Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
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5.14 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 4 7 A lot of times, downsizing means getting rid of the McMansion and moving into a "normal" house. Nancy Bohannon is downsizing on a smaller scale. Much smaller. After divorcing, she moved from a 700-square-foot shotgun in Clarks- ville, Ind., into a 300-square-foot apartment in a Germantown shotgun duplex. "I had to get rid of a lot of stuf," the 56-year-old says. Now she wants to sell the rest of her furniture and get rid of all her "knickknacks." Her next step will be to buy a 30-foot RV (it burned, and the owner is selling it for scrap) to build a 240-square-foot "tiny house." "At my age, I don't want to start over with a new mortgage," she says. "I don't need a lot of room. So it just seemed like a really cool thing to do." In February, Bohannon got together a group of 12 others, via her "Tiny House Louisville" Facebook page. Tey're interested in building their own tiny houses. She says most of them are 20- and 30-somethings attracted to the inexpensive lifestyle that tiny houses ofer. According to Bohannon's estimate, a tiny house can be built for less than $10,000. Tese types of homes are just making their way to Louisville, but they've been around for a while in the Pacifc Northwest. Tammy Strobel, a writer and photographer, and her husband, Logan Smith, a teacher and scientist, have lived in their tiny house (currently parked in northern California) since 2011. She wrote a book about living in a tiny house and says she gets tons of email from people who want to build their own. "Our main motivation was to get our fnances in order," she says. "We wanted to be happy. Debt causes a lot of stress. We had lots and lots of stuf and two cars and too much debt." Strobel says it cost $33,000 to build her 128-square-foot house, but after that initial shell-out, there's no rent or mortgage payment. Bohannon's planned budget is $7,000. She currently works as a medi- cal bill coder, but she ran her own remodeling business for 20 years, so she plans to build the house herself. She'll do a lot of the work, and recruit some friends from her Tiny House Louisville group, in exchange for her help on their houses. She hopes to get all of her building materials secondhand. "I'm on Craigslist every day," she says. She scours the streets for usable lumber and furniture on city bulk-junk pickup days. Until construction starts, the materials are sitting at the Mammoth, a ware- house/artists' space in west Louisville where she'll also build her house. Te layout will be similar to a regular one, except that it could ft into many people's living rooms. Te tiny house will have a deck outside, a living/dining area, a kitchen, a bathroom, a master bedroom (really just an enclosure with a bed) and a lofted guest bed. She'll economize on space by having a two-burner stove and a mini-refrigerator in the kitchen. Instead of a dining table, she'll have stools at the kitchen coun- ter. Instead of a couch in the living room, she'll have a bench. Bohannon says she hasn't had a TV in years, so that won't be a problem. To cut down on water use, she plans to have a composting toilet that doesn't fush — basically a container where waste can be turned into compost. She's experimented with a hand-operated washing machine, sort of like a bucket with soapy water and a plunger for agitation. Bohannon will be able to haul her tiny house with a large pickup truck, but she doesn't plan on moving around too much. After she builds the house — by the end of this summer, she hopes — she's going to move to an RV park with hookups for water and electricity. Ultimately, she wants to park the house on a foundation somewhere in rural Ken- tucky. "I want to have a garden and chickens," she says. She says the thing she'll miss most about living in a larger house is a bathtub. One thing she won't miss: writing rent or mortgage checks. Small Talk Amber Lemon and Keith Starling started searching for a house when their one-bedroom Highlands apartment got cramped with two people and three dogs. Tey liked the restaurants, bars and walkability of the Highlands, so they began the house hunt there. But the Indiana natives surprised themselves by ending up in Portland. "I've been (in Louisville) for fve years, and I'd never been to the Portland area," Starling says. News about NuLu developer Gill Holland's plans for the West End neighborhood piqued the couple's interest. Tey moved into their four-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Portland in February, with its $300 mortgage payment less than their rent was. A lot of people had told them Portland was danger- ous. "When we started looking into it and doing research, we were like, 'People have no idea what they're talking about,'" Lemon says. "Tey hear one story on the news and turn it into an entire neigh- borhood." Lemon, a 28-year-old veterinary technician, and Starling, a 31-year-old leasing and marketing manager at America Place Business Park in Jefersonville, Ind., say they feel safe in their house, not far from the U.S. Marine Hospital on Northwestern Parkway between 23rd and Carter streets. A few their favorite spots in the neighborhood: Lannan Memorial Park on the river, Ben's Bargain Barn on Carter Street and Annie's Pizza on Portland Avenue. "We defnitely feel like we're getting the opportunity to be part of some- thing really exciting," Starling says. "Every day it seems like a new business or service is planned or thought of for this area." At this point, a lot of the planned development in Portland is still just that: planned. On a blustery March afternoon, Gregg Rochman stands in front of a 60,000-square-foot warehouse at 15th and Rowan streets. He and his business partners from Shine Con- tracting are in the process of buying it, and they've already inquired about 89,000 square feet of nearby warehouse space where the Tim Faulkner Gallery and the Louisville Film Society are already tenants. Regarding plans for the warehouse at 15th and Rowan, Rochman says, "Tere's been interest: cofee roasters and a cofee shop, a res- taurant, an archery range, a high-end art appraiser's storage, skating rink…." Tere's also the planned "stroll district," centered around a row of storefronts on Portland Avenue. Holland's companies son- aBLAST! Records and Te Group Entertainment are slated to move to a nearby former school building. When the stroll district comes up in conversation, Lemon and Starling say almost in unison that they want more restaurants there. Brenda Ridge, a Portland native who lives next door, agrees. Sitting on her front porch with her miniature poodle on her lap, she tells the story of when she asked the manager of a White Castle at Sixth and Broadway if he'd bring a franchise to Portland. "Te manager politely told me, 'Lady, this is as close as we'll ever get to Portland,'" Ridge says. Lemon says some Portland residents got angry about gentrifca- tion at a recent neighborhood meeting, complaining that property taxes will go up. Ridge isn't one of them. "I've been to NuLu", she says, "and if they do anything like that, Portland will live again." Putting Down Stakes in Portland 38-49 Real Estate.indd 47 4/18/14 4:40 PM