-scale furniture, like the kind easily found at IKEA. “The space is going to be imagined as a female’s home office in her backyard,” Gaffney said. “She’ll have a rattan chair from
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Serena & Lily and a side table for a book and drink.” However it’s devised, the tiny house is growing in popularity for its low cost and easy transportability, features that will be touted by several tiny house enthusiasts at the Celebration Weekend. One such guest is Kent Griswold, publisher of Tiny House Blog and Tiny House Magazine, who will be on a panel fielding questions about the tiny house movement with other guests. Griswold talked about the financial benefits as one draw of small living. “The tiny house movement in-
volves people that are downsizing. ... People are wanting to live within their means,” he said, citing the 2008 stock-market crash as one factor that drove some people to rethink their lifestyles. Griswold, who lives in a smaller-than-average home at just over 1,000 square feet, doesn’t technically live in a tiny house. “It’s still a dream to downsize even more,” he said. But living in such a small space would have its challenges, too, as one could gather from a quick look at any tiny house. Still, Sunset’s upcoming festivities will celebrate the small, looking past its limitations to all the freedoms it can offer. In addition to its featured garden exhibit, the Celebration Weekend will also include stages for tutorials and presentations on cooking, travel, home and outdoor living. Industry specialists like chef Fabio Viviani, fashion journalist and author Linda O’Keeffe and architect Vina Lustado are among this year’s festival presenters. The weekend will also offer wine seminars, live music and hands-on activities, including terracotta pot painting. N Editorial Intern Lena Pressesky can be reached at lpressesky@ paweekly.com.
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Home Front V Ì Õi`ÊvÀ Ê«>}iÊÎÈ® the first class.) NO STANDING WATER ... It’s a drought, you say, so why would there be danger from standing water? According to Santa Clara County Vector Control, some invasive nasty mosquitoes — the kind that transmit dangerous diseases — are breeding in flower pots (or sometimes inside flowering plants, such as bromeliads), buckets, koi ponds, rain gutters, old tires, pet bowls and even trash and bottle caps. SCCVC also advises to make sure doors and windows have tight-fitting screens. Information: tinyurl.com/m3ljmlm BACKYARD CHICKENS ... Patricia Moore will teach a one-night workshop on “Raising Backyard Chickens” from 7 to 9 p.m., on Monday, June 16, at the Arrillaga Family Recreation Center, 700 Alma St., Menlo Park. Cost is $38 for nonresidents, $29 for Menlo Park residents. Information: 650-330-2200, menlopark.org or csd@menlopark.org N